Day 953: Trump reveals classified information solely to troll Iran

A president can declassify any information they want, but “can” and “should” are wildly different things. The U.S. maintains countless secrets that it would be unwise to willy-nilly declassify and disseminate to the world. These include everything from proprietary information to world class technology.

Friday, Donald Trump decided to reveal presumably classified imagery for the sole purpose of trolling Iran over a failed satellite launch.

By tweeting a high resolution photo of an Iran launch site, Trump revealed:

• That the U.S. was actively watching the launch site, and
• That the U.S. has the ability to take satellite photos so clear that various objects are capable of being easily identified from space.

Trump sent the tweet to mock Iran’s failed launch and taunted them by wishing them “good luck in determining what happened” at the site.

The declassification was reckless and appeared to bypass normal protocols.

Even as geospatial analysts observed that the granular level of detail in the image appeared far superior to capabilities the US has published previously or publicly admitted to in the past, casual observers were pointing to another anomaly. A shadow on the image and a bright spot of light seemed to suggest someone — possibly the President — had taken a photo of the image that very probably was not meant for public consumption.

Trump himself sidestepped questions about whether the imagery was meant for public consumption.

The various government agencies spent the day passing the buck and refusing to answer questions about Trump’s actions.

The CIA, Director of National Intelligence and State Department referred questions to the White House.

At the White House, the National Security Council declined to comment.

There’s no real reason to reveal the information that Trump tweeted, other than ego-stoking. Moving forward, Tehran — and the world — will not only better understand U.S. technology, but will likely take more steps to obfuscate their activities.

953 days in, 509 to go

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