Signal, this ship, carries a variety of passengers.
Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow
The world is a huge makeshift stage, with new arguments (laughing materials) emerging.
We are all accustomed to "pulling groups" on various social media platforms to discuss work, life, and gossip, but have you ever thought that those high-ranking U.S. officials who wield the world's strongest military power are also engaging in a different form of "WeChat group office"?
Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed a hilarious story: he was "mistakenly added" to a Signal group chat named "Houthi PC" by high-level U.S. national security officials, witnessing Vice President Vance and others "mocking" Europe in the group, and just two hours before actual U.S. military action, he saw high-ranking officials discussing the details of military strikes against the Yemeni Houthi forces.
This seasoned media person was initially skeptical; he could not believe that U.S. national security officials would discuss such confidential military operations on a commercial instant messaging app, let alone that the President's National Security Advisor would so "recklessly" add a media editor-in-chief to such discussions.
However, when he saw Defense Secretary Hegseth detailing the operational specifics set to occur in two hours, including targets, weapon deployments, and attack sequences, and these actions indeed took place, he had to accept this absurd reality.
As the incident was exposed, Vice President Vance, Defense Secretary Hegseth, Secretary of State Rubio, CIA Director Ratcliffe, and other U.S. officials became the subjects of ridicule, with the emojis used by the high-ranking officials in the group 👊🇺🇸🔥 becoming a hot meme online.
This incident perfectly illustrates the so-called "makeshift stage theory," where what appears to outsiders as an orderly and authoritative power institution may be more chaotic and improvised internally than we imagine. The world's most powerful government is, in fact, also conducting online group work, and they can even make the "wrong person" mistake.
Looking at the chat software they used, Signal, it is both unexpected and reasonable.
Signal is not the first time to "catch fire."
Long before it became an unexpected "witness platform" for U.S. military operations, this instant messaging app had gained widespread recognition in the tech community and among privacy advocates for its excellent privacy protection capabilities. Notable figures like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and "Prism" whistleblower Edward Snowden have publicly praised Signal.
In early 2021, when WhatsApp announced an update to its privacy policy, Musk simply tweeted "Use Signal," leading to a surge in Signal downloads that temporarily caused its verification system to crash.
Snowden, regarded as a representative of privacy advocates, stated back in 2015: "I use Signal every day." He believes Signal is one of the safest communication tools on the market.
This incident also brought a lot of exposure to Signal, with its downloads on the Android store surpassing WhatsApp and briefly ranking first. Signal's official X account posted that sometimes just saying "thank you" in one way is not enough, so merci, danke, and bedankt (note: expressions of thanks in other languages).
Signal's core advantage lies in its advanced end-to-end encryption technology, where all communication content (including text, voice, video, and emojis) can only be interpreted by the sender and receiver. Even if communication is intercepted, eavesdroppers can only see meaningless strings.
This encryption mechanism is such that even Signal itself cannot read users' communication content, does not collect metadata, does not save call records, and does not perform cloud backups, fundamentally eliminating the possibility of data leaks.
It is this near "impenetrable" privacy protection capability that makes Signal the preferred tool for various individuals needing confidential communication worldwide.
From journalists, human rights activists to political dissidents, many in sensitive positions rely on Signal to protect their communication security. Activists in Latin America helping women seek abortion rights, defectors escaping spies, lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild, leaders of the "Black Lives Matter" movement, and even former terrorist organization ISIS, now Signal has a new user group: senior officials from the Trump administration.
When the U.S. government and its enemies are both "working online" on the same communication platform, it indeed creates a sense of absurdity reminiscent of cyberpunk: those wielding immense power are using a tool created by an anarchist to exercise their power.
This anarchist's name is Moxie Marlinspike.
The Most Interesting Person in the World
Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal, is a legendary and mysterious figure in the tech world.
This cryptographic genius, whose real name is Matthew Rosenfeld, not only created the world's most secure communication software but also lives an incredibly adventurous life, being described by Snowden as "one of the most interesting people on Earth."
Marlinspike grew up in central Georgia, showing dissatisfaction with conventional education and a talent for technology from a young age. He despised the tedious tasks in school that stifled curiosity but discovered the joy of programming on a rudimentary computer in the school library that had no hard drive and could not even save code.
By the age of ten, he discovered the hacker classic magazine "2600" at a local bookstore, beginning his hacking journey. When his mother bought him a cheap desktop computer, young Marlinspike was already able to "ambush" friends on their computers, making messages suddenly appear on their screens to scare them.
In 1999, with a longing for the cyberpunk world, Marlinspike graduated from high school and came to Silicon Valley, only to find it was just "office parks and highways," far from the futuristic world depicted in William Gibson's novels.
He quickly found a programming job at Web-Logic, but as soon as he entered the tech industry, he grew tired of "spending 40 hours a week in front of a keyboard." In the following years, Marlinspike lived an almost punk life in the San Francisco Bay Area—from squatting in abandoned buildings to moving into an old post office warehouse, participating in political protests, and reading works by anarchist theorists like Emma Goldman.
This period of experience profoundly shaped his critical thinking about authority.
Unwilling to settle for mediocrity, Marlinspike's life was filled with incredible adventures.
He once rode a bicycle carrying a 12-meter-high sailboat mast across San Francisco; self-taught in hot air ballooning, he crashed in the desert, resulting in him using crutches for a month; and he even had friends witness his miraculous ability to play rock-paper-scissors for hundreds of dollars without ever losing.
In 2003, he decided to learn sailing, spending all his savings to buy a dilapidated 27-foot Catalina sailboat, then setting off alone from the San Francisco harbor to Mexico, teaching himself through trial and error along the way.
The following year, he filmed a DIY sailing documentary "Hold Fast," documenting his adventure with three friends sailing a leaky "Plague Ship" from Florida to the Bahamas, ultimately abandoning the ship in the Dominican Republic.
Perhaps it is this pursuit of freedom and questioning of authority that led Marlinspike to create Signal.
In 2010, he launched TextSecure (the predecessor of Signal), beginning his revolutionary work in encrypted communication. In 2015, when Snowden first met Marlinspike in Moscow, he described the cryptographer as "incredibly interesting, awesome, super fun, and wild."
Marlinspike has always maintained a high regard for personal privacy, rarely discussing his personal life, including his age, hometown, or even his real name. This obsession with privacy is also reflected in Signal, which does not collect user data, does not save communication records, and is a fully end-to-end encrypted communication tool.
Unlike many tech founders, Marlinspike does not pursue commercial success. The Signal Foundation operates as a non-profit organization, primarily relying on donations, including an initial donation of $50 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.
Signal Encounters Cryptocurrency, FTX Loses Hundreds of Millions
As a staunch anarchist and privacy advocate, Marlinspike also intersects with cryptocurrency.
The decentralized, censorship-resistant, and privacy-protecting characteristics of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin align philosophically with Marlinspike's original intention in creating Signal—to provide people with communication tools free from government or corporate surveillance. Both stem from the cypherpunk movement, pursuing the protection of personal freedom and privacy through cryptographic technology.
In April 2021, Signal announced the integration of the privacy payment project MobileCoin, supporting payments using MobileCoin. Following this announcement, the MOB token experienced a continuous surge, increasing sixfold in 14 days and eightfold in 30 days.
The reason behind the skyrocketing prices was later revealed: an FTX client engaged in large leveraged trading on MobileCoin (MOB), driving the price from $6 to a peak of nearly $70, and using its large positions for collateralized lending.
However, the MOB price quickly fell back to pre-surge levels, leading Alameda, a market maker also owned by FTX founder SBF, to intervene to protect FTX's liquidity, resulting in Alameda incurring hundreds of millions in losses.
The integration of MobileCoin also sparked significant controversy for Signal. Reports indicated that Marlinspike had served as a technical advisor for MobileCoin and may hold a substantial amount of the coin. This raised questions among some users about whether Signal was straying from its non-profit mission towards commercialization.
Marlinspike responded by stating that Signal chose MobileCoin because it offered the best privacy protection and user experience, rather than for personal gain.
Despite numerous connections to cryptocurrency, Marlinspike is also a critic of it.
In early 2022, he published a widely circulated article on his personal blog titled "My First Impressions of Web3," questioning the decentralization promises of Web3 and blockchain technology.
He pointed out that although blockchain protocols themselves are decentralized, the ways users access these protocols are often highly centralized, relying on wallets like MetaMask and infrastructure services like Infura.
Marlinspike also conducted an experiment: he launched an NFT that would change its appearance based on where you were browsing. When viewed on OpenSea or Rarible, it looked like a piece of art; but when you bought it and viewed it from your wallet, it was an emoji of a pile of poop!
Subsequently, this NFT was taken down by OpenSea for unknown reasons, and what left him speechless was that after the NFT was removed, the NFT he had bought (self-purchased) also disappeared from his wallet!
Marlinspike believes that a truly decentralized system should be one that people "can participate in directly, without the permission or mediation of any third party."
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin quickly responded to this article on Reddit: he broadly agreed with Marlinspike's argument, considering it a fair criticism of the current situation, but he also mentioned that many developers and researchers are now looking to use cryptography to improve the entire ecosystem and realize the ideals of decentralization.
The current tendency towards centralization is primarily because it is indeed a simpler and faster method, while the slower pace of decentralized development is due to a lack of sufficient technical resources and funding, along with many technical challenges encountered along the way. However, many of the larger challenges have now been resolved, so Vitalik remains optimistic about future developments.
Although Marlinspike does hold a certain critical attitude towards cryptocurrency, the story of Signal and the cryptocurrency world continues to intertwine, sharing the mission of protecting user privacy and resisting centralized control.
In this era of constant struggle between encryption and decryption, privacy and surveillance, Signal has become a unique entity—it is both a symbol of resistance and a tool of power; both a fortress of privacy and a stage for unexpected leaks.
This ship, Signal, carries a variety of passengers, from government officials to anarchists, from cryptocurrency enthusiasts to ordinary users, sailing towards a more chaotic future.
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