Trump's Top General Issues Chilling Warning To US Troops Overseas
The top U.S. commander in the Middle East is warning American troops that their own cellphone videos could help Iran kill U.S. service members.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, issued the stark warning in a July 28 letter as the military moves to crack down on troops posting footage from bases targeted by Iranian missiles and drones.
Cooper said Iran is watching videos, photos and news reports in near real time to figure out whether its strikes are hitting American positions.
Personnel deployed across the Middle East could soon be ordered to surrender their phones, according to Reuters, even as thousands of troops rely on mobile devices to communicate with spouses, children and other family members back home.
‘The direct, unavoidable cost of this open-source intelligence could be measured in the lives of American service members and civilian residents in targeted Gulf countries,’ Cooper wrote to the troops in letter dated July 28.
The warning comes as U.S. forces remain under pressure across the region following the collapse of President Donald Trump’s ceasefire with Iran.
Sources told Reuters that troops stationed in Jordan, which has been targeted by Iranian drone and missile attacks, could have their phones confiscated within days.
The military is trying to stop information from leaking into the open where Tehran can use it to refine future attacks.
A video posted online this month showed a service member filming as troops ran for cover during a deadly July 17 Iranian attack on a base in Jordan.
Cooper appeared to reference that clip in his letter, noting it was recorded on camera-equipped Meta smart glasses and posted to Instagram.
The footage revealed where and how the wearer evacuated to a bunker, according to the letter.
That kind of detail can matter on a battlefield where seconds, locations and damage assessments can shape the next strike.
Cooper said U.S. electronic jamming and other countermeasures can leave Iran largely unable to determine whether its attacks were effective.
But troops posting online can hand Tehran the answer for free.
‘Iran knows the weapons were fired; however, their forces do not know if they missed by 50 meters, hit an empty tarmac, or successfully struck a crowded facility,’ Cooper wrote in the letter.
He continued, ‘Detailed lists, descriptions, and analyses of what was hit, openly published by news outlets are essentially performing Iran’s Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) for them, free of charge.’
The warning lands after weeks of deadly attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Eighteen U.S. troops have been killed and more than 600 wounded since the conflict with Iran began in February.
The war has also become a growing political problem at home, with public support falling as American casualties rise.
Military commanders have long restricted phone use in sensitive environments, and troops on certain missions are often required to lock away devices.
Phones can be banned outright during special operations and other high-risk assignments.
But a broader phone crackdown in the Middle East would hit ordinary deployed personnel who use them to check in with loved ones during an increasingly dangerous mission.
That possibility has rattled some military families, especially as Iranian claims of attacks on U.S. bases continue to spread online.
Pentagon officials have warned for years that mobile apps, fitness trackers and location data can expose troop movements and military sites to foreign adversaries.
Commercially available smartphone location data has also been used to monitor and target U.S. forces abroad.
Now Cooper is making the threat plain for troops on the ground.
A quick video may look harmless to the person posting it.
To Iran, it could be a targeting report.
Cooper warned that if Tehran can determine whether its first strike worked, it could come back harder.
He concluded that allowing Iran to judge whether its attacks succeeded could prompt it to launch ‘a secondary, much more devastating wave of attacks.’
For U.S. troops in the region, the message was simple.
Put the phone away before the enemy uses it against you.
Herridge Exposes ‘Deep State’ Figures Who Plotted Against Trump
President Trump spent his entire first term fighting political forces – seen and unseen – who didn’t want him in the White House because he was a legitimate outsider.
Over the years, there have been reports exposing who some of those players were, but now, thanks to ace investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, we are learning even more about who was involved in subverting Trump and his agenda, and which government agencies.
Herridge reported during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight” last week that a senior member of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group, known as the DIG, described a pattern in which intelligence community officials acted on the belief that they needed to protect a globalist perspective by limiting certain information provided to policymakers, including Trump.
Herridge’s comments came amid discussion of recently declassified federal documents related to intelligence assessments from 2020 concerning China’s election influence operations.
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Those records, which were released in connection with a primetime address by Trump the prior week, included internal communications indicating that some intelligence reports had been edited to remove references linking China’s activities to the 2020 U.S. election.
One email dated Nov. 20, 2020, from a Strategic Intelligence Analyst specializing in China and North Korea assessments stated that officials had “deliberately massaged our one pending PDB (President’s Daily Brief) to avoid any direct links to the election.”
Herridge said she reviewed the declassified materials and found they were consistent with earlier whistleblower allegations that intelligence regarding China’s alleged multi-domain influence campaign—described as efforts to hinder Trump’s reelection and portray him negatively as a candidate—had been suppressed or altered.
During the interview, she also linked those findings to broader observations shared by a source within Gabbard’s investigative team.
“In the last week, I’ve been speaking with a very senior member of Director Gabbard’s investigations team known as the DIG,” she said.
“And what they told me is that they did see a pattern where there was a sense or a feeling in the intelligence community that they just knew better,” she added.
“They had to save President Trump from his own instincts, from his own tendencies, and that there was very much a globalist view. And they had to preserve a globalist view,” Herridge continued.
“So, whether it was downplaying or suppressing intelligence about the threat from China, whether it was giving a pass and calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation, there was this level of a bureaucracy, a kind of conspiracy that was making decisions about the kind of information that should be reaching policy makers and ultimately the commander-in-chief,” the former Fox News and CBS News correspondent noted.
The DIG, established during Gabbard’s tenure, examined a range of issues, including the origins of COVID-19, Crossfire Hurricane, Anomalous Health Incidents—commonly known as Havana Syndrome—and domestic surveillance practices.
Gabbard’s team also reviewed several intelligence community assessments produced during the Biden administration, concluding that some contained analytical shortcomings, including the selective exclusion of information and an overreliance on limited sourcing.
According to Herridge, her source said the DIG identified similar patterns across multiple investigations, suggesting that decisions about what intelligence was presented to senior government officials followed a consistent approach.
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Herridge also highlighted additional details from the declassified materials involving Nikki Floris, who at the time was a senior FBI official overseeing counterintelligence matters related to foreign influence operations.
The records included instant messages attributed to Floris that described internal discussions and dynamics within the FBI.
