It turns out that a recent White House controversy is a prime example of when automated help isn’t actually all that helpful.
Before President Donald Trump sparked economic upheaval with his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs, the main thing the establishment media wanted to focus on involved the highly publicized Signal messaging app snafu.
In case you missed it, The Atlantic caused quite a stir when its editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg — a fierce Trump critic — was accidentally included in a Signal text chain.
That chain included some heavy hitters in the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
The group was discussing military action in Yemen against Houthi terrorists, which was a conversation that Goldberg obviously shouldn’t have been a part of.
Trump eventually revealed that it was Waltz who was the responsible party for the messaging mistake, but he has been against firing him.
(The White House has also strongly disputed the idea that this leak was somehow the security breach The Atlantic was making it out to be.)
According to an exclusive report from the U.K. Guardian, details have now been leaked about how Waltz made this error — and Apple’s insistence on automating tasks played a big role in it.
This whole incident reportedly began while Trump was still running for president. Goldberg emailed the campaign regarding a claim that Trump mistreated wounded veterans, and that email eventually reached Trump representative Brian Hughes.
Should Waltz have been fired for his monumental mistake?
He “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.”
The Guardian added: “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.”
Waltz apparently accomplished this by accidentally confirming a suggestion made by Apple’s Siri artificial intelligence.
“According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a ‘contact suggestion update’ by Waltz’s iPhone,” the British outlet added.
Apple support describes this feature as such: “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.”
Apple also notes that, “[b]ased on the way you use Contacts, Siri also provides contact information suggestions in other apps.”
To turn off this first feature, iPhone users can go to Settings > Apps > Contacts > Siri, then turn off “Show Contact Suggestions.”
To turn off the latter feature, iPhone users can follow similar instructions by going to Settings > Apps > Contacts > Siri, then turning off “Learn from this App.”
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