Apple’s Siri Contact Suggestions blamed for adding Atlantic’s Goldberg to White House’s Houthi strike Signal group chat

Apple’s Siri Contact Suggestions feature has been identified as the culprit that added an Atlantic editor to the White House’s Houthi strike Signal group chat. Reports reveal that an automated suggestion from an iPhone inadvertently led National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to add Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a Signal group chat discussing U.S. military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. What was meant to be a secure, closed-door conversation among top Trump administration officials went public all thanks to Apple’s wonky Siri Contact Suggestions feature.
Hugo Lowell for The Guradian:
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[N]ational security adviser Mike Waltz included a journalist in the Signal group chat about plans for US strikes in Yemen after he mistakenly saved his number months before under the contact of someone else he intended to add, according to three people briefed on the matter…
[A] “forensic review” by the White House information technology office… found that Waltz’s phone had saved Goldberg’s number as part of an unlikely series of events that started when Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign last October.
According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story… Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.
According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a “contact suggestion update” by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.
The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat – but ended up adding Goldberg’s number to the 13 March message chain…

Apple Support:
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Create a contact
1. Go to the Contacts app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the Add (+) button.
Siri also suggests new contacts based on your use of other apps, such as email you receive in Mail and invitations you receive in Calendar.
Based on the way you use Contacts, Siri also provides contact information suggestions in other apps.

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MacDailyNews Take: Shortbus Siri’s Contact Suggestions have always been wonky. We keep them off on our devices, thusly:
Settings > Apps > Contacts > Apple Intelligence & Siri, then turn off Show Contact Suggestions

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