The D Brief: ‘Counterintelligence nightmare’; Spy sats eye the border; Orbital ‘satellite carrier’; Army chief, interviewed; And a bit more.

“Using common people search tools and breach databases, we found active phone numbers and emails for Waltz, Gibbard, and Hegseth—tied to Dropbox, Microsoft, Whatsapp, social networks as well apps that track running routes,” Der Spiegel’s Roman Höfner explained on social media Wednesday. “We even found numbers from [Waltz] and [Gabbard] that are used for Signal.” 

“To be clear: Of course you can nearly always find old data online, but these emails and phone numbers still seem to be in use and are connected to active accounts,” said Höfner. “Their private email addresses that still appear to be in use can be found in data breaches along with passwords.” 

Why it matters: “Exposed data from top politicians can be used by hackers to launch convincing phishing attacks and gain access to devices and various services such as email, chat tools and PayPal,” which could allow those hackers to “install malware, monitor communications and attempt political blackmail,” an information security expert explained. Read on, (gift link) here. 

Also new: Mike Waltz and Susie Wiles had their Venmo friends lists public until they went private shortly after WIRED asked the White House about it on Wednesday. “Experts say it’s a counterintelligence nightmare,” WIRED reports. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “Someone made a big mistake,” he told reporters Wednesday. “Someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists, but you ain’t supposed to be on that thing,” Rubio said during a business trip to the Caribbean. 

He also alleged, “There were no war plans on there,” and claimed, “The Pentagon has made it clear that nothing on there would have endangered the lives or the mission.” The New York Times has more from Kingston, Jamaica.

Hegseth again insisted on social media Wednesday that he shared “no classified information” in the Signal chat. “No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods” were included in the chat, he said, and added, “Those are some really shitty war plans.” 

But the unsecure chat laid out specific timing and weapons, however. And as Goldberg initially reported, Hegseth revealed this information well before the strikes occurred, and more than 30 minutes before the first aircraft launched to carry out those strikes. 

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell added separately in a statement, “These additional Signal chat messages confirm there were no classified materials or war plans shared. The Secretary was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway and had already been briefed through official channels.”

A second opinion: “This level of operational detail—timing, strike package, battle damage assessment, and more—is 100% definitively, unequivocally CLASSIFIED information,” said Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., and West Point alumni with two combat tours in Iraq. “Sharing that on an unsecured network, EVEN WITHOUT A REPORTER, is a crime and put the lives of service members at risk,” Ryan said in a social media threat Wednesday. “Hegseth must resign. IMMEDIATELY.” 

Analysis: “Hegseth’s Leak Would Have Warned the Enemy. The White House Is Using Semantics to Obscure That,” David Sanger reported Wednesday in a trendspotting piece for the New York Times. 

WH attacks reporter: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Goldberg’s reporting a “misinformation campaign,” and attacked Goldberg as an “anti-Trump hater.” She also attacked Goldberg’s family, and said his wife is a “registered Democrat and a big Democrat donor who used to work under who? Hillary Clinton,” Leavitt said during Wednesday’s press briefing.

As for President Trump, he changed his public position on what observers have called Signalgate, telling reporters Wednesday, “I always thought it was Mike” Waltz. Politico has more on that. 

Reminder: The watchdog group American Oversight has filed a lawsuit against Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Bessent, and Rubio for—as they describe it—“violating federal records laws by using messaging app Signal for high-level national security deliberations,” and the group says it’s hoping “to recover unlawfully deleted messages and prevent further destruction.” 

There’s another thing that’s seemingly lost in all the debate so far over Signalgate, argued Harvard social scientist Ryan Enos. “With all the concern about what messaging app was used by our leaders, I’d love it if we also considered that we dropped bombs on a civilian apartment building and killed 53 people,” including children, Enos wrote on social media Wednesday. “If another country did this to the United States, we’d call it a war crime.”

Additional reading: 

• “'Different Spanks for Different Ranks': Hegseth's Signal Scandal Would Put Regular Troops in the Brig,” Military-dot-com reported Wednesday. Key quote: "How are soldiers supposed to interpret this?" said an Army brigade commander. "It's a cartoonish lapse in security. We still need to take this stuff seriously, but for a while, any security briefing will be peppered with jokes about the secretary of defense."
• “White House taps Musk to investigate Signal chat mishap,” The Hill reported Wednesday; 
• And “The fight over Waltz’s survival shows the administration is obsessed with reporters more than national security protocols,” Politico reported Wednesday. 

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1844, Adolphus Washington Greely was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Greely enlisted for the U.S. Army in 1861, and would eventually rise to the rank of major general. He also captained a failed expedition to the arctic that led to the deaths of 19 of his crew—the survivors endured by eating moss, candle wax, and animal dung—before they were rescued in 1884. In the final year of his life, at the age of 91, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service. Read more about Greely at PBS. 

Around the Defense Department

Space Force plans to put a multisatellite “carrier” into orbit. “What’s better than being able to launch satellites quickly to orbit? Having them there already—or so goes the thinking behind a new $60 million Space Force contract to develop an “orbital carrier.” reports Defense One’s Audrey Decker.

ULA’s Vulcan heavy-lift rocket cleared for national-security launches, bringing competition to a market segment recently owned by SpaceX. Decker has more, here.

By the way: The International Space Station has a podcast, and the first episode just posted on Tuesday. It’s called “Between a Rocket & a Hard Space,” hosted by ISS public affairs officer Patrick O’Neill. ISS Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Michael Roberts joined O’Neill to discuss the line between the ISS and NASA, and how the two entities share research. Listen to that 30-minute conversation here. 

New Army tech uses far less fuel, reducing generator run-time. The 25th Infantry Division’s sustainment commander raves about the Infantry Squad Vehicle, whose hybrid propulsion system reduced one company’s fuel consumption from 45,000 gallons to 2,700 during a recent exercise. And a giant power bank enabled the company to run their op center’s generators just 6 hours a day instead of around the clock. D1’s Meghann Myers reports from the AUSA Global Force Symposium. 

Shipbuilders swarm Capitol Hill to lobby for aircraft carrier funding. In a Wednesday event, the Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition pressed its case for $600 million to secure building of the years-delayed CVN-82. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports.

New: Spy sats join border effort. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency told Reuters that it now has a task force to coordinate its "support to the U.S. border mission," while the National Reconnaissance Agency said it was working with the intelligence community and Pentagon "to secure U.S. borders."

The surveillance agencies’ engagement, “coupled with troop deployments, shows increasing militarization of the southern border, where President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency. Reuters could not determine whether the effort, which has not been previously reported, would gather imagery of U.S. territory.” A bit more, here.

Earlier related coverage: 

• “US spy planes hunt for intel on Mexican drug cartels,” CNN reported Feb. 10; 
• And “U-2 Spy Planes Are Flying Border Security Missions,” The War Zone reported March 14.

Around the world

Four U.S. soldiers are missing after their submerged vehicle was found in a Lithuanian swamp on Wednesday. “The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle the four missing U.S. Soldiers were operating during a training exercise has been located in Lithuania,” Army officials said in a statement. (Read more at Reuters and Military Times.)

Ukraine-Russia truce agreements are already in trouble. Reuters: “Ukraine and Russia accused one another on Wednesday of flouting a truce on energy strikes brokered by the United States, and the European Union said it would not meet conditions set by Russia for a planned ceasefire in the Black Sea,” Reuters reports.

Of particular note: “Russia says sanctions must be lifted before Ukraine maritime ceasefire can start,” the BBC reported Wednesday. 

On the bright side for Kyiv: Ukrainian officials say the country’s relations with White House are “back on track,” Reuters writes.

Related reading: “How a beatdown at sea turned Russia's navy into China's junior partner,” Utah State University Professor Colin Flint wrote in a commentary first published in October and updated this week for The Conversation.

Trump is still pursuing his imperialist designs on Greenland. “We need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it,” Trump told podcaster Vince Coglianese. “I hate to put it that way, but we're going to have to have it.” 

More coverage: France24, Politico, and an explainer from the New York Times.

Related: “Are the United States and Europe still allies? The European public doesn’t think so,” four researchers wrote Wednesday for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. 

And in new U.S. arms sales, the State Department has cleared Qatar’s purchase of eight MQ-9B drones and hundreds of weapons it can carry for just under $2 billion. The benefiting contractors are a veritable who’s-who of top defense firms, including General Atomics; Lockheed Martin; RTX Corporation; L3Harris; Boeing; and Leonardo. Details via the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, here. 

Etc.

Lastly today: Join us in the afternoon for a discussion with Army Chief Gen. Randy George. It’s the last in our month-long “State of Defense” series of conversations with service chiefs, which have already included Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, Air Force Gen. David Allvin, and Space Force’s Gen. Chance Saltzman. 

The event kicks off at 2:05 p.m. ET. Details and registration here. ]]>