The Signal fiasco exposes the hollow nature of Project 2025

Professional typesetting can't make up for ineptitude

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership is a sleek document. It is written by a bunch of people who have several degrees and real experience at the highest levels of federal government (mostly thanks to the first Trump term). It lists several organizations with serious-sounding names as part of its Advisory Board. It is full of technical jargon in all the right places and is sprinkled with plenty of those ubiquitous government acronyms. Someone probably paid for copy-editing.

But Project 2025 is gilded, not golden.

The downright stupid Signal chat fiasco (now almost old news, as the White House says “the case has been closed”) is an event that strips away the shiny veneer of Project 2025. Some members of the chat are closely tied to Project 2025 or the institutions behind it—all part of the same right-wing, so-called conservative intelligentsia. Most notable is John Ratcliffe, current CIA Director. The Project 2025 chapter on the Intelligence Community was written by his former chief of staff, Dustin Carmack (now at Meta). Ratcliffe himself is listed as a contributor to Project 2025 and was a fellow at the Heritage Foundation after his stint as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in the first Trump Administration. Carmack served as Ratcliffe’s chief of staff both when Ratcliffe was DNI as well as when he was a congressman, so they must have had a close professional relationship. According to Carmack’s endnotes, Ratcliffe was personally interviewed for the Intelligence Community chapter.

Project 2025’s concerns about operational security appear to fall only under the category of leaks for partisan political purposes; i.e., under the Intelligence Community chapter subtitle “PREVENTING THE ABUSE OF INTELLIGENCE FOR PARTISAN PURPOSES”. That is, Project 2025 is quite serious about punishing any former or current officials that discuss their work in public:

The President should immediately revoke the security clearances of any former Directors, Deputy Directors, or other senior intelligence officials who discuss their work in the press or on social media without prior clearance from the current Director. IC [Intelligence Community] agencies, including the CIA, should minimize their public presence and vigorously investigate any and all leaks of information, classified or otherwise. The ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and CIA should fire or refer for prosecution any employee who is suspected of leaking information, and penalties should include the removal of pension benefits for those who are found guilty.
- (2025 Mandate for Leadership, pgs 213-214).

Note that it says “any and all leaks of information, classified or otherwise.” (Emphasis mine.) This suggested action is a direct response to a letter written by former intelligence officials about the likelihood that the “Hunter Biden laptop story” was a result of Russian disinformation. P2025 calls out this letter directly. Indeed, on his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order stripping these former officials of their security clearances. The “any and all […] classified or otherwise” must not pertain to Trump appointees, based on the lack of investigation or punishment for this absurd chat situation.

Project 2025 also says:

In addition, the Department of Justice should use all of the tools at its disposal to investigate leaks and should rescind damaging guidance by Attorney General Merrick Garland that limits investigators’ ability to identify records of unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the media.
- (2025 Mandate for Leadership, pg 214).

Note again the politicization of the effort to protect information.

What Project 2025 does not do, as far as I can tell, is make any suggestions to improve operational security or emphasize the general importance of secure communications and information handling. Project 2025 and John Ratcliffe might agree with what Secretary of Defense Hegseth said in the chat, incorrectly, “We are currently clean on OPSEC.” It is quite a case of hubristic paranoia to assume that operational security issues stem mostly from partisan political motivations.

If anything, P2025’s Intelligence Community chapter alludes to increased laxity: “The IC also often spends too much time overcorrecting for past mistakes. The unintended consequences include hesitancy, groupthink, and an overly cautious approach” (pg. 202).

I might humbly suggest that from now on, the leaders of our intelligence community try a little more hesitancy and caution. They’re doing well on groupthink.

While there are some concrete, topical policy suggestions, the whole of the “Intelligence Community” chapter is very focused on either conquering or alleviating internal politics. The section on the National Counterintelligence and Security Center—the center under the Director for National Intelligence that helps counter intelligence threats—mostly consists of nonspecific pablum about cooperation with other agencies and businesses while warning against caving “to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world” (2025 MFL pg. 218).

I’ll be honest, the superficial nature of the chapter didn’t strike me as odd (although the hyperpartisanism did) until I read about this Signal chat dumbassery. This wouldn’t really be a problem—the Intelligence Community does not exactly need The Heritage Foundation to tell it what to do, after all—if it weren’t for the fact that the Project 2025 team is also seeking to dismantle the federal government, including our intelligence agencies. This week, Ratcliffe is inviting Elon Musk and DOGE to CIA to “discuss government efficiency,” as revealed in a Xitter post that was re-Xitted by Ratcliffe. Can a CIA Director focused on hyperpartisanism be trusted to prioritize a staff reduction within a highly technical government agency?

Ratcliffe is not the only member of that Signal chat (list here) with ties to Project 2025. Trump advisor Stephen Miller is the founder and president of the America First Legal Foundation, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member. Michael Needham, counselor of the Department of State, was an employee of The Heritage Foundation; CEO of Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation; and chairman of American Compass, another Project 2025 Advisory Board member organization. Brian McCormack, a longtime energy industry professional who is now Mike Waltz’s chief of staff, is thanked in the Author’s Notes for the chapters on the Executive Office of the President of the United States (written by Russ Vought) and the Department of Energy and Related Commissions.

Did none of these standard-bearers of the newest New Right offer a suggestion that perhaps they should communicate elsewhere? It’s notable that other than Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, only political appointees were on the chat. Given the membership lists of the IC Principals Committee historically, it is quite odd that the DNI (Gabbard) would be included but not the current Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. My guess is that Mike Waltz knew better than to include an admiral with a formidable command history. Or perhaps Waltz is so clueless as to have only left the Acting Chairman off because he was appointed by Biden. A small part of me suspects Waltz added Goldberg to the chat as a brag-leak (after all, leaking is a very simple explanation for why Goldberg was in Waltz’s phone).

Many, many people fear the plans laid out in Project 2025, many of which we are being enacted at the promised lightning speed. But it is also becoming increasingly clear that the current right-wing movement is not a remade Republican party but a hollowed-out one. To quote Trump, “They’re not sending their best.” The members of this chat group were not just the “DUI hires” like Hegseth; they were self-styled and self-promoted “serious people” in the security and foreign policy realms, like the Project 2025-affiliate Ratcliffe and the career China-hawk Waltz.

It is practically unthinkable that a CIA Director (Radcliffe) or National Security Advisor (Waltz) would be unperturbed by what happened in that Signal chat (and Rubio! What complete capitulation to the new kool kids klan!). It’s ludicrous that a CIA Director would think it was “completely appropriate” to share the name of a CIA officer, even one not currently undercover. The Atlantic still declined to share the name, in what must be a first: a journalistic outlet more concerned about securing government information than the government itself. John Ratcliffe cannot credibly call himself a “serious person” in the security world anymore. Nor can anyone else in that chat. It really was just all style and self-promotion all along. Just like how the DOGE faction that was supposed to bring us smart techies gave us “Big Balls” instead, Project 2025 has given us radical dilettantes instead of conservative experts.

A Final Note:

There has been a rumor floating around that Project 2025 actually recommends the use of Signal. Snopes has already debunked it; but I’m here to double-down. Project 2025 does not suggest using Signal or any non-secured application to share sensitive information. As I wrote above, Project 2025 really doesn’t say much about protecting sensitive information at all. I’ve also seen mutterings about Project 2025 architects suggesting ways to avoid creating paper/records trails. To be honest, while I find it appalling that they’d flagrantly flaunt FOIA and prioritize such actions, simply holding meetings to avoid a paper trail is kind of normal throughout all levels of government. For better or worse, employees learn to brainstorm together in ways that avoid future litigation entanglement—although reputable government employees will always document decisions, actions, and the reasoning behind them; and certainly the higher up the management chain you get the more documentation of decisions and actions is important. Something like an IC Principals Committee meeting should have archivable notes, even if they remain classified for a long time. To be honest, it sounded like this chat was superfluous, anyway, merely a chance for the team to celebrate. A professional cadre would have been satisfied with a “mission complete” from a SCIF.