Last month, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat about a military strike in Yemen planned for later that day. Now, sources inside the White House have apparently told The Guardian that an internal investigation revealed the roundabout way that happened: Siri was being helpful.
When national security adviser Mike Waltz invited Goldberg to the chat, he was actually trying to add a Trump spokesperson whose contact information contained Goldberg’s number, according to The Guardian. The outlet says that’s because he approved a Siri suggestion to update the contact at some point previously.
Here’s The Guardian’s description of how that happened:
According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.
Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
And later:
According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a “contact suggestion update” by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.
It’s true that Siri can make suggestions based on info like phone numbers that it finds in your text messages — something you can disable in the iOS Settings app.
But perhaps Siri never should’ve had the chance to end up tangled in a national security scandal in the first place. According to The Guardian, the White House had authorized officials to use Signal because “there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies.” Signal is a great platform for private messaging, but it’s still a consumer product, like an iPhone or Siri, and not an airtight solution for high-level government officials to discuss impending military strikes. Siri’s reported involvement in exposing the Yemen strike discussions is a great example of why.
Apple did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
