By David Ignatius
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used poor judgment and sloppy security practices when he sent highly sensitive targeting information to colleagues, friends and family on the Signal commercial messaging app.
But the “Signalgate” flap illustrates a problem that transcends Hegseth’s poor performance at the Pentagon. Government technology for viewing and sending classified information is so cumbersome and outdated that it drives people to use insecure work-arounds such as Signal. Using the government’s current technology, military and intelligence officers simply cannot move at the speed needed to operate most effectively.
The heart of the problem is the requirement to handle classified information in what’s known as a SCIF, or sensitive compartmented information facility. These are often cramped, stuffy, windowless rooms that don’t fit the real-world need for mobile, dispersed, secure communications. Worse, inside a SCIF, military and intelligence officers often can’t use the internet or the newest AI models. The system imprisons information more than it protects it.
“SCIFs as a means to protect classified discussions and systems have been an outmoded security practice for more than 20 years,” argues Aaron Brown, who spent 20 years as a CIA officer and Army Ranger specializing in counterterrorism and now runs a technology start-up called Lumbra. “The SCIF was built for a bygone era in the 1970s and 80s when communications were easy to control, and the speed of business didn’t require persistent access to the internet.”
Hegseth used Signal because he wanted to keep other senior officials updated on the Trump administration’s plans to bomb Yemen. For speed and simplicity, he used a chat group set up by national security adviser Michael Waltz, called “Houthi PC small group,” to send information about targets and timing. Inexplicably, he employed another Signal chat to share similar information with his wife, personal lawyer and others. A dozen former military and intelligence officers I’ve talked to say his actions were irresponsible and would normally lead to disciplinary action.
But thousands of military and intelligence officers face similar dilemmas every day. CIA case officers, for example, require fast-moving data from the internet to conduct operations. But if they’re stuck inside a SCIF overseas, or in the vast headquarters complex at Langley, they need special permission to access the internet. Some walk out to their cars to use their phones, according to former officers; others bring their phones inside SCIFs. Both are no-nos.
People break these rules to get the job done. Brown told me during an interview that CIA counterterrorism officers who need to make split-second decisions while running assets are in a no-win situation. “Either one would abide by the rules and risk the operation failing, due to an inability to coordinate at the speed of counterterrorism, or break the rules and bring a forbidden device into the SCIF.” His conclusion, based on experience: “Our best leaders are going to pick the operational pace over the rules every time, setting up an impossible dilemma.”
SCIF-mania also limits the ability to use the latest AI models that are transforming national security – or even simple internet tools such as Google search. Brown says he waited 18 months for permission to use Google in a classified space and finally gave up. The need for military and intelligence officers to experiment with large-language AI models is acute. But Brown says the Pentagon and the intelligence community, while now accessing earlier AI models, can’t broadly use the latest models, including Open AI’s ChatGPT-4o, Google’s Gemini 2.5, or Anthropic’s Claude 3.7.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that SCIFs are in very large part to blame for the IC’s technology deficits,” Brown argues. “It means that we now have an entire generation of intelligence and DOD practitioners that have almost never used these advanced AI systems.”
What’s agonizing is that technologies exist that could break the SCIF barrier. But the Pentagon and the intelligence community have been slow to adopt them. Take the problem that Hegseth confronted – the need for a quick, secure mobile device that could be used safely by national security officials around the world.
There’s a fix for that, devised by a mobile phone company called Cape, founded by a former Special Operations sergeant named John Doyle. Cape has devised a virtual mobile network that disappears from the normal cellphone net. The phone is nearly impossible to hack or trace, according to Doyle.
“Modern mobile is how we all communicate -from teenagers glued to Snapchat to soldiers on the frontline in Ukraine to our nation’s elected officials,” argued Doyle in an email. “It’s a national imperative to make secure commercial mobile work for everyone’s needs, including defense and intelligence professionals.”
Yet government security officials are stuck with legacy systems. “Officers are demanding these new systems and tools, but innovation is blocked by outdated security practices, overly rigid counterintelligence policies, and inefficient acquisition processes,” Brown contends.
There are mobile SCIFs, too – prefabricated units that can be placed in a home or unclassified workspace. But too few are available, and it can take up to a year to get permission to install one, intelligence veterans say.
Hegseth was a poor choice as defense secretary because he lacks the management and technological experience to break through the security logjam. He behaves as though rules don’t apply to “warriors” like him. Rather than using a work-around, a real leader would champion a movement to transform the Pentagon’s archaic technology practices, symbolized by the four confining walls of the SCIF.
David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “Phantom Orbit.”
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