Living and working in Ukraine makes it sensible to install a Ukrainian SIM card on my phone. I can still use WhatsApp and, drum roll for effect, Signal, which, unless you've been living under a rock for the last few days, has made quite a splash in the twenty- four- hour news cycle.
On Saturday evening in Kyiv, the air raid sirens began to wail, and my phone started pinging warnings from a Signal group, UA Missile Alerts, which notifies people working in Ukraine, primarily journalists, about current Russian drone tracks and incoming weaponry. I quickly checked the list of members, wary that the administrators may have inadvertently added high-level members of the American National Security Agency, the head of the DOD, or Trump cabinet members to our private group. Thankfully, the admins had done their job, and we proceeded to evade the wave of Shahed drones Russia had unleashed on Kyiv.
Three people, including a five- year- old girl and her father, were killed in the attacks that went on through the night. Ten others were injured.
Surprisingly, having a Ukrainian SIM card bestows on me a number of perks seemingly denied to American intelligence and security agencies. For instance, a text message I received a few weeks ago alerted me to the dangers of, erm, Signal group chats and Russian phishing scams attempting to infiltrate Ukrainian armed forces Signal groups. The message was clear: the Russian GRU (military intelligence) was making concerted efforts to infiltrate Ukrainian Signal group chats. They even provided a handy link to a website explaining how they were doing it.
The webpage—cunningly entitled “Signals of Trouble: Multiple Russia-Aligned Threat Actors Actively Targeting Signal Messenger"—is a technical deep dive into how Russia targets such groups and is an eye-opener of a read. I will forward the link to Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, before her inevitable appearance at any Senate Congressional hearing. Here is the link for any fellow journalists accidentally invited into informal, cabinet- level chat groups dedicated to attack planning.
https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/russia-targeting-signal-messenger
Fortunately for the hapless members of NSA Director Mike Waltz’s group, one of the most significant threats mentioned in the report was close proximity threats, meaning being in close contact with a malicious actor – threat name: APT44. Thankfully, Steve Witkoff, who was at the Kremlin during the group's formation, emerged unscathed, as Vladimir Putin, once viewed as the key figure behind Russia’s Special Military Operation against Ukraine, is now a reformed man of peace and poses no threat to the NSA Director's personal device security.
The path forward: I recommend Ukraine cuts off all intelligence sharing with the US until dictator Trump, a bigly bad man, gets his house in order and shows a real commitment to peace in the region by signing over the rights of all United States shale gas reserves and Super Bowl advertising revenues to Ukraine.
What can one say, Paul? Our world has turned utterly insane when pathetic little, evil and malevolent narcissists with no sense of enlightenment, like Trump and his owner, Putin, hold sway over the lives of countless others.
Perhaps it has always been so, but must it ever be?