this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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He's the Secretary of Defense, he makes most the rules about how military secrets are handled. Even if it were against some rule, if he orders someone to break a rule, then he's the one breaking not the person setting up the connection. Sure in the military, you don't follow illegal orders, but that's reserved for being ordered to do a war crime or go against the constitution in some way. Sec Def telling someone to set up an internet connection doesn't rise to this level.
Sure we don't have sworn testimony, but the AP is a reliable source of information and they verify their sources. I'd default to trusting the story rather than doubting it because you can't imagine anyone in the pentagon having the ability to set up an unsecured internet connection when ordered to do so by Sec Def.
There's being skeptical, then there's being contrarian for the sake of it.
Who do you imagine would be the one to say "no"? The military is required to follow the orders of the civilian leadership, which at the moment is Pete Hegseth. The only person who could say "no" would be Donald Trump. But that's not going to happen, they don't even want reporters in the press room of the Pentagon these days.
I think you've just become accustomed to there being competent civilian leadership of the military, so you can't imagine these scenarios as being possible. Yeah under a competent SecDef these things are impossible, because someone competent would never even consider discussing war plans over civilian communication channels, or at the very least listen to the advice of experts if they suggested it. Dude is an idiot, but that idiot is the person in charge. Being competent doesn't overrule the chain of command. Expertise in subjects like network security (or anything else) doesn't overrule Hegseth's position.
When people said putting an undisciplined Fox News personality in charge of the military was an extremely bad idea, this is why.