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As more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target.

Allies, already concerned by Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, have also begun to see the US as an intelligence-sharing liability. There are fears that the mounting firings and leak inquiries in Hegseth’s orbit, along with his inability to manage these internal crises, exposes the entire global US war footing – especially, if a geopolitical and external crisis comes across his desk.

“[What if] a foreign entity, whether it be a state actor or non-state actor, is able to intercept the movements of troops or department personnel, or something like that, capture them and hold them to ransom,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and CEO at Task Force Butler. “That kind of thing could very easily happen.”

Former officials serving in national security positions under Joe Biden’s administration also told the Guardian on background that the situation is perilous and that Hegseth has endangered the secrets of the defense department and the White House. One person said Russian and Chinese spies were no doubt directly targeting susceptible people in Hegseth’s inner circle.

Goldsmith, a threat intelligence expert, said there were many scenarios wherein a foreign government could gain access to those chats, without the need to directly compromise Hegseth’s devices.

“Pete Hegseth is texting his wife and his wife is posting on Instagram, clicks a link, and gets malware on her phone,” said Goldsmith, describing a hypothetical scenario. “Then the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians just happen to be like, ‘Oh, shit, we’ve got Mrs Hegseth, [without] even targeting her.’”

To Goldsmith, Hegseth, who came into power on the heels of publicly characterizing the Pentagon as a “woke” shambles after years of ignoring “war fighters”, has already undermined the overall power of the US military in his months-long reign.

These kinds of leaks, anticipating troop movements, anticipating attacks – those can put our adversaries in position to intercept pilots or convoys or ships, which could create an international incident. It could mean a nuclear or a biological or a chemical crisis of some kind.