An incident that saw a journalist accidentally added to a White House group chat has been reportedly blamed on iPhone’s Siri.
Last month, the Trump administration found itself under fire after details of a planned strike on Yemen were leaked to Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief at The Atlantic.
The Signal group chat included officials like Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and saw discussions about a military strike set for later that day.
While Elon Musk tried to downplay the entire incident, the security breach stirred up frustration from the Democrats and the Republicans – even Hillary Clinton chimed in with a pointed response.
Now, according to The Guardian, an internal investigation has pointed the blame at today’s technology.
When national security adviser Mike Waltz tried to add a Trump campaign spokesperson to the group chat, Siri updated the contact in a way that swapped Goldberg’s number instead.
This was because Waltz must’ve approved the Siri suggestion to do so at some point, The Guardian stated.
According to three people familiar with the investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticised Trump’s treatment of wounded veterans.
Wanting to respond quickly, the campaign brought in the help of Mike Waltz, their national security spokesperson, to shape an appropriate response.
That email was then forwarded to Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who copied and pasted it – with the signature block that contained Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message to Waltz.
As Goldberg’s number was sitting in the text thread, Siri saved the details during a ‘contact suggestion update’ by Waltz’s iPhone.
This iPhone function sometimes links random phone numbers to existing contacts based on info found in emails and texts that it detects as related, which is allegedly how Goldberg’s number ended up in Waltz’s contacts and he was mistakenly added to the Signal chat. In the incident’s immediate aftermath, Waltz also said that he had never met or communicated with Goldberg, The Guardian noted.
This kind of thing can happen with Apple devices, but the feature can be turned off in the iOS Settings app. But even with that feature available, many are left wondering how it was ever allowed to influence sensitive communications involving national security. That said, The Guardian commented that White House staff had been cleared to use the Signal app for real-time chats ‘there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies.’
