President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to reporters while looking at various models of the company's vehicles on the South Lawn of White House on March 11, 2025. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Washington: Elon Musk, the billionaire advisor to President Donald Trump, has offered his technical experts to investigate how a journalist was added to an official chat on Yemen air strikes, the White House said Wednesday.
"Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told a briefing.
The White House on Monday confirmed that a journalist was included in a group chat in which US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials discussed upcoming strikes against Yemen's Huthi rebels.
President Donald Trump announced strikes on March 15, but in a shocking security breach, The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that he had hours of advance notice via the group chat on Signal.
"The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain," National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said.
Goldberg did not provide details of the plan, but wrote that Hegseth sent information on the strikes, including on "targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing," to the group chat.
