Post-Signalgate, Pentagon CIO prioritizes secure platforms for sensitive instant messaging
DOD is moving to accelerate government and military leaders’ access to trustworthy options for communicating sensitive, real-time information, according to the official performing the duties of Pentagon CIO.
By
Brandi Vincent
May 8, 2025
Katie Arrington, the senior official performing the duties of Pentagon CIO, testifies at a congressional hearing, May 8, 2025. (Screenshot from video of a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing)
The full consequences of the Trump administration’s “Signalgate” affair remain unseen — but in response, personnel inside the Office of the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer are moving to accelerate government and military leaders’ access to trustworthy and protected options for transmitting instant communications about sensitive, real-time information.
“This is something that, when they say ‘incidents happen,’ it innovates us and urges us to make the requirement, and make the devices, and make the technology available. So, this is something that we are taking as a priority,” Katie Arrington, the senior official performing the duties of Pentagon CIO, told lawmakers Thursday.
She shed new light on those and other near-term plans during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing about the DOD’s current IT and AI posture.
Reports first emerged in March that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared high-stakes military operational plans in a group chat — via the encrypted but unclassified texting app Signal — with several of his counterparts in the Trump administration and an American journalist (who unveiled the ordeal after he was accidentally added to the group chat). Cybersecurity advocates, former military officials and members of Congress immediately raised concerns about the messages and warned that sharing classified or sensitive information on non-government platforms about planned military operations could put servicemembers’ lives at risk.
https://defensescoop.com/2025/05/08/signalgate-dod-cio-prioritizes-secure-platforms-sensitive-instant-messaging/
