OUR PICKSSignalGate Isn’t About Signal | Restoring U.S. Nuclear Energy Leadership | U.S. Cybersecurity Weakness Benefits China, and more

White House Denials Over the Signal Snafu Ring Hollow  (Economist)
The breach raises questions of security and legality.

The Trump Teams Denials Are Laughable  (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)
The president’s officials must know that what they did in the Signal group chat was wrong—and dangerous.

SignalGate Isn’t About Signal  (Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
The Trump cabinet’s shocking leak of its plans to bomb Yemen raises myriad confidentiality and legal issues. The security of the encrypted messaging app Signal is not one of them.

U.S. Cybersecurity Weakness Benefits China  (James Palmer, Foreign Policy)
The Trump administration’s group chat breach underscores that Beijing might have the edge in information warfare.

DOGE’s Real Challenge in the Pentagon Isn’t Slashing the Workforce, It’s Boosting Productivity  (Erik Schuh, War on the Rocks)
When I served at U.S. Air Forces Europe, a daily 15-minute briefing took 43 hours of staff work. This wasn’t an outlier — it was the norm. With the largest discretionary spending item in the federal budget and massive inefficiencies, the Defense Department might seem an obvious target for the Department of Government Efficiency — known as DOGE. With roughly 2.8 million personnel, the Department of Defense spends $299 billion on personnel costs, with billions more allocated towards contractors performing similar jobs. Manpower alone accounts for one-third of the defense budget.
Although DOGE has focused largely on sweeping budget cuts, its core purpose is to modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. Despite the Department of Defense’s focus on combat efficiency, rarely is there a meaningful push to improve productivity. DOGE could address this gap and strengthen military readiness by automating administrative tasks, streamlining bureaucratic processes, and modernizing information technology systems.

Trump Is Deporting “Them” in Ways That Threaten Us  (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic)
The president’s strategy for targeting foreigners endangers the rights of Americans too.

How to Liberate Electric Power  (Devin Hartman, National Affairs)
After two decades in hibernation, demand for power has surged, with over 80% of that growth stemming from data centers, manufacturing, and cryptomining. This should come as welcome news. But ballooning electricity costs and worries over shortages are prompting questions over whether the United States has enough juice to win an industrial race. If policymakers are going to help our country meet its electricity needs in the coming decades, they will have to understand the nature of power-demand growth, advance competitive markets for power supply, improve regulation of power delivery, and cut excessive red tape hamstringing new infrastructure.

America Needs a Strategy Against China’s Manufacturing Dominance  (Gary Roughead, National Interest)
As it attempts to strengthen its industrial capacity against China, the United States must reassess the fundamentals of its economic policies and take a long view of its national interests.

Restoring U.S. Nuclear Energy Leadership  (Sherri Goodman and Daniel Poneman, National Interest)
America once led the charge in nuclear energy, but the superpower has fallen behind in the twenty-first century. America now has the chance to reclaim former successes.