Waltz Reportedly Archived Signal Messages on Israeli Intelligence-Linked App

Former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz archived official government messages sent on Signal through an Israeli app with strong ties to Israeli intelligence and military, new reporting reveals, exposing a glaring data security vulnerability within the top ranks of the Trump administration.

On Thursday, a picture of Waltz’s phone in a cabinet meeting published by Reuters circulated on social media, with users noting that it appeared to show Waltz on the encrypted messaging app, Signal. The screen showed various message chains that appeared to be with figures like Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

However, as some journalists noted, a banner at the bottom of the screen showed that Waltz was using a companion app made by a firm called TeleMessage, which allows users to archive messages on Signal, where users can use settings to auto erase messages. This may be Waltz’s answer to attorneys suing the United States over officials like Waltz seemingly using Signal to discuss sensitive military and other top-level information to evade requirements for government records to be archived.

As Drop Site reported on Friday, TeleMessage is an Israeli firm founded by a former Israeli military intelligence official who was a leader in “one of the IDF’s Intelligence elite technical units,” his biography says.

In fact, many of TeleMessage’s executives and top employees have backgrounds within Israeli military intelligence, with experience in technology and computers within those roles. One employee served within Unit 8200, which has been likened to the U.S.’s National Security Agency and labeled as a spy agency.

Indeed, Drop Site reports that employees have moved between TeleMessage and “some of the leading Israeli spyware firms” like Cellebrite, an Israeli phone hacking technology company that is used by police in the U.S. to crack down on Americans, most often left-wing activists.

The use of Signal by Waltz — who Trump nominated as the U.S.’s UN Ambassador in a move widely seen as a demotion — and other top officials to discuss sensitive government business already sparked concerns when messages were seemingly mistakenly shared with The Atlantic’s chief editor. Experts said that discussing war plans, in this case U.S. strikes on Yemen, on a private messaging app opens up the U.S. to hacking and spying by foreign adversaries.

The use of TeleMessage’s archive app only heightens these risks. Though the White House did not answer to questions about how the app was being used, Drop Site reported that the company “offers governments and businesses the option to exfiltrate data that automatically sends copies of messages to servers on-site or in the cloud.” This provides another pathway where these messages could be accessed, with the security of these servers in question.

Sharing such sensitive information with a company that has strong ties to Israeli military intelligence, meanwhile, raises even more concerns. Some reports have suggested that, while aligned on many issues like the Gaza genocide, top U.S. and Israeli officials have differed on some military decisions regarding strategy in the Middle East — decisions that Waltz may have been discussing in the dozens of Signal chats that he reportedly used as national security adviser.

Meanwhile, at least as of 2012, the CIA has considered Israel to be its top counterintelligence threat in the Middle East because of Israel’s sophisticated spy tactics. Indeed, in 2019, the U.S. government found that Israel was placing devices near the White House to spy on Trump administration communications. More recently, amid Israel’s genocide, reports have found Israeli spies and informants futhering information on U.S. activists.