Congressman Suhas Subramanyam Slams Trump Administration for Discussing War Plans on Public Messaging App Signal at the House Oversight Committee Hearing on Securing Telecommunications

Washington, D.C. – Today, Ranking Member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs Suhas Subramanyam (VA-10) led a hearing on the Trump administration’s use of unauthorized messaging and email applications to share classified information regarding America’s national security.

Congressman Subramanyam blasted White House national security officials for not understanding that Signal is not an appropriate venue to discuss national security information. The congressman explained that, despite Signal encryption, White House officials’ phones are common hacking targets for our adversaries, and that communicating classified and sensitive information on non-secure platforms puts our service members at risk. He highlighted that, while protecting telecommunications infrastructure and our national security is a critical, bipartisan issue, it is impossible to have a serious conversation about these topics without discussing last week’s revelation that cabinet-level officials were discussing sensitive and classified information on Signal. The White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to a group chat with individuals like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth where, shockingly, they coordinated military plans and strategy on Signal, a commercial and unsecure public messaging application. The plans Secretary Hegseth disseminated in the group chat were highly classified and should only be discussed in secured facilities. 

The congressman refuted the Trump administration's efforts to minimize the situation as “really not a big deal” and characterize the news as “old and boring.” He countered the administration's efforts to claim the mission was a “success” by highlighting that classified information on military actions and intelligence sources was openly revealed in one of the worst security breaches in modern times. 

Please see below for Congressman Subramanyam’s opening remarks. You may watch and download his full committee remarks here. 

Thank you to Chairman Timmons for holding this hearing. 

Protecting our national security is a bipartisan issue. Salt Typhoon was a deeply concerning breach of our cybersecurity. We must work together to protect our critical infrastructure from attacks by foreign adversaries.

Unfortunately, we can’t do that because we are failing basic security protocols at the highest levels. We can all agree a mistake was made. The NSC is making us vulnerable to things like Salt Typhoon.

If we want to be secure, we need to fix what appears to be very serious. We can’t have a serious conversation about national security without talking about what happened on Signal last week.

So, let’s talk about it.

In short, the National Security Advisor added a journalist to a Signal group chat where top officials shared classified information about an upcoming strike. You might hear my Republican colleagues say last week’s Signal leak wasn’t a big deal.

You might hear them try to play it off and make excuses, hoping that you will forget about the whole thing.  But we can’t forget about it.

Republicans have tried to deflect, saying the mission was a success. But it’s not a success if the whole world now knows how we did it.

We’ve made it much harder and more dangerous for our troops to carry out these missions in the future.

Republicans keep saying the information discussed was not classified. Even if that is true, it was still highly sensitive and could have been catastrophic in the wrong hands. 

Those texts revealed where we received our intelligence. This text tells us that they had identified a target walking into an apartment building. That intelligence came from our Israeli allies who are now furious that this source has been leaked. 

Our allies were already hesitant to share intel with this administration.

Now, the administration has proven that our current national security leaders cannot be trusted to keep sensitive information safe. They’ll just take our classified information and text it to whoever shows up in their contact list.

So, if the objective of this mission was to lose the trust of all our allies, well mission success then. Go team.

Republicans are going to say that accidents happen An accident is when you text gossip to your boss instead of your work bestie. Leaking sensitive military strike information to a journalist is not an accident, this is gross incompetence that put lives in danger. 

We need to hold our government leaders to a very high standard. I have had so many angry constituents reach out to me. Some are veterans themselves and say they would have been fired immediately or face prison time if they’d done something like this. 

I have had parents whose children serve in the military say the same thing. They are terrified that their kids’ lives are at risk because our military leaders cannot be trusted to keep our soldiers safe:  

“That our nation’s top defense official shared sensitive troop movements over a commercial social media platform, without verifying who was on the other end, is not only reckless—it is terrifying. Our service members and their families deserve leaders who treat their safety with the gravity it demands. This breach not only endangers lives but erodes the trust of those who serve and support our military.  My son has sworn to defend this country. I expect the same level of responsibility and integrity from those in charge.”

“For eighteen years I have lived a life most people will never understand. My promise to defend this nation doesn’t stop when I clock out. It permeates every single aspect of my life. It affects who I marry, who I live with, who I date, who I’m friends with, who I speak to. I would be sitting in a jail right now if I would have done something as brazen, thoughtless, and dangerous as what JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, and Mike Waltz, among others, did today.” 

Just two days ago, the White House said, “Case closed.”  I disagree, I still have a lot of questions, and I think the American people do too.

How prevalent is their use of Signal? Sounds like Mike Waltz uses it quite a bit, I guess when he’s not sending it through his Gmail.  And we never would have found out if they hadn’t accidentally added a journalist to the chat. Are they using Signal on their personal phones? Or their government issued phones? 

How vulnerable are those phones to hacking by Russia? Or Iran? Or China? Have any of those devices already been compromised? 

It’s pretty clear these people use Signal all the time. No one batted an eye when Secretary Hegseth shared strike plans on Signal, not one of the eighteen people suggested they move the conversation to a secure channel—not even the CIA Director or the Director of National Intelligence.

Our government spends so much money to protect sensitive communications. There are 13,000 secure facilities around the country. Why did they not use one of those to have this conversation? 

The people in the chat are high-level government officials that travel with a large posse, many of whom could have connected them to secured communications channels. Why didn’t they do that? 

I’ll tell you why. Because they wanted to avoid oversight. 

They didn’t want to preserve all their conversations—which, by the way, is required by law—they wanted to have conversations that would automatically disappear after a week.  Poof.  Gone, never happened. 

None of this is normal. And we can’t let them think it is. 

So today, I ask my Republican colleagues on this committee if they’ll join me.  We’re here to talk about the risk of state-sponsored cyber attacks. Let’s confront this most urgent vulnerability and work together to investigate this massive security leak. 

Mr. Chairman, will you work with me to understand the full scope of this national security threat and make sure our federal officials are no longer exposing our sensitive military information to cyberattacks?

This is an issue of national security, and the safety of every American. 

Thank you, I yield back.

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