The most important intelligence sharing network in the west is being ruined by America – here’s how
Five Eyes, the most important intelligence network in the western world, binds the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand into a tapestry of shared espionage.
But now it is unravelling – and the Trump administration has pulled its threads.
Mark Carney, the new Canadian Prime Minister, said that his country may now have to “look to ourselves” following the revelations that US defence secretary Pete Hegseth shared sensitive details of plans to attack Yemen’s Houthis on a Signal messaging group which included the head of the CIA and the US director of national intelligence – and a journalist.
“We have a very strong intelligence partnership with the Americans through Five Eyes,” Carney said. “Mistakes do happen, but what’s important is how people react to those mistakes. They don’t deny the mistakes; that they are clear and transparent in addressing them.”
But every US official on the Signal group, including the head of the CIA and the director of National Intelligence, has denied there was a security breach, insisted that no secret material was shared, and brushed the whole incident off.
This has had a catastrophic effect on the faith of US-allied intelligence services in the ability of American officials to keep the most secret secrets secret.
Most importantly because it is clear that a personal phone identified as most likely in the hands of Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, was receiving sensitive information about US military plans while he was in Moscow.
Using a commercial messaging system rather than a government-encrypted communications system is dumb enough. Doing so using personal telephones is unforgivable. Doing both in Moscow, as it would appear Witkoff did, is downright incompetent.
As an example of the reach of Russian intelligence into mobile devices, I used an Apple device during a recent two-week trip to Ukraine which ended in Odesa, the Ukrainian port city last Saturday. Yesterday I fired that device up and found all its data traffic was being routed through Russian Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea.
When British government delegations traveled to the Russian capital, personal and government-issued mobile phones of every single member of the delegation, the air crew, and security personnel were left in the UK. That order included the prime minister.
On arrival, the delegations were issued new phones for local use. They also get trained in minimizing all communications and how to behave while in country, including while in the toilet and in bed. On departure, the phones they were issued to use in Moscow were always smashed before takeoff, the debris brought back to the UK and burned.
Witkoff has, allegedly, been wandering Moscow with his personal phone oblivious to the fact that Russian intelligence will have penetrated his handset.
They will have done this as easily as the Saudi Arabians, and the other Gulf countries he has also visited. Every resident in Saudi or the UAE is famously aware that their communications are so bugged they can sometimes hear recordings of themselves mid-chat.
US-allied intelligence agencies will now be scrambling to try to figure out what secrets of theirs Witkoff may have stored on his phone.
