Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly, broke the story of a ridiculous story: he was "mistakenly" dragged into a Signal group chat called "HouthiPC" by senior U.S. national security officials. He witnessed U.S. Vice President Vance and others "ridiculing" Europe in the group, and witnessed senior officials discussing the details of a military strike against the Houthi armed forces in Yemen two hours before the actual U.S. military action.
The senior media person was deeply skeptical about this at first. He could not believe that senior U.S. national security officials would discuss such a secret military operation on a commercial instant messaging software, let alone that the president’s national security assistant would be so "reckless" to drag a media editor-in-chief into such discussions.
However, when he saw Defense Minister Hegseth revealing the details of the upcoming operation in the group in two hours, including information on the target, deployment of weapons, and attack sequence, and these actions did take place subsequently, he had to accept this absurd reality.
As the incident was exposed, senior U.S. officials such as Vice President Vance, Defense Secretary Hergseth, Secretary of State Rubio, and CIA Director Ratcliffe became the targets of ridicule. The emoticons used by the senior officials in the group also became hot memes on the Internet.
This incident perfectly illustrates the so-called "Grass Team Theory". The power structure that seems to be operating in an orderly and authoritative manner to outsiders may be more chaotic and impromptu than we imagined. The most powerful government in the world turns out to work in groups online, and even makes such low-level mistakes as "inviting the wrong people."
Looking at the chat software Signal they use, it is both unexpected and reasonable.
This is not the first time Signal has become a hit.
Long before it became an unexpected "witness platform" for U.S. military operations, the instant messaging software was widely recognized by the tech community and privacy advocates for its superior privacy protection capabilities. Celebrities such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and "Prism" whistleblower Edward Snowden have publicly praised Signal.
In early 2021, when WhatsApp announced an update to its privacy policy, Musk simply posted a suggestion on Twitter to "Use Signal". Signal's downloads then surged, once causing its verification system to crash.
Snowden, who is regarded as a representative of privacy protectionists, said as early as 2015: "I use Signal every day." He believes that Signal is one of the most secure communication tools on the market.
This incident also brought a lot of exposure to Signal. The number of downloads of the Signal Android store surpassed that of WhatsApp and others, and once ranked first. Signal's official
Signal's core advantage lies in its advanced end-to-end encryption technology. All communication content (including text, voice, video and emoticons) can only be interpreted by the sender and receiver. Even if the communication is intercepted, the eavesdropper can only see meaningless strings.
This encryption mechanism is such that even Signal itself cannot read the user's communication content, does not collect metadata, does not save call records, and does not perform cloud backup, which fundamentally eliminates the possibility of data leakage.
It is this almost "irrefutable" privacy protection capability that makes Signal the first choice tool for people around the world who need confidential communications.
From journalists and human rights activists to political dissidents, many people in sensitive positions rely on Signal to keep their communications secure. Activists in Latin America who help women seek abortion rights include North Korean defectors evading spies, lawyers from the National Bar Association, the leadership group of "Black Lives Matter", and the former terrorist organization ISIS. Now Signal has a new user group, senior Trump administration officials.
When the U.S. government and its enemies are all "working online" on the same communication platform, there is a sense of cyberpunk absurdity: those who hold great power are using tools created by an anarchist to exercise their power.
The anarchist's name is Moxie Marlinspike.
the most interesting man in the world
Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal, is a legendary and mysterious figure in the technology world.
The cryptography genius, whose real name is Matthew Rosenfeld, not only created the most secure communication software in the world, but also lived an incredibly adventurous life and was called one of the "most interesting people on earth" by Snowden.
Marlinspike grew up in central Georgia, displaying a dissatisfaction with conventional education and an aptitude for technology from an early age. He hated the boring tasks in school that stifled curiosity, but discovered the joy of programming on a crude computer in the school library that had no hard drive and could not even save code.
When he was less than ten years old, he discovered the classic hacker magazine "2600" in a local bookstore and began his hacking journey. After his mother bought him a cheap desktop computer, young Marlinspike was able to "ambush" his friends' computers, surprising them with messages popping up on the screen.
In 1999, with a longing for the cyberpunk world, Marlinspike came to Silicon Valley after graduating from high school, only to find that there were only "office parks and highways" here, which was far from the future world depicted in William Gibson's novels.
He quickly found a programming job at Web-Logic, but as soon as he entered the technology industry, he was tired of "spending 40 hours a week in front of a keyboard." In the years that followed, Marlinspike lived an almost punk life in the San Francisco Bay Area—from squatting in abandoned buildings to moving into an old post office warehouse, participating in political protests, and reading the works of anarchist theorists such as Emma Goldman.
His experiences during this period profoundly shaped his critical thinking about authority.
Not one to settle for the ordinary, Marlinspike's life is filled with incredible adventures.
He once rode a bicycle across San Francisco while carrying a 12-meter-high sailboat mast; he taught himself to fly a hot air balloon, but crashed in the desert, causing him to spend a month on crutches; some friends even witnessed his miraculous performance in playing rock, paper, scissors, betting hundreds of dollars but never losing.
In 2003, he decided to learn sailing, spent all his savings to buy a dilapidated 27-foot Catalina sailboat, and then set out alone from the Port of San Francisco to Mexico, becoming self-taught through trial and error along the way.
The following year, he filmed the DIY sailing documentary "HoldFast", which recorded the adventure of him and three friends on a leaky "Plague" from Florida to the Bahamas, and finally abandoned the ship in the Dominican Republic.
Perhaps it was this pursuit of freedom and questioning of authority that led Marlinspike to create Signal.
In 2010, he launched TextSecure (the predecessor of Signal) and began his revolutionary work in encrypted communications. When Snowden first met Marlinspike in Moscow in 2015, he described the cryptographer as "incredibly interesting, awesome, super fun and wild."
Marlinspike has always maintained a high regard for personal privacy. He almost never talks about his personal life, including his age, hometown and even his real name. This dedication to privacy is also reflected in the Signal he created - a communication tool that does not collect user data, save no communication records, and is fully end-to-end encrypted.
Unlike many tech founders, Marlinspike isn't looking for business success. The Signal Foundation operates as a non-profit organization and is sustained primarily by donations, including an initial donation of $50 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.
Signal meets cryptocurrency, FTX loses hundreds of millions of dollars
A staunch anarchist and privacy advocate, Marlinspike also has a history with cryptocurrencies.
The decentralized, censorship-resistant, and privacy-protecting features of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are highly consistent at the philosophical level with Marlinspike's original intention of creating Signal - to provide people with communication tools that are not subject to government or corporate surveillance. Both originated from the cypherpunk movement, which pursues the protection of personal freedom and privacy through cryptography technology.
In April 2021, the Signal mobile terminal announced the integration of the privacy payment project MobileCoin and supports the use of MobileCoin for payment. After the news was announced, MOB tokens continued to rise, with an increase of 6 times in 14 days and 8 times in 30 days.
The reason behind the surge was later revealed. An FTX customer conducted a large number of leveraged transactions on MobileCoin (MOB), pushing the price of the currency up from US$6 to a maximum of nearly US$70, and used its large position for mortgage lending.
But then the MOB price quickly fell back to the price before the surge, causing market maker Alameda, also owned by FTX founder SBF, to step in to protect FTX's liquidity, causing Alameda to bear hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
The integration of MobileCoin also caused huge controversy for Signal. Reports indicate that Marlinspike served as a technical advisor to MobileCoin and may hold a large stake in the coin. This has led some users to question whether Signal is deviating from its non-profit original intention and turning to a commercial path.
Marlinspike responded that Signal chose MobileCoin because it provides the best privacy protection and user experience, rather than personal interests.
Despite his many connections to cryptocurrencies, Marlinspike is also a critic of cryptocurrencies.
In early 2022, he published a widely circulated article "My first impressions of web3" (My first impression of Web3) on his personal blog, questioning the decentralization commitment of Web3 and blockchain technology.
He pointed out that although blockchain protocols themselves are decentralized, the way users access these protocols is often highly centralized, such as relying on wallets such as MetaMask and infrastructure services such as Infura.
Marlinspike also conducted an experiment: he listed an NFT that would change the appearance of the image depending on where you browse it from. When you browse it on OpenSea or Rarible, it looks like a work of art; but when you browse it from your wallet after buying it, it turns out to be a piece of shit Emoji!
Subsequently, the NFT was removed from the shelves by OpenSea for unknown reasons. What made him even more speechless was that after the NFT was removed from the shelves, the NFT in his wallet (spontaneously purchased) also disappeared!
Marlinspike believes that a truly decentralized system should be one in which people "can participate directly, without the permission or mediation of any third party."
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, also quickly responded to this article on Reddit: He generally agrees with Marlinspike's argument and believes that this is a fair criticism of the current situation, but he also mentioned that many developers and researchers now want to use cryptography to make the entire ecosystem better and realize the concept of decentralization.
The reason why they tend to be more centralized at this stage is that it is indeed a relatively simple and fast method. The reason why decentralized development is slower is because they do not have enough technical resources and funds, and they have encountered many technical challenges along the way. However, the bigger challenges have been solved one by one, so Vitalik remains optimistic about future development.
While Marlinspike does have some criticisms of cryptocurrencies, the stories of Signal and the cryptocurrency world continue to intertwine, with the two sharing a mission to protect user privacy and resist centralized control.
In this era of constant struggle between encryption and decryption, privacy and surveillance, Signal has become a unique existence - it is both a symbol of resistance and a tool of power; it is both a bastion of privacy and a stage for accidental leaks.
The ship Signal carries all kinds of passengers, from senior government officials to anarchists, from cryptocurrency enthusiasts to ordinary users, sailing towards a more chaotic future.