The equipment that Trump's national security team should have used

Recently, the editor in chief of The Atlantic found himself in a group chat on Signal, in which president Trump's national security team discussed a military operation in Yemen. This immediately became SignalGate.

Here I present the secure government equipment and networks that Trump's team should have used instead of an app on their (personal) smartphones. It will also become clear why the Trump team prefers using Signal.

From left to right: Marco Rubio, Michael Waltz and Pete Hegseth in a White House conference room,
with some screenshots of messages that were exchanged in the Signal group chat.
(White House photo, January 28, 2025 - click to enlarge)

The Houthi PC small group

On March 11, 2025, president Trump's national security adviser Michael Waltz started a group chat on the open-source encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, which took place on March 15.

The chatgroup was named "Houthi PC small group", with PC apparently referring to Principals Committee, a term typically used for a gathering of senior national-security officials. This group had a total of 19 participants:

- Michael Waltz, National Security Adviser
- Brian McCormack, Chief of Staff for the National Security Council
- Alex Wong, Principal Deputy National Security Adviser
- Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff
- Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
- JD Vance, Vice-President of the United States
- Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
- Mike Needham, Special Adviser for the Department of State
- Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense
- Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury
- Dan Katz, Chief of Staff for the Secretary of the Treasury
- Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence
- Joe Kent, Acting Chief of Staff for the Director of National Intelligence
- John Ratcliffe, Director of the CIA
- Walker Barrett, Staff member of the House Armed Services Committee Republicans
- Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy to the Middle East
- Jacob, function unknown
- Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor in Chief of The Atlantic

This list shows that the members of the "Houthi PC small group" were from many different government departments and agencies and that some lower-ranking officials participated as well.

This is probably one of the reasons why they used Signal: given the variety of positions, they would probably not have access to the same equipment and/or networks to have a properly secured conversation.

The major US government departments and intelligence agencies have their own computer networks, usually one for unclassified and one or two for classified information:

Overview of major Homeland Security computer networks
From a briefing for Congress, July 2004

Secure computer networks

The networks of the Department of Defense (DoD) are the most widely used and therefore most suitable for interagency communications. There are separate DoD networks for different classification levels:

NIPRNet (Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network)
- For information that is Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU)
- Circa 4,000,000 users

SIPRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network)
- For information classified Secret (S)
- Circa 500,000 users

JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System)
- For information classified Top Secret/SCI (TS/SCI)
- Circa 200,000 users

These classified networks are not connected to the internet and additionally secured with TACLANE network encryptors. These networks offer email (in the Signal group chat mentioned as "high side inboxes"), messaging and other collaboration tools, but they can also be used for VoIP phone calls and secure video teleconferencing.

> See also: US military and intelligence computer networks

Operations center in the US Central Command headquarters, with computers and
VoIP phones for Unclassified (green) and Secret (red) communications.
(still from 60 Minutes, January 2021 - click to enlarge)

Secure telephone networks

The DoD also operates a secure telephone network for classified conversations, called the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), also known as the Multilevel Secure Voice service. The DRSN connects the White House, all military command centers, intelligence agencies, government departments and NATO allies.

The DRSN has some special features and uses custom made telephone sets (currently the IST-2 made by Telecore), which can be used for both secure and non-secure phone calls. These phones also have the distinctive four red buttons for Multilevel Precedence and Preemption (MLPP).

During the attacks of September 11, 2001, the DRSN didn't function as intended and therefore a new Crisis Management System (CMS) was established. This includes a dedicated Voice over IP network that connects the President, the National Security Council, Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intelligence agency watch centers, and others.

The CMS uses high-end Cisco IP phones with a bright yellow bezel. This color indicates that it can be used for conversations up to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI), which is the classification category for the most sensitive, intelligence related information.

Former secretary of defense Lloyd Austin in his Pentagon office in 2021,
with a Cisco IP phone with yellow bezel for the CMS and
an IST-2 phone with many red buttons for the DRSN.
(DoD photo - click to enlarge)

Most senior members of the "Houthi PC small group" have a phone for the CMS in their office, but their deputies, advisers and staff members usually have not. So when they have to be involved in a secure phone call, that often means they have to be in the same room as their principal and listen to the conversation via the speakerphone.

It's noteworthy that not included in the Signal chat group were Michael E. Kurilla, commander of the US Central Command, and local commanders who led the military operation in Yemen. They were likely in contact with defense secretary Hegseth via the proper military channels, which would be SIPRnet or the DRSN.

> See also: The communications systems at the US Central Command headquarters

Securing mobile phones

All the equipment for secure communications discussed so far are fixed/landline devices that sit on someone's desk. That's fine when working in office, but nowadays people are used to do almost everything on their smartphone.

Securing mobile communications has long been a challenge. In the first place because outside, conversations can easily be overheard. For a long time, encryption devices were large and heavy, until in 2002 the Sectéra Secure Wireless Phone was introduced, which enabled encrypted phone calls and SMS/text messages over public networks.

> See also: How Obama's BlackBerry got secured

> See also: Obama using a secure GSM phone

Around 2010, cell phones of the GSM generation were rapidly replaced by smartphones, which became so complex that it's very difficult, if not impossible to prevent the device from being compromised by malware and/or backdoors.

Under its Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program, the NSA tried to solve this problem by securing commercially available devices with multiple layers of protection and encryption. This resulted in the DoD Enterprise Mobility program, which encompasses three different classification levels:

DMUC (Unclassified)
- For Samsung and Apple smartphones and tablets
- Circa 140,000 users

DMCC-S (Secret)
- For Samsung smartphones and tablets
- Circa 8000 users

DMCC-TS (Top Secret)
- For Samsung smartphones
- Circa 500 users

Overview of the DoD Enterprise Mobility program, 2022
(click here for the full document)

The Secret version (DMCC-S) became operational in 2015 and offers secure phone calls via the CellCrypt app, access to SIPRNet email via the Outlook Web Application (OWA) and some other pre-approved apps on a Samsung smartphone or a Samsung tablet.

The DMCC-S solution has further restrictions, because in case the phone not only handles data-in-transit (DIT), but also stores classified information (data-at-rest, or DAR) it may only be used in physically protected environments.

On social media some people claimed that a conversation like in the Signal group chat should only take place in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). However, a SCIF is only mandatory for information classified Top Secret/SCI, while military information is usually classified Secret.


The White House provides its employees with Apple iPhones, but without access to the iOS App Store and with all text messaging capabilities disabled - under president Biden, only a few staffers in the press office had the ability to text on a limited basis.

Especially Signal's option for "disappearing messages" (which was turned on in the "Houthi PC small group") isn't compliant with the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which requires that all communications by and among White House staff members have to be archived.



Trump's shift to Signal

As we have seen, there are various highly secure communication channels that Trump's national security team could have used. Those who were working in their office had access to secure computer networks and a secure phone, those who were traveling (like Gabbard and Witkoff) had the option of using a DMCC-S smartphone.

However, it was already the transition team that prepared Trump's take-over of the presidency in January 2025, which deliberately refused to use government facilities and IT systems. This was in part to avoid the mandatory record-keeping that comes with using official resources.

Instead, Trump's staffers and incoming government officials communicated via their personal devices, often using the Signal app, and this continued after Donald J. Trump had been inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States.

Last February, political appointees at the DoD ordered that Signal had to be installed on government phones for newly installed senior military officials: "they all use Signal and need it to communicate with the White House" - even though in the same month, the NSA had warned against vulnerabilities in using Signal.

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing a few days ago, Trump's CIA director John Ratcliffe said that Signal is also widely used by officials and staff at his agency's headquarters: "One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA as it is for most CIA officers."

NSA bulletin about Signal vulnerabilities, February 2025
(click here for the full document)

Links and sources
- Bruce Schneier: The Signal Chat Leak and the NSA (March 31, 2025)
- The Independent: Previous administrations were wary of the messaging app Signal. Trumpworld has embraced it (March 27, 2025)
- The Atlantic: Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal (March 26, 2025)
- The Atlantic: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (March 24, 2025)
- TWZ: C-17’s ‘Silver Bullet’ Airstream Trailer Pod Used By Secretary Of Defense Hegseth On First Overseas Trip (February 12, 2025)
- DoD Inspector General: Audit of Cybersecurity of DoD Classified Mobile Devices (December 13, 2024)

Interesting topics from the NSA's 2009 Presidential Transition Book

(Updated: January 21, 2025)

In the period between the election and the inauguration, a new US president prepares to take over the administration and gets briefed by numerous officials and agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA).

Here I will present some interesting topics from the extensive 2009 Presidential Transition Book (pdf), which the NSA had prepared for Barack Obama after he had been elected president on November 4, 2008.

Context

The NSA's briefing book was published in May 2017 by the National Security Archive as part of its Cyber Vault. That collection contains 42 declassified documents about cyber issues and also includes a 42-page Transition 2001 briefing (pdf) which the NSA had prepared for incoming president George W. Bush.

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book (pdf) for Obama was declassified on April 13, 2016 and has no less than 289 pages from a binder. It combines various documents and briefing materials from 2006 to 2008, some of them quite highly classified and therefore still heavily redacted.

Despite the redacted portions, the book provides a good and detailed introduction to the NSA and its activities, but with its 289 pages it sometimes goes well beyond what the president and his staff had to know, like for example the highly detailed acquisition and procurement plans of the agency. (p. 154ff)

Mission

While on its public website it was said that the NSA had just two core missions, Information Assurance and Signals Intelligence, the Presidential Transition Book add a third one:

- Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), including codebreaking,

and

- Information Assurance (IA), including codemaking,

which together enable

- Computer Network Attack (CNA), which includes offensive operations against adversaries' information systems, but this had to be done in collaboration the JFCC-NW, which eventually merged into the US Cyber Command.

> See also: NSA's Strategic Mission List

Communications monitoring

Another topic that seems not necessary for the president to know is about a hardly known NSA unit called the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity (JCMA), which was part of the NSA's former Information Assurance (IA) directorate.

The JCMA consists of a Headquarters Operations Centers at Fort Meade and six Regional COMSEC Monitoring Centers, located at Menwith Hill Station (MHS) in the UK, NSA/CSS Europe in Stuttgart in Germany, an undisclosed location, NSA/CSS Hawaii at Camp Smith in Hawaii, and NSA/CSS Georgia at Fort Gordon in Georgia. (p. 36)

These JCMA units monitor the unclassified communications of American military and government entities to determine if critical information has been disclosed or if other vulnerabilities exist that adversaries could exploit. (p. 36)

According to the Transition Book the "Attorney General-approved procedures (and Federal law) permit monitoring with consent, and NSA/CSS ensures that personnel are notified of the possibility of monitoring and that all required consents have been obtained before such monitoring can begin." (p. 49)

Label on an Integrated Services Telephone (IST) which can be
used for both classified and unclassified phone calls
(click to enlarge)

Cyber defense

Several parts of the 2009 Presidential Transition Book are about "Defending Vital Networks", which at that time already was a high priority issue.

The NSA saw a central role for itself, because "Insights and information gained from the Signals Intelligence mission, combined with the expertise and capabilities offered by the Information Assurance mission, make NSA/CSS a key player in defending vital networks against the threats of the Internet age." (p. 30)

Accordingly, the NSA was one of over 20 federal departments involved in the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), or simply the "Cyber Initiative", which was established by president George W. Bush in January 2008 and was continued by president Obama.

The CNCI "seeks to address current cybersecurity threats and anticipate future threats and technologies in order to prevent, deter, and protect the U.S. Federal government (.gov) domain against cyber intrusions. The strategy includes establishing shared situational awareness across the federal government." (p. 32)

The exact way in which the NSA contributes to the CNCI is redacted, but some of its unclassified contributions are:

- "Threat analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the intentions, capabilities, and activities of the adversary."

- "Activity analysis allows for the discovery of unknown, significant intrusion activity, in-depth analysis of known intrusion sets, and trend analysis."

- "Network analysis and cyber target development efforts monitor, characterize, and report on foreign digital networks, organizations and personas in cyberspace." (p. 32-35)

An intriguing issue is that in other NSA documents the notorious Utah Data Center is called an "Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center", but the Transition Book doesn't contain a single unclassified reference to what the purpose of such a CNCI data center would be (neither do the Snowden documents).

However, the Transition Book does emphasize that "All of our responsibilities under the CNCI are within our existing authorities and missions, i.e., SIGINT, Information Assurance, enabling network warfare under JFCC-NW, and providing technical assistance to other federal agencies. The vast majority of our work under the CNCI is work we are already doing under our Transformation 3.0." (p. 100)

The NSA/CSS Threat Operations Center (NTOC), ca. 2006
(photo: NSA - click to enlarge)

Transformation 3.0

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book seems to be the first document that provides an elaboration of "Transformation 3.0" or T3.0. This appears to be a strategic technology plan meant to "distribute our processing capabilities throughout the global enterprise and to unify our missions."

This had to be done by "creating a cooperative and concerted real-time exploit-attack-defend capability [redacted]. T3.0 connects analysts, missions partners, clients, sensors, systems, and information on a global scale through a robust, secure, and distributed network." (p. 60)

(Upon request of The Black Vault, an Intellipedia page about Transformation 3.0 was declassified in 2018, but again most parts have been redacted)

Transformation 3.0 comes after two earlier Transformations of the NSA, which apparently took place in the 1990s and the early 2000s:

"T1.0 - Modernization
Following the cold war, T1.0 improved corporate business processes, shaped the workforce, modernized technlogy, and updated operations - better positioning the Agency to grapple with varied threats and emerging technology."

"T2.0 - Collaboration
Following 9/11/2001, T2.0 began to move NSA/CSS from a paradigm of "need to know" to "need to share", both within NSA and with our clients and partners. T2.0 began to merge the Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance missions together as one, providing on-site support and tailored services - which enabled NSA/CSS to fashing new relationships for the new world order, redrawing distinctions between national and tactical, producer and consumer, collector and operator."

T3.0 - [redacted]
Today, NSA/CSS is focused on the [redacted]. The intention is to create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation/Defense/attack-enabling (E/D/enA) capabilities [redacted]" (p. 123)

Transformation 3.0 was comprised of three parts: "(1) Mission Modernization, (2) Infrastructure Modernization (comprising significant improvement in Power, Space and Cooling (PS&C) and Information Technology (IT) Modernization efforts, both described earlier) and (3) Workforce Modernization." (p. 125)

T3.0 is briefly mentioned in some documents from the Snowden trove as well, for example this one that says that the initiative started in 2006, which means it came shortly after Transformation 2.0 which had just been launched in 2003. See about T2.0 also this newsletter. At GCHQ there was a counterpart program called SIGINT Modernisation.

Another document leaked by Snowden says that the objective of T3.0 was nothing less than "Global Network Dominance" and that a crucial piece for that was the Remote Operations Center (ROC), which manages and operates the NSA's rapidly growing array of hacking operations.

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book also includes a copy of an internal powerpoint presentation about the Transformation 3.0 plan, which is almost completely redacted. (p. 79ff)

This briefing slide from the Transition Book repeats that an important part of T3.0 was to "create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation, Defense and attack-enabling capabilities" which reminds us of the NSA's TURBULENCE program. This program was first reported on in 2007 and was the successor of the TRAILBLAZER project.

Update:
An internal NSA newsletter from October 2006 confirms that TURBULENCE is the actual implementation of the Transformation 3.0 initiative. Something similar can be read on page 293 of the National Defense Authorization Act (pdf) for the fiscal year 2008, which added that TURBULENCE was structured as a "series of loosely connected projects, not one of which met the threshold for designation as a major systems acquisition. This decision, while permitting the NSA to avoid external acquisition oversight, exacerbated the Agency’s weaknesses in systems engineering and systems integration."

TURBULENCE (abbreviated as TU) was/is an umbrella program with at least seven components, including TURMOIL for passive collection from fiber-optic cables and TUTELAGE, which detects and blocks cyberattacks directed against the computer networks of the US Defense Department.

Even more interesting is TURBINE, which uses identifiers from TURMOIL and TUTELAGE to initiate a semi-automated process in which an implant from the NSA's Computer Network Exploitation system QUANTUM is installed on a target's computer system.

With these three components, TURBULENCE integrates all three capabilities of Transformation 3.0: TURMOIL for exploitation, TUTELAGE for defense and TURBINE for attack-enabling.

Slide about the TURBULENCE program from the Snowden files
(click to enlarge)

Research program

Another interesting chapter in the 2009 Presidential Transition Book is about the efforts of the NSA's Research Directorate (RD):

"Since 2003, the NSA Research Program has been structured around four important mission thrusts which drive our advanced research efforts.

"Owning the Net.
This denotes our goal to dominate the global computing and communications network. Research will develop tools and techniques to access, at will, any networked device for offensive or defensive purposes."

"Coping with Information Overload.
We must turn the massive amount of information on the global network into a strategic asset, rather than an obstacle. Under this thrust, Research will develop capabilities to present the most valuable information, organized to make sense to analysts so that thy can perform their tasks in a more efficient and effective manner."

"Ubiquitous, Secure Collaboration.
The focus here is to provide the techniques and technology to allow diverse users - within the government and with our industrial and international partners - to work collaboratively and securely across multiple domains and different environments."

"Penetrate Hard Targets.
Penetrating hard targets provides the technological solutions to enable new access, collection and exploitation methodologies against the nation's toughest intelligence targets. The research Directorate provides foundational and advanced mathematics that contribute innovative solutions to all of the above mission thrusts." (p. 69)

The NSA's Research and Engineering (R&E) Building at Fort Meade
(click to enlarge)

NSA workforce

The exact number of people working at US intelligence agencies was always classified, but surprisingly, the 2009 Presidential Transition Book provides some very detailed figures.

It says that, probably in 2008, NSA/CSS employed 36,371 people worldwide, with 52% of them civilians (18,849) and 48% military and civilians from the armed services (17,522).

68.8% of the NSA's civilian workforce had a bachelor's degree or higher, 40.7% were women, 17.7% members of a minority and 3.8% were persons with disabilities. The average age of the civilian workforce was 43.6 years. (p. 58-59)

A separate chapter titled "NSA/CSS Footprint" provides detailed information charts about the NSA's four regional Cryptologic Centers, including the names of their commanders, partial organizational charts and numbers about their workforce, with actual numbers for 2008 and projected numbers for 2012 and 2015. Below are the actual numbers for 2008: (p. 185ff)

- NSA/CSS Georgia (codename SWEET TEA):
2930 employees: 368 civilians, 42 service civilians, 2173 military, 347 other (foreign or IC partner, contractor)

- NSA/CSS Hawaii:
3054 employees: 224 civilians, 121 service civilians, 2582 military, 127 others

- NSA/CSS Texas (codename BACONRIDGE):
2136 employees: 246 civilians, 56 service civilians, 1689 military, 145 other.

- NSA/CSS Colorado:
1324 employees: 233 civilians, 4 service civilians, 976 military, 115 contractors.

> See also The NSA's regional Cryptologic Centers

Finally, the 2009 Presidential Transition Book ends with the biographies of over 30(!) top officials of the NSA, all of which have been fully redacted, except for those of the director (Keith B. Alexander), the deputy director (John C. Inglis) and the chief of staff (Deborah A. Bonanni). (p. 243ff)