Albert Mohler (0:00)

Foreign It's Tuesday, March 25, 2025. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. All right, so yesterday on the briefing, we talked about a movie. Indeed, we talked about several movies, the worldview implications thereof. What if you came up with a movie in which you had a reporter, say, for a major national magazine, and he was accidentally included in a very confidential address list when the United States Security Advisor to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense and others are communicating about American war plans? Let's just say that you are a reporter and a complete set of war plans for a military operation is sent to you before it happens. Make for a great movie, right? So it also evidently makes for reality because that is the big news in the United States right now, and it's shaking the national security and defense establishments, no doubt reverberations in the White House as well, because indeed, a set of war plans were accidentally texted to a major reporter. In this case, it was Jeffrey Goldberg, who is editor in chief of the Atlantic. He was identified in the stream by initials, as were some others. He was pretty quickly able to decode who the other people were. He wasn't sure it was reality at all. And as a matter of fact, if you were put on that kind of list, you probably would assume it was some kind of a hoax. And hoaxes of that kind have entrapped many reporters in the past. So as Goldberg relates in a major article that he published at the Atlantic, he decided just to wait and see what happened. But as he says repeatedly, he didn't believe that he was possibly actually receiving live war plans in advance of military action by the United States accidentally texted to him as a member of the press. It was only when the operation was underway that he became convinced he actually had been accidentally included in a live military and military intelligence national security privilege list that was texted on Signal. And by the way, Signal, Goldberg identifies as, quote, an open source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text messaging services are capable of delivering, end quote. Obviously, it is not secure. It's a publicly accessible open source platform. And evidently that's where some active war plans for the United States were being discussed, deliberated and disseminated. The exchanges really are interesting. And of course, they weren't meant to become public, but they did become public. In this case, Goldberg did not release the war plans. He didn't write about the war plans. He instead basically acknowledged that the War plans were legitimate once it was discovered. And thus he identified the situation to the Pentagon and beyond. But it is also clear that the text exchanges, as are covered in his article, really turned out to be very interesting. The Vice President or the person identified as JD Vance said to the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, if you think we should do it, let's go. And then stated, I just hate bailing Europe out again. I'll just say that sounds legit. The Secretary of Defense responded, or at least the person identified in the text stream, now known to be authentic as Pete Hegseth, said, quote, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic. Pathetic, by the way, capitalized. But speaking of Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, he comes back and says, but Mike is correct. We're the only ones on the planet on our side of the ledger who can do this. Nobody else. Even close question is timing. I feel like now is a good time as any given potus, that's the President of the United States directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go. But potus still retains 24 hours of decision space, end quote. Don't you like that military term? We can all use that decision space. When do we bomb the Houthis? Well, let's just think about this as a matter of decision space. This turns out to be a highly personal form of exchange. The individual identified as the Vice President of The United States, J.D. vance, said, I will say a prayer for victory. And we're then told two other users subsequently added prayer emoji. There you go. Emojis about an impending military attack. Goldberg writes, quote, according to the lengthy text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence from the time he writes this at 1:45pm Eastern Time. So I waited in my car at a supermarket parking lot. If this signal chat was real, I reason and Houthi rebels would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X, that's Twitter, and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sana'a, the capital city, end quote. In other words, it was all legit. The war plans were real. That was later acknowledged by the Pentagon, saying at least they appeared to be real. Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, we're told, confirming the veracity of the communication. And he said, quote, this appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials the ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security, end quote. Well, let me just state it doesn't at this point appear that there was any real national security crisis in the situation, because the person who received this inadvertently didn't do anything with it, such as warn our enemies of an impending attack, much less release the actual structure of the war plan. The strikes against the Houthi rebels did indeed take place, and of course, they're widely reported, not only in the United States, but around the world. The statement made by Brian Hughes, spokesman for the National Security Council, appears to affirm that the text thread was authentic, that the number of the reporter in this case was added inadvertently. But then he went on to editorialize that it's a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. Now, I will also say that looking at that, well, two things come to my mind. Number one, it does look thoughtful. And number two, it looks like fiction. And if anything, that just demonstrates the fact that truth is often stranger than fiction. And, of course, truth has the advantage of being true. And so when you're thinking about, for instance, if you were to create a plot for a novel or a short story or a movie in which you had something like this happen, of course you would have it happen with more drama than it turns out here. You would also have to have a national security crisis with, of course, what happens when the leak takes place, or you have an inadvertent addition of a civilian who doesn't belong in this chain. In this case, we should be thankful that it appears this civilian was quite responsible in not leaking the plans or in any other way giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. But the second thing you have to think about is the fact that this really is, well, stupid. This is, in a national security sense, inexcusable. And yet, at the same time, it's immediately understandable how many of us hasn't accidentally texted the wrong person. And I think a lot of people looking at this would say, what in the world do you mean? You've got senior White House officials, the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President of the United States, military planners, and all the rest on a text stream signal. I mean, for crying out loud, you can sign up for it yourself. Now, why would it be there? Well, let me just state, there is a reason that at least some Democrats are claiming, and that is that on signal, you can arrange for your messages to disappear. And at least some Democrats are saying, well, this is a way around the Preservation of that kind of communication and just allowing it to disappear. And by the way, there's no embarrassment in this communication that the White House should want to disappear. But nonetheless, there are those who are saying that's probably why they were on signal. The other reason is that it is encrypted and it is quite stable as a platform. And you know, what this actually might demonstrate is that when you are talking about the digital age right now, when even the most senior leaders in our military are operating on something like an iPhone or its equivalent, it turns out that it's not so much that they downshifted to something we can use ourselves, it's that what we can use ourselves has been upshifted to something just about as sophisticated as anything the United States military can come up with. In other words, if you have an iPhone, you can look at it and say, you know, it could have been me who was accidentally included in these war plans. But I'm thankful it wasn't. I'm thankful in this case that it did fall into the hands of someone who, though a reporter, has reported about it after the events took place, not before. And you know, if anything, this is one of these events that can awaken the national security establishment to the fact that maybe they just ought not to be doing it this way because just maybe someone can be included inadvertently. I would think. In the first place, if I'm on this kind of tech stream, I'm not going to want to work on initials. I'm going to want to know who everybody is. As I say, it's also interesting to get inside the lingo here and the terminology I mentioned, decision space. I kind of like that one. How about hisi? It turns out that in this kind of communication, high side refers to the other side of the national security privacy encryption, and let's just say top secret wall. So high side means high security. The very fact it's referenced in this means that they knew they really weren't on a high side communication in these texts. But high side, you can use that too. You can tell a kid when he asks a question you don't want to answer, hey, I'm sorry, kid. That's on the high side. Our Christian worldview reminds us that we live in a very dangerous world. We live in a world in which there are very real adversaries, such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen. And we talked about them right after I point out, after those strikes had taken place. And we live in a dangerous world, quite frankly, in which something as innocuous as a text stream can become a matter of life and death, national survival, or national demise. And as you see this, it just affirms the fact, it underlines it, it highlights it. Any one of us can make this mistake with lower stakes. Every one of us has made this mistake. But that's where responsibility comes in. If you do bear this responsibility, you bear the responsibility not to make this mistake or at the very least to make sure it doesn't happen again. I can pretty much anticipate that there is going to be a more high side communication with the people involved in this decision making, reminding them to keep these communications well, to use their words to keep their decision space. Comments on the High side okay, there are a couple of other big headline stories that relate to this in an interesting way. For one thing, the New York Times reported on Sunday, quote, the 47th president unveils new U.S. fighter, the F47. So there is going to be a new fighter in the American arsenal. It is going to be the most advanced yet. It is going to be known as the F47 7. As John Ismay reports for the Times, quote, Since the late 1950s, most of America's warplanes have been given names that indicate a threat, like the F4 Phantom and the A6 Intruder, or animals like the F14 Tomcat, the F15 Eagle, and the F16 Fighting Falcon. But on Friday, quote, the country's 47th president, with defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by his side in the Oval Office, announced that the US Air Force's newest jet would be the Fast 47. It was not announced what kind of animal or threatening moniker the plane is going to have. The 47th President of the United States simply said that 47 is a beautiful number. Okay, now enjoy this quote. The Air Force Chief of Staff, General David W. Alvin, was in the Oval Office and said later in a statement that the F47 was a monumental leap forward in securing America's air superiority for decades to come. He said the F47 would be the most advanced, lethal and adaptable fighter ever developed, designed to outpace, outmaneuver and outmatch any adversary that dares to challenge our brave airmen. And the President, by the way, said that an experimental version of the new F47 fighter has been operational for almost five years. See, we didn't know that it was rumored there were supposed sightings or at least sightings of drawings. And this is the kind of project that in an open society can't be kept fully secret. As Ismay remarks, quote, if the F47 delivers on the President's promises, it could well be the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world. Russia and China are working on their own sixth generation warplanes, as are groups of European nations. The President said, quote, we know every other plane. I've seen every one of them, and it's not even close. This is a next level. He said, you know, level five is good, meaning fifth generation fighters. The President went on to say, quote, you know, level five is good, and level five refers to fifth generation aircraft. In the United States, that means the F22 and the F35. But the president went on to say, this is level six. The General, that is, General Alvin went on to say, this would be the world's first crewed sixth generation fighter. So looking at jet aircraft, you're going up generation by generation. That means leaps in technology. So, again, the fifth generation, which incorporated very high technology, along with stealth, that included the Air Force fighters, known as the F22 and the F35. By the way, the F35 is now one of the most popular jets in the world, bought by foreign armies that are at least permitted to do so by the United States. You're talking about a very popular fighter and a very expensive plane. So you ask the question, how much is an F47 going to cost? Well, they tell us. They're not going to tell us. What exactly are the specifics of the F47? Again, they're not going to tell us. Is it going to be a stealth fighter? Well, you can count on that. The President himself said that the plane would be virtually unseeable. Is it going to be powerful? What are the specifics? Well, the President simply pointed to the power of its engine, saying that it would have, quote, unprecedented power. It's got the most power of any jet of its kind ever made, end quote. Now, those are general statements. It's going to be fast. Faster. It's going to be the fastest ever made. It's going to be. It's going to be good. It's going to be better than any fighter that's ever been made before. How good? We're not going to tell you. How much is it going to cost? We're not going to tell you. What exact weapons will it carry? Well, by now you know the answer. They're not going to tell us. It is assumed that the new fighter will have the ability to carry both missiles and bombs. What exactly does it look like? Oh, this is very frustrating. They're not going to tell us now. They will eventually tell us because they're going to be able to see it. I recall back right after 9, 11, I was traveling, and at that point you had to travel by car. I was traveling to an event and I was driving through Missouri and I was doing so at just the time that an airstrike was originating from an Air Force base there in Missouri. And I saw these planes in the air. They were the Stealth bomber. I had never seen one before. But almost immediately you looked at these aircraft and recognized, wow, this is a game changer. This is completely different. They had to stack up, as they say in the air, in order to get the entire group of planes ready to go. They refueled, we now know, at a base in Diego Garcia, and they were able to go, bomb, refuel, come back. It's an amazing story, but that's now more than two decades ago. But my point is that Americans, by and large, really didn't know what one of these planes looked like until they saw them, because they're flying in the air and by the way, flying for deadly business. In a revealing statement, President Trump said he hoped the new aircraft would never have to be used in war. But he went on to say, but you have to have it. And if it ever happens, they won't know what. I'll just leave out a word here, what hit them? And you know, that's true. It's responsible for an American president to say, we hope we never have to use this in an act of war, but you have to have them. And that's because we live in a dangerous world. Once again, we come back to what is known in Christian theology as Augustinian realism. It's the realism that says we live in a fallen world, we live in an evil world. We live in a world in which we have real enemies. And it is responsible for a government, for a righteous government to get ready to defend itself against all threats. And that means threats against the fact that you have others around the world trying to develop these sixth generation fighter bombers, attack aircraft. And if the United States does not have it, you can be assured someone else will. And that will change the national security situation in an unacceptable way for the United States. One day, of course, we'll know more about this plane. But at this point, the President of the United States and defense officials wanted to be very clear. There is a contract that has been awarded to Boeing. That in itself is an interesting story. And they're not telling us much else about the plane. And we're going to have to wait. Unless I'll just offer someone texts you the drawings. But next, as we're talking about national security and classified information, President Trump ordered the complete release, unredacted, of materials from the investigation of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States, on November 22, 1963. And in the latest dump, which we are told is comprehensive, at least we're told that, and unredacted, it's about 64,000 pages now, that's been a matter of days ago. And when we talk about the assassination of President Kennedy, we are talking about one of the most hotly contested events in all of human history. That's not an exaggeration when you look at all the theories of exactly what happened, how many shooters, from what angles, the conspiracies, because immediately when you talk about something like the assassination of a president of the United States, who, by the way, was involved in the cold and who, by the way, had been involved along with others in his administration, including his brother, in a war on the Mafia, by the way, very complicated relationship. But nonetheless, President Kennedy had enemies, and there were those who would advance their causes by his elimination. And so you can understand the level of conspiracy theories, of hypotheses, of theories of what happened. And you would think that in the release of now 64,000 additional pages, we're told this is the end of the set of documents. This is the bottom of the bar. We're told this is everything there is. President Trump himself said that the documents are unredacted. There's a little asterisk at the end of that that says, except for some materials that are related to the ongoing security of the United States of America. Let me just point out that's a very big asterisk. But when you wonder exactly what that might mean, well, just look at reports of what has been found in the 64,000 pages. Not much in truth about the Kennedy assassination, but a good deal about American state security, espionage and spycraft. Both the successes of it and the clumsiness of it, the successes and the failures of it. That's one of the reasons why it turns out there was so much opposition to the release of this material. Organizations such as the CIA and other security agencies had a lot to lose by publishing information, including in some cases, unredacted information about contacts and information gathering techniques. So you look at the situation, you say, well, this is really old. I mean, who could be alive now? How dangerous could the release of this information be? And, you know, there's a point to be made there. This is probably not going to reveal Anything that is a current national security interest or secret of the United States. But on the other hand, I often point out that spycraft and espionage turn out to be remarkably disclosive of basic worldview truths and concerns. And when you're talking about a dangerous world and you're talking about gathering this kind of information, although technologically there have been some real advances, of course, every day, for that matter, technological advances in gathering this kind of material, processing this kind of material, recording this kind of material, the fact is that on the human side of human intelligence, that part really hasn't changed all that much. As people inside spycraft tell us these days, it's pretty much like the Romans versus the Greeks. Human nature hasn't changed. Human behavior hasn't changed all that much. The behavior of nations and empires hasn't changed all that much. And yes, that comes back to a biblical truth. Human nature, it hasn't changed. This is testimony to that. Now, there are some tantalizing things we know already mentioned in these 64,000 pages. One of those tantalizing things is the fact that one of the chief spies in the United states, John A. McCone, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had been in contact one way or another with not one but two popes in the Vatican. That could turn out to be a very interesting novel that no doubt would quickly become a movie that someone would of course, mess up. As I said, it was President Trump who made this decision and issued the executive order. But he did so on the authority of a law that was passed back in 1992 when George Herbert Walker Bush was President of the United States. What makes that most significant? Remember, George Herbert Walker Bush, that is, Bush, 41, was himself a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. That law back in 1992 is known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. Again, 1992. Why did that happen then? It was because of the Oliver Stone film JFK K that prompted an awful lot of demands for the release of information back in 1992. They said all of it will be released in due time. President Trump said 2025 is due time. By the way, one historian who has had access to the information has already published a great deal about the Kennedy administration, says that to him, one of the most interesting aspects of the documentation is the discovery that, as the Times reported, quote, nearly half of the political officers in American embassies around the world were working for the CIA. As he said. That's astonishing. But while we're thinking about these things related and in the headlines Again, they just sometimes come in groups. Finally, I want to deal with the fact that there was a massive fire that knocked out power to one of the busiest airports in the world in recent days as Heathrow Airport, in so many ways the gateway in the Atlantic world between, say, North America and Europe. And you're talking about one of the busiest and most important aviation assets to the entire world, and in particular to the Western world. And shutting down Heathrow is one of those things that could come close to shutting down a society. It wasn't 9, 11 in scale, certainly not when you take into account the loss of human life. But in terms of a threat to the infrastructure, shutting down aviation is one quick way to shut down an economy and for that matter, to create international chaos. So why am I talking about this related to the other things? Well, it is because even though most of us would look at this fire breaking out in a power unit, and the obvious question is how in the world could the authorities there in Britain have allowed their biggest aviation asset to be dependent upon one power station like this that could be knocked out? The biggest question coming from Americans, immediately from the American aviation community, is where in the world's the redundancy that responsible parties would have here. Now, at least Heathrow authorities were able to get the power back up and the airport back open. But that then leads me to a headline that just ran at the Telegraph, major newspaper, their Conservative newspaper in Britain, saying that MI5, that is one of the two major spy agencies there in Britain, is going to be checking very carefully for Putin's fingerprints on the Heathrow fire. And that is because, just remember, Vladimir Putin, Russia, its fingerprints have been all over some events that have taken place. Remember that the United States had to threaten Russia about putting cargo bombs on cargo aircraft. Just a matter of the last year or so. And now you're looking at at least informed people in the intelligence community in the UK pointing to Russia and saying we're going to have to find out if Russian agents were behind this. If so, it is the warning of a kind of dry run that could happen. In an article that appeared in the Foreign Affairs Journal just this week, a NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General warned members of the European Parliament that, quote, incidents of sabotage were taking place across NATO countries, end quote. That again from the Telegraph report. The Telegraph tells us, quote, at first glance, the Heathrow fire looks as if it could have Russian fingerprints all over it. It has marked similarities, for example, to the arson attack on a Ukrainian linked warehouse in East London last year, for which two British men were arrested. Well, it's gonna be interesting to see what we find out from the investigations there in Britain. But it's also true that many of these things, though suspected, could go undetected. That is, of course, unless Vladimir Putin inadvertently added someone to his text stream. Then we might really know. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com youm can find me on Twitter or X by going to twitter.com AlbertMohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.