The Guardian is all for war and secrecy

"The biggest problem with the leak wasn’t only that sensitive military operations were revealed, but the systemic dishonesty it revealed: It exposes a system of broken accountability"

"The biggest problem with the leak wasn’t only that sensitive military operations were revealed, but the systemic dishonesty it revealed: It exposes a system of broken accountability"

This comment by the Guardian’s editor Katharine Viner tells it all: Trump is horrible because he is incompetent and inefficient at waging ruthless and unending war. Who is accountable for the mistakes made in waging war is the issue. The question of why these wars must be waged, however, is off the table. The final bricks in the wall of a political economy focused on war are being layed in place as I write. Why, the cement is barely dry.

Read it and weep:

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Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief

It was a jaw-dropping slip with potentially far reaching ramifications. The fallout from US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, adding Atlantic editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg to the now infamous “Houthi PC small group” Signal chat continues. This week we’ve focused on the political response in the US and the global security implications for the rest of us.

Archie Bland, for the essential First Edition newsletter, asked just how bad the leak was and looked at the security implications of using Signal for national security discussions. Media columnist Margaret Sullivan praised the Atlantic’s handling of an extraordinary leak and Robert Tait profiled Goldberg who, since breaking the story, has been the subject of a stream of ad hominem attacks from some of the officials on the Signal thread. Jonathan Freedland and Susan B Glasser discussed how Trump himself had blamed the media, rather than Waltz and company, on the Politics Weekly America podcast. Meanwhile, senior international correspondent Peter Beaumont looked both at what hostile states could take away from the leak and how some of the participants’ lies and denials about the messages have “made the scandal immeasurably more serious than it was already”.

That point was elaborated on by Joseph Gedeon and Hugo Lowell, in the Washington team, who wrote that the biggest problem with the leak wasn’t only that sensitive military operations were revealed, but the systemic dishonesty it revealed: “It exposes a system of broken accountability, where high-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity.” While that was the public response, columnist Moira Donegan was cutting on what the messages said about the private behaviour of these top officials: “The group chat speaks to the essence of the second Trump administration: its cavalier incompetence, its contempt for human life.”

For those of us outside the United States, the attitudes – to information security and towards supposed allies – were the most troubling takeaways from the debacle. Leyland Cecco and Eva Corlett asked what it meant for the future of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, while Andrew Roth analysed how the messages revealed the sheer level of contempt in which the likes of JD Vance and Pete Hegseth hold Europe. As columnist Marina Hyde put it, “Please enjoy European diplomats declaring that as far as the relationship between the continent and the US goes, this is ‘the writing on the wall’. If only it HAD been written on a wall – that would actually have been more secure and secretive.”

Another quiet week in American politics, then. For help keeping in the loop, our team in the US produces a daily catchup of events in American politics that readers tell us they are finding very useful indeed. (You can bookmark it here.) And do keep an eye on Opt out, a series in which Johana Bhuiyan helps readers to safely navigate your online privacy, which is more important than ever. (And which is perhaps one for Mike Waltz to bookmark … ) This week’s edition explains how green card holders and foreign visitors can protect their phone data from overzealous officials at the US border.