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Signal chat furore may push US workers to China’s side, Democrat warns

Senate intelligence committee vice chair says China is ‘luring individuals with national security clearance who’ve been pushed out’

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Left to right: National Security Agency Director General Timothy Haugh, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Jeffrey Kruse appear during a Senate Committee on Intelligence Hearing on Tuesday in Washington. Photo: AFP

A senior Democrat linked political fallout from US President Donald Trump’s top officials’ use of Signal to discuss war plans to national security threats from China, warning that an “erosion of trust” among America’s intelligence officials emboldens attempts by Beijing and Moscow to recruit them.

Grilling five of the nation’s spy chiefs, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, on Tuesday in a previously scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Senator Mark Warner, the body’s vice chair, chided the group for “a pattern” of actions by the administration that “make America less safe”.

The hearing came just one day after The Atlantic published a report revealing that the publication’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat with top Trump officials, including Ratcliffe, in which they finalised plans to strike Yemen.

The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg said in his report.

A fighter plane takes off for an operation against the Houthi group. Photo: US CENTCOM via Reuters
A fighter plane takes off for an operation against the Houthi group. Photo: US CENTCOM via Reuters

“Chinese intelligence agencies are posting on social media sites in the hopes of luring individuals with national security clearance who’ve been pushed out, perhaps arbitrarily, to come into their service,” Warner said.

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