Report Finds Pentagon Exposing Troops to Foreign Surveillance

Photo Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense is putting troops at risk of foreign spies because of security weaknesses in the Pentagon’s $2.67 billion mobile phone contracts.

A damning new watchdog report exposed ongoing failings in the Pentagon’s protection of sensitive communications and location information in the military’s sprawling Spiral 4 wireless contract, despite repeated warnings about overseas espionage, as revealed by PunchUp , the Daily Beast’s sister Substack .

The armed forces had more than 568,000 wireless lines in January, making the security of its communications a potentially enormous national security concern.

The Pentagon failed to check whether phone companies were adequately protecting sensitive data that could reveal troops’ locations and who they were in contact with, the investigators found.

Officials also failed to properly scrutinize the companies’ security checks before renewing their contracts.

In a chilling warning, the watchdog said hackers could “map entire communication networks within the DoW (Department of Defense), pinpoint sensitive locations like safe houses or command posts, and expose operational vulnerabilities, significantly compromising national security.” Investigators also found that Pentagon officials “were aware that malicious actors could exploit known vulnerabilities to intercept and read SMS messages” sent to and from military phones.

Yet the department “had not issued policy for protecting text messages.” This latest investigation followed a December 2024 warning from Democratic Sen.

Ron Wyden and Republican Senator Eric Schmitt.

The pair demanded action after Chinese state-linked hackers infiltrated major U.S. phone networks, gaining access to Americans’ call records and private conversations.

Their letter identified AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile as the firms reported to be targeted by Chinese hackers.

After the espionage operation, known as Salt Typhoon, was uncovered, the Pentagon updated its contracts last May to require independent checks of the phone companies’ security systems, including tests to identify weaknesses hackers could exploit.

But the watchdog found that officials still lacked a proper process for reviewing those findings before exercising contract options.

In an extraordinary warning, Wyden said he was still deeply “concerned” about the security of communications used by American servicemembers.

“I remain concerned that our servicemembers remain at risk from the military’s insecure communications and look forward to seeing what else the Inspector General finds,” Wyden told us.