Insanely Generative

Signal Intelligence Failure


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If you’ve ever accidentally texted “I hate this woman” to this woman, you’re halfway to understanding today’s episode. The other half involves a sitting U.S. administration, several high-ranking officials, and enough classified war planning to make the Pentagon clutch its pearls and retire early.

This week, I sat down with my dear friend and occasional co-conspirator Tallulah Braxton-Davenport—a woman so Southern she refrigerates her church hats in the summer—to talk about the Trump administration’s truly exquisite act of digital malpractice: adding a journalist to a secret Signal chat detailing airstrikes in Yemen.

Yes, that journalist.

Yes, those airstrikes.

From Pete Hegseth’s all-caps grunts to JD Vance’s sudden interest in nuance, from emojis replacing military briefings to Stephen Miller crashing in like the least charismatic stage manager at a high school production of Julius Caesar—this episode is less foreign policy and more community theater with global consequences.

We discuss:

– How secure messaging apps become very insecure when used by very dumb people

– The etiquette of emoji use in wartime

– Why Stephen Miller is the human equivalent of a filing cabinet that screams

– The underappreciated geopolitical role of grocery store parking lots

Also, we ask the question no one else is brave enough to: if Signal is encrypted, but the minds behind it are made of Play-Doh, does it matter?

By the end, you’ll agree with Tallulah’s grandmother’s most cherished saying: “If you see a turtle on a fence post, you can be sure it didn’t get there on its own—and it damn sure can’t explain foreign policy.”

Listen now, before the next war gets accidentally live-blogged via Yelp reviews.



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Insanely GenerativeBy Paul Henry Smith