LATIKA M BOURKE: Trump administration’s group chat security blunder should be wake-up call for Australia

Europe doesn’t need any more wake-up calls, but does Australia?

The extraordinary Signal chat, in which The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a group message involving the United States’ most senior national security leaders, has put the Trump Administration under its first serious bout of pressure since the inauguration.

US President Donald Trump resorted to his usual tactics of denial and slurring the media, calling the journalist who broke the story and his outlet a “sleazebag” and “failing”.

The US media is, naturally and rightly, obsessed with the administration’s sloppiness at ‘CCing’ in a journalist on what should have been a top-secret chat, given it discussed the timing of launching military strikes on the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who have been terrorising merchant vessels in the area since Israel began its retaliatory bombardment of Gaza after Hamas October 7 attacks in 2023.

The Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was taken to task by Democratic Senator Mark Warner at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“If there was no classified material, share it with the committee,” Mr Warner said.

“You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security.

“If this was a rank-and-file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behaviour, what would you do with them?”

The sloppiness is sensational news.

But Australia should be paying careful attention to the content of that chat, particularly the venom directed towards Europe, more so than the debate that has ensued as to whether or not this conversation should have been taking place on an encrypted messaging app.

US Vice President JD Vance, who made his loathing of Europe clear and direct at February’s Munich Security Conference, was even more vehement in what he thought was a private conversation with colleagues.

Mr Vance had taken issue with the idea of the United States launching strikes on the Iranian-backed Houthis attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea, saying that 40 per cent of the Europeans’ shipping went through the Suez Canal compared to 3 per cent of US trade.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Mr Vance complained.

Reassuringly, the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz overrode Mr Vance’s reflexive hatred of Europe by stating the need to guarantee freedom of navigation, securing open shipping lanes.

“Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes,” Mr Waltz said.

Mr Hegseth was even stronger, saying the heart of the issue was not about the Houthis but about “restoring Freedom of Navigation,” which he said was “a core national interest.”

“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading,” Mr Hegseth told Mr Vance.

“It’s PATHETIC.

“But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.

“Nobody else even close.

“Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes.”

There is good news. This exchange showed us some crucial dynamics and thinking inside the unpredictable Administration.

Firstly, the Vice President’s vengeful instincts were overridden, and for the right reasons.

More importantly, Mr Hegseth and Mr Waltz both embrace US leadership and power and believe in projecting that for the common good.

But now to the bad news.

For the first time, we saw that the US holds a desire to put a price on its role as global cop and charge its allied beneficiaries accordingly.

“Per the president’s request we are working with (Department of Defence) and (State Department) to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans,” Mr Waltz reassured the group.

Stephen Miller, Mr Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, went further.

“As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return,” Mr Miller wrote.

“We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what?

“If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

It shows that the extractive approach taken toward Ukraine, whereby Mr Trump expects Kyiv to pay back Americans for the military assistance sent to it by the Biden Administration, is no one-off or even due to Mr Trump’s personal animosity towards President Volodomyr Zelensky.

This is a new orthodoxy.

Depend on the US for your security? Expect to pay.

And there is every reason to fear this same ideology could be applied to the Indo-Pacific, where Hegseth has been visiting this week and is the flashpoint of the United States superpower competition with China.

Whilst the United States has made clear it has a greater stake in Indo-Pacific security than Europe’s and is diverting its resources accordingly, the region is deluded to think that this might exempt it from this extraction mentality.

Elbridge Colby, a sceptic of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program AUKUS and Trump’s pick to be number two in the Pentagon, has already issued the region, specifically Taiwan and Australia, with clear warnings.

“The main concern the United States should press with Australia, consistent with the president’s approach, is higher defence spending,” Colby said.

“Australia is currently well below the 3 per cent level advocated for NATO by NATO Secretary-General [Mark] Rutte, and Canberra faces a far more powerful challenge in China.”

Even the United Kingdom shares this sentiment. Former UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told The Nightly this year: “The Australian defence budget is also far too small for the threat that is on the horizon in the Indo-Pacific.”

On Taiwan, he was even more hardline, saying their defence spending should be raised to 10 per cent.

Yet, Australia remains in denial. Facing an election that it wants to fight on cost-saving measures funded by taxpayer-funded sweeteners such as lowering prescription costs and free doctors’ appointments, the Albanese government tinkered with future defence spending to merely speed up upgrades to the Western Australian naval bases HMAS Stirling, Henderson and the frigates.

Australia’s defence spending won’t increase to 2.3 per cent of GDP until next decade, according to the budget papers released on Tuesday ahead of the election campaign.

How is this likely to be received in MAGA’s Washington? Again, examining what has led to the Administration’s loathing of Europe is instructive.

In one of his first interviews as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio singled out the preference of European nations to spend on their social security safety nets instead of their own security.

“When you ask those countries why can’t you spend more on national security, their argument is because it would require us to make cuts to welfare programs, to unemployment benefits, to being able to retire at 59, and all these other things,” Rubio said.

“That’s the choice they made but we’re subsidising that. They’re relying on us to be the front-stop. And that’s not an alliance. That’s a dependence, and we don’t want that.”

The budget Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined on Tuesday did exactly what Rubio criticised about the European approach.

America’s allies should not be waiting for any more warnings or any further high-stakes acts to receive the message.

The Indo-Pacific is so far escaping the wrath being meted out to Europe, it should use this window of time to respond, instead of sleepwalking into Europe’s same mistake.