- The White House has blamed an iPhone function for the Fiasco de Signalgate
- This saw a journalist added by error to a military planning group chat.
- The “contact suggestion update” function in question can be disabled
At this point, I have probably heard of ‘Signalgate’, where President Trump’s national security advisor accidentally included a journalist in a confidential war planning chat in the signal messaging application. Well, now it seems that an iPhone key feature may have been prominently figured throughout the disaster, at least with the White House.
According to The Guardian, the White House now says that the “contact suggestion update” function of the iPhone contributed to the incorrect number (the Atlantic journalist) that is added to an existing contact card for a different person (Trump’s spokesman Brian Hughes).
To explain how this happened, we have to enter the weeds of their correspondence. He began when the journalist in question, Jeffrey Goldberg, from the Atlantic, sent an email to the Trump campaign at the end of 2024 to obtain his response to a story that the outlet should work. Goldberg’s email was sent to the then Trump spokesman Brian Hughes, who copied and hit the message, including his firm, which contained Goldberg’s phone number, and sent an email to the Trump National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz.
At some point after that, Waltz’s iPhone automatically found the phone number in Hughes email to Waltz and suggested it as a new number for Hughes, not for Goldberg, the person with whom he was really associated with. Presumably this happened because the number was included in an email by Hughes, which the iPhone took in meaning that the number belonged to him.
When the military planning group was created in the Signal application, Waltz intended to invite Hughes, but accidentally invited Goldberg, whose number was now kept under the name of Hughes on the Waltz iPhone. And therefore, Trump’s campaign managed to inform a press member about highly confidential military operations before they even began.
How to avoid this mistake yourself
The iPhone function in question can be useful. For example, if a friend gets a new number and includes this in an email that sends you, your iPhone can suggest the new number without needing it first. That can help keep your contact book updated.
But obviously, the characteristic can sometimes be wrong. If you want to disable it, open the configuration application on your iPhone and go to Applications> Contacts> Apple Intelligence & Siri.
From here, disable alternation next to Show contact suggestions. This will prevent your iPhone from automatically suggesting new phone numbers, emails and addresses for your contacts.
For particularly sensitive contacts (for example, such as people you want to add to a secret military planning group), you must manually verify that your details are correct and updated because, as we have seen, technology can sometimes be wrong.
