“Signalgate” — the disclosure that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared sensitive war plans over the app Signal from a personal device — was one of the early defining storylines of the Trump administration.
There was no shortage of (largely justified) outrage at the passing of high-stakes information over commercial cellular channels. But the reality is that people, including government officials, have adopted cell phones as their primary means of communication for everything today, from grocery lists to ground invasions.
In Ukraine, in spite of the risks, both sides of the conflict have heavily used commercial cellular networks throughout the war, because nothing beats them in terms of availability and efficiency.
In early June, Ukraine scored its biggest win in months by launching drone attacks at Russian airfields, and in the process it laid bare the asymmetric vulnerabilities that cellular networks present to a major military power like the United States.
Ukrainian handlers operated the drones from thousands of miles away by connecting over Russian commercial cell networks. Because Russia cannot simply turn off its commercial cellular networks, given the enormous social and economic consequences, it was left scrambling for ways to mitigate the threat.
There is a lesson in this for us. We cannot turn back time to a world where strategic, essential communication only happens in a sensitive, compartmentalized information facility, or over private, dedicated networks. Rather than doubling down on outdated protocols, we need to fix the broken network on which the world runs — commercial cellular.
Every time your phone connects to a tower, it leaves behind metadata that adversaries can potentially exploit. Your movements can be tracked, your contacts mapped, your calls and texts intercepted using flaws in decades-old signaling protocols. Hackers can take over your number with SIM swaps and hijack sensitive accounts (like Signal).
Our adversaries understand this, and they have been exploiting the weaknesses in our commercial networks as a result.
Volt Typhoon, a China-backed hacking operation, was designed to burrow into U.S. telecom infrastructure to cripple it during a future crisis. Salt Typhoon, a sweeping Chinese espionage campaign, breached at least nine U.S. telecoms and monitored the communications of both the Trump and Harris campaigns.
The FBI told Americans to stop using SMS messages. Congressmen called it the worst telecom hack in history. Yet, we’re still carrying on like nothing happened.
The core of the problem is that our telecom infrastructure is old, stagnant and too comfortable with monopoly rents.
The U.S. once led the world in 2G, 3G and 4G cellular networks. Now, Huawei leads the world in 5G and is already laying tracks for 6G, thanks to enormous support and billions in subsidization by the Chinese government.
Modernizing U.S. telecom is no small task — the industry has invested roughly $2 trillion in communications infrastructure since 1996. We can’t rip and replace the plumbing of the digital world overnight, but we can innovate on top of it.
The rise of cloud computing has allowed rapid innovation by software-first upstarts disrupting traditional sectors, from travel to taxis to taxes. Software-defined cellular networks, which my company utilizes, now make it possible for nimble newcomers to innovate on top of towers and fiber, using modern security protocols and scalable infrastructure.
But only if they’re allowed to.
The federal government should support privacy-first, software-based mobile infrastructure in the same way it once supported privacy-first internet infrastructure. And as it does so often in these ambitious projects, the Department of Defense should lead the way.
The Tor browser began as a Navy research project. It’s now a global tool for journalists and dissidents. Today’s equivalent is investing in modern telecom — starting with efforts like the Department of Defense’s 5G initiative, which should look beyond private network-based prototypes and address making the public, commercial cellular that we all use more secure, resilient and dynamic.
Another example is the Navy’s Spiral 4 program office, responsible for procuring cellular communications for the force, and is perfectly positioned to hold the industry more accountable for innovation and improvements over the status quo.
“Signalgate” and Ukraine’s Spiderweb operation are wake-up calls. Mobile phones and the cellular network are the way everyone communicates now, and it’s unrealistic to expect people, even those doing high-consequence work, to abandon the efficiencies of mobile communication.
Fixing this requires more than an app. We need to lead innovation on private and secure cellular infrastructure as a strategic imperative.
John Doyle is CEO and co-founder of the privacy-first mobile carrier Cape.
