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For tech enthusiasts, the big question about "Signalgate" is how National Security Adviser Mike Waltz added The Atlantic’s Editor-In-Chief to a Signal chat that detailed Yemen bombing plans. As it turns out, a feature in the iPhone Contacts app may be to blame.
According to The Guardian, citing three people briefed on the matter, Jeffrey Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign in October for comment on a story. Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes forwarded to the email to Waltz (then a Florida congressman and Trump campaign surrogate) via text. The message included Goldberg's contact information, and Waltz "inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone—under the contact card for Hughes."
On iPhones, Siri suggests “new contacts based on your use of other apps, such as email you receive in Mail and invitations you receive in Calendar.” The feature is enabled by default, and can add a "previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related," The Guardian notes.
Typically, you need to accept or reject this suggestion, though it may be easy pick the wrong one if you're distracted. There are reports on Apple's forums going back several years about numbers being "mysteriously added to an existing contact." (Presumably, none of those people are the US Secretary of Defense mistakenly sending "war plans" to a journalist, though.)
Waltz’s mistake reportedly went unnoticed until he needed to add Hughes to the “Houthi PC small group” on Signal but ended up selecting Goldberg’s number. Per Goldberg’s earlier report, he received a Signal connection request from a user named Michael Waltz on March 11 and was added to the “Houthi PC small group” by the same user on March 13. Senior members of the Trump team later confirmed that they were on that chat.
Waltz told a version of this story during a Fox News appearance last month. "Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows your name and then you have somebody's else's number there?" he asked host Laura Ingraham. "You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact, so of course I didn't see this loser [Goldberg] in the group. It looked like someone else."
If you're concerned about a similar mishaps, you can turn off Siri suggestions via Settings > Apps > Contacts > Siri and turn off Show Contact Suggestions.