If someone had proposed this story for a Netflix series on geopolitics, it would probably have been rejected at the script stage: too absurd, too improbable, too far from any security protocol, common sense or institutional respect. Instead, it really happened. A group of senior US administration officials, including Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, discussed covert military operations on Signal, a commercial messaging app, and did so in the presence of a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, who was mistakenly included in the chat.

The White House itself confirmed the incident, after The Atlantic published an account of the embarrassing leak. Two hours before the US launched attacks against Houthi targets in Yemen, Secretary Hegseth had already shared operational details in the chat: targets, weaponry, sequence of attacks. All within reach of anyone who was on the app at the time, including journalists. For Pentagon officials, this was a potential violation of the Espionage Act, the law governing the handling of sensitive information. A blunder so serious that it seems like the result of a bad dream – and yet it is news.

But even more alarming is the tone of the reported conversations. In that chat, not only military strategies were discussed, but also – and above all – barroom language steeped in contempt and arrogance. JD Vance expressed reluctance towards intervention, but not for humanitarian reasons or fears of escalation: the problem, for him, was ‘having to save Europe again’. To his remark – ‘I hate having to save Europe again‘ – Hegseth replied bluntly: ‘I fully share your distaste for parasitic Europe. IT IS PATHETIC.“

There is not only a lack of diplomacy in these phrases: there emerges a real ideological fanaticism, a predatory attitude towards international relations, and a visceral contempt for the very idea of transatlantic cooperation. It is not just a matter of inexcusable technical or institutional imprudence. It is the ideology that worries: an America that is increasingly closed in on itself, that considers allies a burden, war a topic for private chat, but above all a lever to be exploited to harass others.

This is not a TV series. It is the real world, but it is definitely surreal.

PS. European strategic autonomy also passes through the development of the India-Middle East – Europe Economic Corridor, an alternative to the Suez Canal. What does this have to do with this article? We will talk about it soon.