This security lapse signals much more about character

Sharing inflammatory emojis with the bros doesn’t inspire trust.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Screen grab of messages with text and emojis.

The Atlantic

I have - on more than one occasion - sent a sensitive message to the wrong person. It makes me cringe even to recall those mistakes, and so I have a certain amount of sympathy with senior US government leaders who, this week, have been caught out by private messages that got into the wrong hands.

The messages at the heart of this scandal were sent on a Signal chat between National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, J.D. Vance the Vice President, and Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence. What none of them had realised was that inadvertently included in the group was Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic.

Needless to say, screenshots of the chat went viral. The problem, however, wasn’t just what was overheard, - which by itself amounts to a major security breach, - but about what that revealed about the participants – which, I believe, signals a much deeper problem: a breach of character. And there, my sympathy ends.

The White House team was discussing the recent bombing campaign targeting Iran-backed Houthi rebels who have been disrupting navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab-al-Mandab strait. According to reports, the strikes left at least 53 people dead and injured almost 100 more. Some reports say that civilians and children were among the dead. But in the confines of the walls of power of Washington, these lives were written off in a crude series of emojis: a raised fist, the US flag and fire.

Dehumanisation is a dangerous path. Once we stop seeing one another human beings with intrinsic value, dignity and worth our world becomes a far less safe place. It seems a dark day where people on one side of the planet can launch a drone attack on people on the other side and then brag about it on a messaging platform in emojis, like a bunch of mates celebrating a board game win.

The messages on Signal were not just dismissive of those deemed to be enemies – but also of those they call friends. The comments highlight the disparaging way that members of the highest-ranking leaders in the US government view Europe, their faithful and long-term ally. “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC” writes Pete Hesgeth, US secretary of defence.

As a European and British person, these are difficult words to read. It seems our transatlantic relationship has descended into a transactional relationship. Viewing our historical partnership as some kind of profit / loss accountancy does not bode well for world peace. Anyone whose commitment to you is based solely on financial return is an unreliable ally, and that is why Hesgeth’s words are toxic for global security.

Having recently divorced ourselves from Europe with Brexit, now it feels as though we are on the other end of annulment proceedings. The longstanding bonds between Europe and the US that once seemed unbreakable are now fragile, and the global landscape is shifting in ways that may leave us isolated at a time when cooperation and solidarity are more crucial than ever.

It is difficult to hold those in power to account, as Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, knows only too well. It would perhaps have been easier for him to refrain from going public with the compromising information he found in his possession. However, when public servants are not who they seem, it is time for private individuals to speak up and demand better.

We need to speak up in outrage not only about the security lapse, but about the character failings, not just about the breakdown in international relations, but in the breakdown in the ethical fabric of leadership. We must expose those who view human life as disposable, those who view friends as pawns in a financial game. We must hold those in power accountable for the values they uphold, or risk further erosion of the principles that underpin peace. Only by demanding higher standards from our leaders can we hope to restore the trust and integrity necessary for a more secure global community.

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28 November 2024

4 min read

Here's why we need to keep democracy holy

It's much more than a utilitarian deal that benefits the most.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A sign reading 'polling station' stands by the entrance to a church.

Red Dot on Unsplash.

One of the more ludicrous constitutional contributions of late has been the parliamentary petition, with well past two million signatures when I last looked, demanding another general election be called, because the Labour government, elected in July, has “gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election.”

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has surprised precisely no one by saying that he won’t be calling one. And so we’ll move on. But, in passing, what is truly breathtaking is how little our democracy is understood and, apparently, how unseriously democracy in the west is now taken. If that sounds unduly censorious, I have a two-word response: Two million!

Little time need be spent on demolishing the premise of this spurious petition, other than to wonder how many of those signatories would have appeared on one calling for, say, a fresh mandate after the coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg (where is he now? Ah yes) performed a massive reverse-ferret on a manifesto pledge not to raise university tuition fees.

Or how many of these same fearless electors believe the result of the Brexit referendum should be voided because of the lies of the Leave campaign, most notable the one painted on the side of Boris Johnson’s battle bus. But no – two million residual, self-righteous righties can only be mobilised against a Labour government.

This event none the less raises valid questions about what our democracy is (and is not) and why we should want to protect or even cherish it. These questions become the more critical because there’s a tangible feeling of slippage in western democracy, as if we’re growing a bit tired and even contemptuous of it.

There’s the ominous re-growth of nationalism across Europe. And not a few bien pensants – me included, to my shame – might admit to a feeling after Donald Trump’s re-election as US president that democracy is too important to be left to the people.

Slightly more seriously, we need to ask ourselves what the qualities of democracy are that we should seek to defend. The first of these is, quite obviously, the rule of law. Should a political actor seek to overthrow a democratically established electoral process, then that is a crime within the rule of law. Witness the horrors on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on January 6 2021.

That’s the Feast of the Epiphany as it happens, but nothing to do with the coming of wise men. With Trump at the centre of it. Draw your own democratic conclusions – and weep for the rule of law.

Natural justice is to ensure that vexatious petitions don’t overthrow legally elected governments, either by lobby or violence.

Again, why does this matter and what is it about democracy that we hold sacred, even holy? It can’t simply be that we hold dear a kind of hard utilitarian ideal that what we elect to do is for the benefit of most of the people, for most of the time, as decided by popular mandate among the demos.

If we believe in democracy, as I believe most of us do, we’re presented with a choice: We can look to secularism as a solution, universal Enlightenment principles built on citizenship and equality before the law. Or we can look to a multiculturist model, keeping the peace between essentially separate communities and the state.

Or we can shape something on Augustinian Christianity, that recognises the limits of political democracy, which would eschew undemocratic theocracy, but which would hold that no political order other than the Body of Christ (the Church) can claim divine authority.

We’re in classic Rowan Williams theological territory here: “[T]he Body of Christ is not a political order on the same level as others, competing for control, but a community that signifies, that points to a possible healed human world.”

Unsurprisingly, I buy that. Williams goes further to state this spiritual effect on the political environments in which we find ourselves is likely to be “sceptical and demystifying.” Which seems to be a reasonable manifesto in a democracy.

The principle of election can be a worrying one in theological terms. We don’t “elect” God, though some secularists would claim that the Godhead is our invention. Rather, it has sometimes been perceived to be the other way around historically.

Reformational Calvinism would hold, among many other things, the rather terrifying view that we’re elected by God. “The Elect” are those who will be saved, while the rest of us (I presume) can rot in hell. Little democracy there.

Less deterministically, a more modernist worldview would argue that the Christian faith, on which foundation western civilisation is built, offers a viable moral definition of the lawful state, with which politicians of all (democratic) persuasions can tackle issues of global justice.

One such issue of natural justice is to ensure that vexatious petitions don’t overthrow legally elected governments, either by lobby or violence. That’s an important aspect of Christian witness and will require true grit in in its application during the years ahead. That’s, if you will, our grit in the democratic oyster.