If you’re running the security directorate of a hostile nation, savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple? The Trump administration has unlocked the vault doors, fired half of the security guards and asked the rest to roll pennies. Walk right in. Take what you want. This is the golden age.

如果你是敌对国家的安全机构负责人，好好享受这一刻吧。从美国政府偷取机密从来没有这么容易过。这么简单的事，你还能管它叫偷吗？特朗普政府打开了金库大门，解雇了一半的保安，让剩下的人去数硬币。直接走进去。想要什么就拿什么。这是个黄金时代。

In its first two months, the Trump administration has made move after move that exposes the government to penetration by foreign intelligence services. It’s not just the group chat about forthcoming military strikes that The Atlantic revealed on Monday — although that was, to be clear, as audacious and ridiculous a security breach as there has been in decades. The administration short-circuited the process for conducting background checks on top officials, turned tens of thousands of people with access to government secrets into disgruntled ex-employees and announced it was lowering its guard against covert foreign influence operations. It installed one of Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals on the roof of the White House, seemingly to bypass security controls, and gave access to some of the government’s more sensitive systems to a teenager with a history of aiding a cybercrime ring, who goes by the nickname Big Balls.

在最初两个月里，特朗普政府做出了一个又一个举动，使政府暴露于外国情报机构的渗透。《大西洋》周一披露的在群聊中讨论即将到来的军事打击只是其一，尽管要明确的是，这是几十年来最鲁莽、最荒谬的安全漏洞。政府缩短了对高级官员进行背景调查的程序、将数万名可以接触政府机密的人变成心怀不满的前雇员，并宣布降低对外国秘密影响行动的警惕。它在白宫屋顶上安装了埃隆·马斯克的卫星互联网终端，似乎绕过了安全管理措施，还让一名有协助网络犯罪团伙前科的少年（绰号“Big Balls”）访问政府的一些格外敏感的系统。

In his first term, President Trump caused an uproar by revealing intelligence to the Russian ambassador that was routinely withheld from America’s actual allies. This is something different: the erosion of America’s ability to keep any secrets at all. The second Trump administration is treating security like just another stale Washington convention, an annoying impediment to its ambitions to move fast, break the bureaucratic state and replace it with an all-powerful executive. The bros in tech and finance don’t have to deal with these creaky, fussy restraints. Why should the White House?

在他的第一个任期内，特朗普总统向俄罗斯大使透露了一些通常对美国的盟友都保密的情报，引起了轩然大波。这一次又有所不同：美国保守任何秘密的能力正在削弱。特朗普第二任政府将安全问题视为又一套华盛顿陈规，非常烦人，阻碍了它快速行动，打破官僚体制，用一个无往不利的行政机构取而代之。科技和金融领域的兄弟们不需要处理这些陈旧、繁琐的限制。白宫为什么要处理这些？

Major adversaries pray for this level of chaos, confusion and opportunity. A secretive Chinese network is trying to recruit fired U.S. government workers. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service states with “high confidence” that foreign adversaries are trying to “capitalize” on the Trump administration’s mass layoffs. But the Chinese Ministry of State Security or the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate aren’t the only ones who stand to profit from the Trump administration’s disregard for even minimal operational security. Intelligence gathering has become easier for everyone.

我们的主要敌人盼望的就是这种程度的混乱、混淆和机会。一个秘密的中国网络正试图招募被解雇的美国政府工作人员。美国海军刑事调查局表示，“高度确信”外国对手正试图“利用”特朗普政府的大规模裁员。但是，特朗普政府无视哪怕最低限度的行动安全，从中获利的不仅是中国国家安全部或俄罗斯对外情报局。情报收集对所有人来说都变得更容易了。

So-called zero-click spyware is now sold to regimes and corporations around the globe. Apple has notified users in 150 countries that they’ve been targeted. A program from a single Israeli spyware maker, the NSO Group, has been deployed in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Hungary, India, Mexico and Rwanda. “Now the junior varsity countries can come in and succeed,” Frank Figliuzzi, the F.B.I.’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, told me. “You don’t need to be very sophisticated.”

所谓的“零点击”间谍软件现在被卖给世界各地的政权和公司。苹果通知150个国家的用户，他们已成为了攻击目标。一个由以色列间谍软件制造商NSO集团开发的程序已经被部署在沙特阿拉伯、西班牙、匈牙利、印度、墨西哥和卢旺达。“如今随便什么国家都可以进来，并且取得成功，”前联邦调查局反情报助理局长弗兰克·菲格里齐告诉我。“根本用不着什么水平。”

This should be the time to batten down the hatches. But the Trump administration has other priorities. Around 1,000 F.B.I. agents have been diverted from their regular duties to scrub the case files of Jeffrey Epstein. (Even in New York City — a hotbed of foreign intelligence activity — the F.B.I. field office is “all hands on deck” on the Epstein review.) Meanwhile, the Justice Department stopped its investigations into the possible compromise of New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams by foreign governments. A seven-agency effort to counter Russian sabotage and cyberattacks has been put on hold. Personnel from the bureau’s counterterrorism division have been newly asked to pursue those who vandalize Teslas, while the new Joint Task Force Oct. 7 investigates “illegal support of Hamas on our campuses.”

现在本应该是严阵以待的时候。但特朗普政府还有其他优先事项。大约1000名联邦调查局探员被调离日常工作，去处理杰弗里·爱泼斯坦案的卷宗。（即便是在外国情报活动的温床纽约市，联邦调查局外勤办公室也在“全员投入”处理爱泼斯坦的案卷审查。）与此同时，司法部停止了对纽约市市长埃里克·亚当斯可能被外国政府利用的调查。七部门联合对抗俄罗斯破坏和网络攻击的努力已被搁置。联邦调查局反恐部门的人员最近被要求追查那些恶意破坏特斯拉的人，而新成立的“10月7日联合专案组”将负责调查“在我们的校园里非法支持哈马斯”的情况。

As for that mortifying incident in which a journalist was invited into a supposedly super-triple-extra-confidential conversation with top military and intelligence leaders, it’s hard to know what’s worse: not being aware who was in the group chat or conducting the chat on mobile phones. The participants — the intended participants, anyway — may have thought they were safe because their texts were encrypted by the Signal messaging app, prized by the secrecy-minded all over the world. A chat, however, is only as secure as the people using it. Just a few days ago, the Pentagon issued a warning that Russian hackers were tricking people into letting them join their Signal group texts. Steve Witkoff, a special envoy, accepted an invitation to join a chat anyway — and he did it from Moscow. Mr. Witkoff has since said that he was using a secure, government-issued device. But there’s no way to make a phone completely unhackable. In SCIFs, the secure rooms where Washington officials conduct their most sensitive conversations, phones aren’t even allowed in the door.

至于这次令人难堪的事件——一名记者被邀请参加一场据称是超级机密的、军方和情报部门最高领导人之间的谈话，不知道哪种情况更糟糕：是不知道有谁在群聊里，还是这些人在用手机聊天。参与的人——至少是那些他们知道的参与者——可能认为他们是安全的，因为他们的消息是由Signal应用加密的，这个应用受到全世界有保密意识的人的青睐。然而，聊天的安全性取决于使用它的人。就在几天前，五角大楼发布警告称，俄罗斯黑客正在欺骗人们加入他们的Signal群聊，但中东特使史蒂夫·维特科夫还是接受了群聊邀请——而且是在莫斯科。维特科夫后来表示，他使用的是政府发放的安全设备。但是没有办法让手机完全不被黑客攻击。华盛顿官员进行最敏感谈话的安全房间——敏感情报隔绝设施(SCIF)——甚至不允许带入手机。

The people at the center of Signalgate — the national security adviser, Michael Waltz; the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; to name a few — all know this. They all served in the military. They no doubt heard innumerable lectures from counterintelligence experts about all the different ways an adversary can make off with sensitive data. But this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. This is an administration that makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and has at its pinnacle a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence.

“群聊门”的核心人物——比方说，国家安全顾问迈克尔·瓦尔兹；国防部长皮特·海格塞斯；国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德——都知道这些。他们都曾在军队服役。毫无疑问，他们听过反情报专家无数次介绍对手窃取敏感数据的各种不同方式。但这是一个积极、骄傲地拒绝专业素养的政府。它把那些拥有专业素养的人描绘成腐败的老古董、真正的敌人、“深层势力”，并宣称自己拒绝听取他们的意见是一种正当和正直的表现。按照这种观点，安全机构必须屈从于白宫的意愿，如果高层人士不具备传统意义上的任职资格，那就更好了。这届政府让福克斯新闻的周末主持人成为世界上最大军队的领导人，让一个充满阴谋论思想的播客主播负责联邦调查局，最厉害的是，让一个真人秀明星成为总统。像这样的失误是不可避免的结果。

“Of course they have their WhatsApp groups and their Signal groups,” Matt Tait told me. Mr. Tait is a well-connected cybersecurity consultant and a former analyst at GCHQ, the British signals intelligence service. “Fundamentally, they don’t really trust the civil service that are working for them, and don’t really see any of the constraints that traditionally people would follow as applying to them at all.”

“他们当然有自己的WhatsApp群和Signal群，”人脉广泛的网络安全顾问、曾在英国信号情报机构政府通信总部担任分析师的马特·泰特告诉我。“从根本上说，他们并不真正信任为他们工作的公务员，也不认为传统上人们会遵循的任何约束都适用于他们。”

In the coming days the administration’s defenders may note, correctly, that much of what the federal government stamps secret barely qualifies as sensitive, and that administrations going back 20 years or more have used their personal devices to talk war and peace. But that does nothing to excuse the recent gaffe, which is why those involved are trying to distract us with claims that fall just this side of comedy. Mr. Waltz suggested that Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who was invited to the war planning chat, might have hacked his way in, as if that would make the security concerns better, not worse. Ms. Gabbard claimed the texts exchanged by the group — detailing the targets, timing and weapons system used in an ongoing U.S. attack — were somehow not classified at all, and therefore no secrets had really leaked.

在接下来的日子里，政府的辩护者可能会正确地指出，联邦政府贴上机密标签的许多事情几乎不能算作敏感，而且20多年来，政府一直在用他们的个人设备谈论战争与和平。但这并不能为最近的丢人现眼开脱，这就是为什么相关人士试图用滑稽可笑的说法来转移我们的注意力。瓦尔兹暗示，被邀请参加战争计划讨论的记者杰弗里·戈德堡可能是靠黑客手段进入群组，似乎这样做会减轻而不是加重安全担忧。加巴德声称，该小组聊的内容——详细说明了美国正在进行的袭击的目标、时间和武器系统——在某种程度上根本不是机密，因此没有真正的秘密泄露。

So if you’re running a foreign intelligence service, relax. You’ve got time. This fiasco could’ve been a wake-up call to the Trump team, an opportunity to overhaul their security procedures and maybe stop courting disaster on quite so many fronts. This administration has decided to go hard in the other direction. “Nobody’s texting war plans,” Mr. Hesgeth told reporters, after being exposed for doing just that. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

所以，如果你在管理一个外国情报机构，放轻松。你还有时间。这次出丑本可以给特朗普团队敲响警钟，给他们提供一个彻底改革安全程序的机会，或许可以停止在这么多方面制造灾难。然而本届政府决定朝着另一个方向努力。“没人用聊天软件发战争计划，”海格赛斯在被曝光使用聊天软件发战争计划后对记者说。“我很清楚自己在做什么。”