Report Claims That Auto Suggestion Feature Added Journalist To Trump Officials Chat
Oh man, you cannot make this stuff up. So picture this: you’ve got National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, deep in the thick of a second Trump administration, navigating classified discussions, foreign threats, high-level comms — and boom, thanks to one overly helpful iPhone feature, he accidentally hands a VIP all-access pass to the Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic.
Yep. That’s how Jeffrey Goldberg ended up eavesdropping on a private Signal chat with top Trump officials talking about an imminent military strike. Wild.
Now, let’s back up. According to The Guardian, this whole mess traces back to October 2024 — six months before Goldberg ever “showed up” in the chat. At the time, Goldberg had emailed the Trump campaign about a critical piece he planned to run, and Brian Hughes, Waltz’s comms guy (and a Trump campaign alum), forwarded that message and Goldberg’s contact info to Waltz as part of a prep package. Seems harmless, right? Wrong.
An iPhone suggestion to update a contact with a phone number seen inside the conversation is what led to Mike Waltz inadvertently saving an Atlantic reporter’s phone number under the name of the person he was chatting with, which was Brian Hughes.
Automated suggestion on tech… pic.twitter.com/pRZPLPqMRk
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) April 6, 2025
See, here’s where the iPhone steps in like an overeager intern. Apple’s “suggested contacts” feature noticed Goldberg’s number sitting there next to Hughes’ name in that message thread and said, “Hey, this must also be part of Hughes’ contact info — let’s just slap it on there.” No prompts, no double-check, no confirmation — just full-blown digital matchmaking.
Flash forward to March. Waltz creates or updates a Signal group chat for Trump’s top brass — a place where national security-level chatter is unfolding — and guess who gets an invite? Jeffrey Goldberg. Not because he hacked it. Not because someone tipped him off. Just because he was autofilled as Brian Hughes. That’s right. The dude known for publishing critical exposés on Trump got an accidental backstage pass to real-time U.S. military strategy.
So it really did get sucked into Mike Waltz phone…
According to @guardian, the WH forensic report says Brian Hughes, who runs Waltz comms, sent Goldberg’s contact last Oct to push back on a campaign story. Apple added the number under Hughes as a “contact suggestion update.” pic.twitter.com/688DXYiEZl
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) April 6, 2025
Goldberg, true to form, went public once he realized what he was seeing. Waltz, understandably, was floored. His reaction? “Somehow the number got sucked into my phone.” And while that sounded fishy at first, forensics confirmed it. The iPhone literally sucked it in — thanks to contact-suggestion tech that assumed everyone sharing a message must be besties.
And the kicker? Marina Medvin and others pointed out what a lot of us have probably felt at some point — that these supposedly helpful phone features can be not just annoying, but downright dangerous. We’re talking “leak a secret strike plan to a national journalist” levels of dangerous.