Absurd story out of The Atlantic today as one of their editors-in-chief is added to a Signal chat discussing military strikes in Yemen with key Trump administration figures.
As far as I can tell, the actions here are potentially illegal and definitely a huge disaster for at least 3 reasons:
Adding the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a discussion of highly sensitive military objectives
Having the chat over Signal, which is not approved by the government for sharing classified information
Having on disappearing messages, which likely violates federal records acts.
This market resolves YES if any of the following people are no longer in the Trump administration by the end of April for any reason related to this Signal thread and leak:
Michael Waltz (National Security Adviser)
JD Vance (Vice President)
Pete Hegseth (Secretary of Defense)
Susie Wiles (White House Chief of Staff)
Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence)
Marco Antonio Rubio (Secretary of State)
Scott Bessent (Treasury Secretary)
John Ratcliffe (CIA Director)
Steve Witkoff (Middle East and Ukraine Negotiator)
Brian McCormack (Representative for National Security Council)
Alex Wong (Deputy to National Security Adviser)
Mike Needham (Counselor of State Department)
Dan Caldwell (Representative for Defense)
Dan Katz (Treasury Chief of Staff)
Joe Kent (Director of National Counterterrorism)
Andy Baker (Representative for Vice President)
Stephen Miller (Homeland Security Advisor)
I'll be fairly loose about the reason being related to the leaked thread. If they're fired and it's unknown why but we have a decent suspicion, that counts. Same for people leaving/resigning and not explicitly being "fired".
Update 4/19:
Politico is reporting that Caldwell has been fired. I want to be as clear as possible with this since I anticipate things could get somewhat subjective, so I’ll say now:
As of this moment, I don’t see any reporting directly tying it to the signal thread - especially since Caldwell was fired among other colleagues who weren’t involved.
But, if such reporting does emerge, it doesn’t have to be the only or even dominant reason he was fired. I put “fairly loose” in the description, and I intend to stick to that.
Update 4/21:
If Hegseth is out before the end of April this is almost certainly a YES. Even if other factors contributed to the departure the signal chat will certainly have been a part of it.
Update 2025-04-30 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Regarding Dan Caldwell's firing, the creator currently intends to resolve NO, based on analysis of reporting from Politico, AP, and NYTimes which does not, in the creator's view, sufficiently link the firing to the Signal thread leak under the "fairly loose" standard.
The creator specifies the market would resolve YES if new reporting emerges before the closing date confirming any of the following:
The Pentagon/DoD leak investigation, which reportedly led to Caldwell's dismissal, is related to the Signal scandal.
Caldwell's firing was related to his role in the Signal scandal.
The general firings (including Caldwell's) occurred due to pressure resulting from the Signal scandal.
Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Regarding Dan Caldwell's dismissal, where it was reported he was told off the record it was due to leaking classified information, the creator clarifies the following:
For this dismissal to trigger a YES resolution, the specific leaking Caldwell was allegedly fired for must be related to the Signal chat leak.
Based on current reporting (e.g., from Politico regarding leaks about the Panama Canal, Red Sea carrier, Elon Musk visit, Ukraine intelligence), the creator does not currently see evidence that the leaks leading to Caldwell's dismissal were related to the Signal chat incident.
The market would resolve YES if reporting emerges confirming the leaking Caldwell was allegedly dismissed for was the Signal chat or related to it.
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FWIW, and I sold my shares way before resolution, but the common sense interpretation of the question and the resolution are totally opposite. There's no way that anyone involved in the decision was surprised by Waltz or Caldwell today. There's also zero chance that any official statement about the reason is 100% the real reason, and I say this with 10+ years of experience in PR. I understand you can't know the real reason with 100% accuracy, but I just really wish people would state their degree of gullibility when asking a question. Not that I could keep track of it, but it would really help me make more calibrated bets if people said "I'm totally going to trust whatever the official line is" or "I'm going to do my own research and by the way I have no clue what research even is so I'm just going to resolve based on whatever LLM I feel like asking says." My brothers and sisters, there is a middle path. If you care about Manifold's epistemic integrity, you should care that the common sense interpretation of the question matches the resolution.
The joy of Manifold is that there are lots of interesting questions. The sadness is that resolution risk puts, like, 25-50% error bars around any particular value.
@WilliamGunn Waltz was fired on May 1st in addition to the announcement being then? Honestly if you find a source that says he was officially fired before the month ended I might reresolve.
Sorry you don't like the resolution. I think it's correct. I'm not basing this off the official reason, there's just no reporting anywhere at all I've seen tying it to the Signal chat.
I am sympathetic to the idea the signal chat contributed to the general chaos in the DoD that indirectly lead to Caldwell's ousting, but definitely don't think that's a "common sense" interpretation of the title.
@Gabrielle actually... interesting question @Sketchy but when precisely did Waltz submit his resignation? (by the way I'm holding NO shares but not enough to be biased about the outcome tbh haha)
@bens fair question. I was honestly sort of hoping it’d be yesterday. Fox is reporting that they “confirmed” he was ousted Thursday.
@Gabrielle I’m open to this suggesting Caldwell’s firing was related. Any media reporting this? On its face, the firings seem to have come from separate places and times - Waltz was from Trump, Caldwell from unspecified but likely Hegseth.
@Sketchy I tried to research this some.
Dan Caldwell has appeared on a video interview with Tucker Carlson and explained some information about his knowledge of why he was fired.
Here is the video, and here is a (fan-made?) transcript (I tried to spot-check it...)
The gist of it from what I can tell is Caldwell is unsure why he was fired but he was told off the record that it was due to leaking classified information to the media.
Here is the only mention of Signal, Caldwell dismisses it as unrelated to Signal:
TUCKER CARLSON: So I just want to restate because this is the core, this is why you’re here. Because you got bounced out and you’re being accused of betraying your boss, your president, your nation. You have, I don’t want to speak for you, not leaked classified information to the news media. You’ve never undergone a polygraph exam and you’ve never handed over your personal phone. Are all those statements true?
DAN CALDWELL: That is all 100% correct. And let me just say, actually my first instinct when they came and escorted me out of my office was I actually thought that they were going to try and get me to testify against the secretary because the secretary over the whole signal gate stuff is under an inspector general investigation. That was my first instinct, was this was part of it.
TUCKER CARLSON: So there was an investigation into leaking. I think the president, like all presidents doesn’t want leaking. I mean, nobody wants leaking, right?
Nothing about this is definitive and "absence of evidence...", etc..., but it's interesting to get a first-hand report.
@Eliza Thanks for this! I had seen some of these quotes but didn't directly listen to the Tucker interview.
he was told off the record that it was due to leaking classified information to the media.
The crux to me is whether this leaking refers to Signal or not. All of the references I have seen so far point to something like this (from Politico):
The leaks under investigation include military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon to discuss China and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine, according to the official.
If I thought the signal chat was in scope for this I would be inclined to resolve YES. But I don't see reporting that it is, and Caldwell doesn't seem to think so either.
@Sketchy I agree, everything I saw in this interview with Tucker Carlson points to it being related to some other leak, not Signal. (But obviously this is just one side of the story.)
@Eliza ya this lines up with what I saw as well: it was for leaks of Pentagon gossip and such to the media, I'd guess
Hegseth is still in. It's now confirmed that Caldwell was fired in April, so the question is whether the firing reason has a "fairly loose" connection to the signal thread. To try to answer this question, I combed through several different sources to see what they attributed his firing to.
...fired with several other Defense Department officials amid a leak investigation
...arguing he was purged over his foreign policy views
...Caldwell said he thought when officials came to escort him out of the Pentagon on April 15 was that he was being asked to testify against Hegseth in an inspector general investigation over the use of the Signal messaging app by senior administration officials to discuss a looming airstrike in Yemen.
AP:
...tied to an investigation into unauthorized disclosure of department information
...He was the staff member designated as Hegseth’s point person in the Signal messaging chat
...The officials did not disclose what leaks are being investigated, but there has been a crackdown across the Pentagon and the Trump administration on the disclosure of sensitive or classified information, starting even before news of the Signal chat emerged on March 24.
...The dismissals seem to be connected to a broader power struggle within Mr. Hegseth’s office, rather than a specific leak, according to several people with close ties to the Trump administration.
The "leak investigation" in question is not, as far as I have been able to find, related to the Signal thread. Politico reported elsewhere that it's part of a wide-ranging investigation into things like Panama Canal plan leaks. The leak investigation started before the Signal scandal.
Many of these articles mention the Signal scandal as topical, but none link it to the firing. Caldwell thought being escorted out might be related to the Signal thread, but the testifying did not happen.
What would change my mind:
As of right now, I plan to resolve this market NO. However, I put "fairly loose" and intend to stick to it. If anyone offers reporting that says any of:
The Pentagon/DoD leak investigation is related to the Signal scandal
Caldwell's firing was related to his role in the Signal scandal
The general firings were because of pressure as a result of the Signal scandal
I would be inclined to resolve this YES. @NAnp6Ih, @Lorelai, @SusanneinFrance
@Sketchy so it should resolve yes, right? He was placed on leave due to an "unauthorised disclosure". You can't just decide that Signal chat isn't linked to this because you don't feel like the link is explicit enough.
@Lorelai being placed on leave is different than fired. One is a temporary and the other is permanent
Dan Caldwell is in your list and fired (presumably) for leaking the story/stories about Signalgate 1.0 and possibly 2.0
@SusanneinFrance conversely he denies he leaked anything, much less signalgate, and claims while he was never told why he was fired, it must have been due to a difference of opinion regarding policy
@SusanneinFrance I mentioned this in a comment below, but I haven't seen anything about signalgate 1.0 leaks and Caldwell? The article you linked reference:
last week that the investigation centered around a series of leaks, including the deployments of carriers to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon for a security briefing and the pause of U.S. intelligence to Ukraine
None of this is signalgate? The article goes on to say:
Caldwell said he thought when officials came to escort him out of the Pentagon on April 15 was that he was being asked to testify against Hegseth in an inspector general investigation over the use of the Signal messaging app by senior administration officials to discuss a looming airstrike in Yemen.
To me, this is saying that the firing is not connected to signalgate? He thought he was being asked to testify about it, but instead he's being fired for separate, unrelated leaks that Hegseth is claiming he is responsible for.
I'm open to seeing articles that connect Caldwell's firing with signalgate 1.0, I just haven't seen it yet.
There seems to be a chance Hegseth is on the way out due to the Signal chat. We might be close to resolving as a YES https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5371312/trump-white-house-pete-hegseth-defense-department
@TimMerritt if Hegseth resigns/is out before the end of April this is almost certainly a YES. There’s no way the signal chat wouldn’t have contributed to it.
https://x.com/mylovanov/status/1913595580577706302?s=46
Politico is reporting that Caldwell has been fired. I want to be as clear as possible with this since I anticipate things could get somewhat subjective, so I’ll say now:
As of this moment, I don’t see any reporting directly tying it to the signal thread - especially since Caldwell was fired among other colleagues who weren’t involved.
But, if such reporting does emerge, it doesn’t have to be the only or even dominant reason he was fired. I put “fairly loose” in the description, and I intend to stick to that.
@Sketchy Developing story about Hegseth: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5371312/trump-white-house-pete-hegseth-defense-department