It kinda gets buried under the utter incompetence of these clowns but why are we even bombing Yemen? How is it acceptable to brazenly destroying other countries’ civil infrastructure? It’s a US president’s pastime activity since Obama
Consider all the small business defense contractors who are held to the letter of the most minute security compliance requirements. They have to somehow meet everything, with very limited resources.
And then at the top of government, the most sensitive information is frequently handled without any care at all. Not to mention 19-year olds with flash drives barging into the most sensitive IT systems of the federal government.
Slight imbalance there, I would say.
Notice why Hesgeth's aids were fired:
> According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.
I understand the tactics of much of what Trump and his people do, even though I often disagree. I understand why Trump has DOGE moving quickly and breaking things; I understand why they show contempt for the law, rules, and customs - they want to destroy those things.
I don't understand the utter incompetence that often appears; an earlier example was team Trump's court filings challenging the 2020 elections but there is lots more. How does that furthering the neo-fascist / conservative / Trump mission? I suppose it's disruptive but if they just showed basic competence they would probably get away with much more.
When the only qualification you have for the people that you hire to advise you is absolute sycophantic loyalty, it isn't surprising when they turn out to be wildly incompetent.
Hesgeth has significant success in life and served as a captain in the Army (or Army National Guard). Those aren't sufficient qualification for Secretary of Defense, but they are for not doing stupid, self-sabotaging stuff.
Simlarly, Rudy Guliani was a lawyer and mayor, but the 2020 election court filings and arguments were idiotic. How is that possible?
I don't buy that they are idiots. I don't have an explanation, however.
Hegseth has years on record as a day drinking handsome face on day time TV who rushes into things without thinking ..
eg: throwing an axe and hitting a drummer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMrVdFnjEjs
That's a very narrow type of "significant success" and absolutely below the bar of qualification for Secretary of Defense, although easily clearing the bar to be considered an idiot.
Fascism rewards loyalty above competence.
Folks that are more competent and considered are less likely to be involved in the first place. I think we can see that from Trump's first time in office. There were people politically aligned that fell by the wayside. Unfortunately incompetence appears to be the winning strategy.
> I don't understand the utter incompetence
Simply put, it’s a reflection of Trump’s own incompetence, or perhaps carelessness and his utter refusal to recognize and make use of expertise in others. I’m about halfway through “Lucky Loser” (Buettner & Craig) which traces his financial history. His disdain for objective data over “intuition” has always been alarming. I suspect his hiring for cabinet positions follows a similar carelessness.
> Lucky Loser
Thanks for that ref! I've always maintained T is extremely dumb, He goes towards far left on the Dumb scale on the levels which you'd have never seen before. But, at the same time, he has all the luck which no one else has. Glad, I'm not the only one to see him that way.
This is what happens when 99% of hires are DEI hires… :)
I remember in the one UX design class I took how they stressed the apocryphal "your grandmother is using this app" which in hindsight is sadly asking too much, apparently the bar should have been lower at "the secretary of defense is trying to start a group chat and not leak national security secrets".
He’s not really trying not to leak secrets, though.
Not trying at all ...
US defense secretary texted strike information to his family in group chat he created
At this point, who outside the most delusional among us is not questioning the unfittedness of the entire Trump administration?
Those watching and reading Fox News who will likely completely the ignore the story.
Or they will spin it. The Democrats and othe Trump opponents have no power to communicate effectively outside their bubble, and Trump's team, the Republicans and the right wing know it. They can do anything and spin it successfully. It is the heart of their power.
Arguably 45% of the US by job approval.
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I would request that you think about such situations a bit more before posting a public comment like this. Military security is first and foremost about protecting our armed forces. When the Pentagon plans an attack, it is vitally important that only our military knows about the plan and no-one else, especially the enemy.
It's only a matter of time that our maximally incompetent Secretary of Defense does something that leads to the death of our own armed forces personnel. E.g. the Houthi learning about an incoming attack and shooting down the pilots, or harassing and killing our Navy sailors patrolling the area.
I highly recommend reading Secretary Gate's memoir about being the Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr. and Obama. There is so much at stake that very few people ever talk about. https://bookshop.org/p/books/duty-memoirs-of-a-secretary-at-...
Would add that out of the handful of fighter pilots I know, 100% of them are seriously considering retiring from the armed forces into private industry, something 0% of them (to the chagrin of their spouses) would have countenanced even a few weeks ago.
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Experts say it risks the lives of the pilots. Also, if Hesgeth and other officials are doing it with this particular information, we might be concerned they are doing it with other information.
The number innocent US citizens in Yemen dead due to US strikes exceeds US pilots killed. So the US dead lives calculus is complicated by the fact this is also Americans (government) killing Americans.
... not that it's a zero sum situation as you've laid it out.
It's reasonable to be critical of both details, but not to hold them in any sort of balance.
I don't know it's zero sum, but if the drone strike on a Yemen domiciled US citizen would have been anticipated I think that citizen would not have waited around to be blown up, to the extent a child has such agency.
One of the most famous recorded surface-to-air missile kills on a stealth aircraft was enabled by spies reporting formations and timing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani
Yugoslav spies residing near Italian NATO airbases informed the Yugoslav Air Defense HQ about lack of EA-6 Prowler electronic jammer and "Wild Weasel" anti-SAM aircraft launches during the late evening.Interesting! Unfortunately, Wikipedia offers no citations for that story. (Also, I don't think it says anything about timing, only formation in the sense of what aircraft and capabilities were flying.)
> I'd point out it is a victimless crime
is it though?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/why-tr...
> as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request.
not american, but wouldn't the victims in this case be 'every american'? i suppose it depends on whether you think PRA/FoIA et al. are important in holding governments to account or not.