Jennifer Barnhill is a columnist for Military.com writing about military families.
It has been more than two months since the world first learned about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of an unclassified Signal group chat to communicate sensitive military operations to members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet and a reporter from The Atlantic. While America may have moved on, military families know that OPSEC is more than a political talking point; it is a matter of life and death.
When my husband went on his first deployment, I was invited to attend a pre-deployment briefing. The message was clear: I was personally responsible for the safety of my husband and his peers. I was expected to learn and abide by OPSEC, or operational security guidelines. I, like generations of spouses before me, accepted that my loose lips could sink his ships, or minimally be the cause of extended deployments and canceled port visits.
So, I did my part. I attended in-person spouse events, as we could not communicate deployment dates online. I locked down my social media accounts. I was careful not to share sensitive information on social media or over the phone. My family and friends didn’t understand why I couldn’t make plans in advance or tell them when my husband might be able to call.
OPSEC is a painful inconvenience for families and those in uniform. Service members have to follow restrictions placed on the use of apps like Pokemon Go and TikTok, can’t use USB flash drives, and must follow countless other common sense guidelines aimed at safeguarding OPSEC. Military spouses too keep our nation’s secrets on a daily basis. It forces us to operate slowly and deliberately. But we do so knowing the cost of our convenience is not one we are willing to pay.
“There are not adequate words … putting the lives of thousands of service members, including my husband’s, at risk,” said Air Force spouse Kendall Brown in a viral TikTok post redressing her representative, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., for failing to address her concerns related to “Signalgate.” “It is only because of the f—ing integrity of the reporter that that information didn’t get leaked out and cause the deaths of service members.”
Brown was not the only spouse who spoke out against the actions of Hegseth and administration officials.
“Military service can feel like a game of roulette, and families like mine are only able to endure the fear and uncertainty because there’s a silent agreement between us and our national security leaders: We accept that our loved ones could die because we trust that our leaders will not expose them to unnecessary risk,” Rebekah Sanderlin wrote in an OpEd in U.S. News. She said what many of us were thinking, that the actions of the current administration violated that silent agreement.
“When you write anything that anyone is going to disagree with, you know you’re going to get some ugly responses. This particular piece about Signalgate, I didn’t get anything,” said Sanderlin. “I have not heard a single person, not one voice, defend [Hegseth’s] use of Signal, and I have a great many friends who are avid Trump supporters.”
As a columnist myself, I was shocked to hear that her article did not result in trolling. In order to make sense of this silence, I decided to examine what Americans were saying about OPSEC.
I pulled up two Facebook posts about Signalgate, one from Fox News and one from The Atlantic. Both posts were made March 26, referencing a new Atlantic article entitled, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.” This article expanded on Jeffrey Goldberg’s original story, but this time included screenshots of the Signal chat, including the now infamous emojis shared by Mike Waltz, who at the time was the national security adviser: “👊🇺🇸🔥.” Each article had thousands of comments, I reviewed the first 150.
The most common responses to The Atlantic post denounced the Trump administration/Hegseth’s actions, making up 41% of comments. One commenter said, “They broke the law in having this conversation outside a SCIF and their gross incompetence invites attacks from our enemies.”
Roughly 30 percent of Fox News comments rebuked the media, specifically the author of the Atlantic article, for putting American security at risk. One commenter even suggested Goldberg should be prosecuted, saying, “Classified or not…! Why would the reporter share the information.? Reporter should be charged with espionage or treason.. that reporter KNEW he shouldn’t do what he did but he did it anyway…”
Both sides of the aisle emphasized the importance of OPSEC. They just assigned blame differently.
However, the second an emoji-filled group chat hit social media, OPSEC became a joke. No matter which side of the aisle you sit, the conversation became political. And rather than focusing on the importance of keeping OPSEC, news headlines helped amplify ad hominem attacks and leaders disavowed wrongdoing.
“Nobody was texting war plans,” Hegseth told reporters after the first Atlantic story broke.
This response disappointed me. And it’s not the first time I’ve been disappointed by a secretary of defense. In 2024, Lloyd Austin made headlines when he failed to notify Congress, the Biden administration or his deputy of his hospitalization following a prostate cancer diagnosis. And just like leaders spoke out against Austin, retired military leaders are calling out Hegseth’s actions.
“The thing that upset me most about that was not the mistake; people make mistakes,” said retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal during an appearance on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart where he discussed the themes of his book “On Character: Choices That Define a Life.” “It was after the fact when people went on public news, and they said the information wasn’t classified. Of course it was.”
Of course it was.
Even though we are not officially part of the military, military spouses do our best to abide by OPSEC expectations because, to us, OPSEC is personal, not political. And when military and political leaders fail to meet those same expectations, it is a slap in the face.
Military spouses know that even unclassified information, when pieced together with other information, can be used by the enemy. Sure, Hegseth didn’t share a full report on Signal, but based on DoD definitions, he shared classified information. And despite my feelings about his actions, I get why he did it.
OPSEC is a pain in the butt.
“What military family has not been inconvenienced by OPSEC at some point in their journey?” said Libby Jamison, attorney and Navy family member. “And so to then see that disregarded so blatantly, I think, is really hard to swallow.”
We need to start talking about OPSEC again. We need to make it clear what is acceptable and what isn’t because OPSEC should never feel easy. It should always feel inconvenient because the costs are too high.