Last week nobody could tear their eyes away from “Signalgate.” It was one of those moments that changes everything.

It started when the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, published an article about his inadvertent inclusion in a high level — even classified — national security group chat.

I know that sounds like an oxymoron. It is one. It was on a messaging platform called Signal.

He said he started to receive messages on his phone from the likes of the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the CIA, and the Vice President, among others. It was surreal.

He published some of the actual messages, which concerned plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.

But those involved weren’t having it.

About one hour after the National Security Council acknowledged the validity of the series of text messages, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denounced Mr. Goldberg as a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes.”

On Fox News, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who arranged the chat and sent Goldberg the invitation, called Goldberg “a loser” and “the bottom scum of journalists.” 

Confronted with a sea of denials from all the officials involved — including from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, who, under oath at the Senate Intelligence Committee the next day, insisted no classified information had been shared — The Atlantic then published material it had withheld out of regard for America’s security.

This was a series of text messages that detailed the plans to bomb civilian targets in Yemen. Mr. Goldberg received them at 11:44 a.m. on March 15.

News reports about the bombings came two hours later that day. 

Seems irrefutable, no?

Not for this administration.

Mr. Hegseth himself, it turned out, had texted the classified war plans to all 18 members of the group chat, including the editor of The Atlantic. That’s the thing about messaging platforms. You can see who said, and who sent, what.

But. When confronted by reporters, “nobody texted war plans,” said Mr. Hegseth.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, doubled down. She claimed the Atlantic account was a “hoax,” a “disinformation campaign” cooked up by Goldberg and his wife, who were both, she said, registered Democrats.

Bipartisan outrage across America has been multifaceted. The reckless disregard for long established security protocols, as for the safety of American soldiers and pilots; the questionable need for bombing anyone in Yemen at all, and the weird way the decision was taken, in a group chat; that the record of the decision was set to “expire” in four weeks, in direct contravention of the Records Act; the unbelievably callow use of fist and fire emojis to indicate approval of the bombing of civilian targets; the lying and denigrating when confronted with all the above — it was hard to know where to start.

One thing impossible to resist, though, is the confrontation the episode staged between the established media, with its professional editors and journalists, and the way things go down on social media platforms.

The Atlantic was founded in 1857, and is a respected journal of politics and literature. It is owned by the Emerson Collective, headed by noted philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs. Editor Jeffery Goldberg has had a long and distinguished career, notable not least for calling Mr. Trump to account many times since 2016.

X, owned by Elon Musk, is the home territory of the chorus of misinformation and conspiracy theory sounded by key members of the Trump administration this week. The platform inflates and spreads lies and vitriol to destroy the democratic processes that rely on informed opinion.

Business as usual on X, where Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt, who are expert at evading the truth, not only can and do say anything they like, and where they deliberately enrage and engage their supporters by deploying keywords like “hoax,” “woke,” and “DEI,” is not going to be business as usual on the world stage, either in the White House Press Office or at the Department of Defense or in front of a bunch of reporters.

The whole world is watching this administration, and it does not consist solely of superfans, 25-year-old incels, and Russian bots.

So, for example, when Donald Trump presses his trade war against Canada and Europe, he seems genuinely surprised and angered at the pushback he gets. That’s not what happens when he posts on Truth Social!

He seems shocked that Canada is moving toward Europe to protect its economic and military sovereignty. He angrily imposed 25% tariffs on all imported auto parts last week, to punish both Europe and Canada, and intensified his calls for this country’s “annexation.”

War takes many forms. Trump’s tariffs are a form of open economic warfare, designed to weaken their targets. Another way of waging a war is through what are called “below-threshold attacks.”

In a policy report prepared for the Canadian Centre for International Government Innovation, the DND’s Raquel Garbers notes such attacks are “calibrated to fall below the threshold at which a targeted state would take effective action to defend itself.”

Meaning, it is hard to defend against them. Economic below-threshold attacks can take the form of financing political candidates, as Elon Musk has with far-right candidates across Europe, most recently in Germany’s election.

Hidden interference of any kind in a sovereign nation is a below threshold attack.

But, Ms. Garbers notes, sort of reassuringly, there is a big difference between “hostile states,” like China, Russia and India’s routine deployment of below threshold attacks, and the actions of “responsible states.” The latter, Canada’s allies for example, “respect established norms regarding conduct and limits.”

But Signalgate made clear that is not what is happening in the United States. It is not respecting established norms regarding conduct and limits, either within its own borders or beyond them.

The opposite is the case.

Consider again the connection between platforms like X, social media’s conspiracy theories, and the destruction of democratic processes. X revels in hoaxes, fake news, smear campaigns, malicious doxxing, and gaslighting.

These methods don’t work that well when they are obvious and out in the open, as we are seeing. Where they are subject to scrutiny and analysis, put in context, and held up against established standards — both of ethics and of verification.

They do work well, though, as “below threshold attacks.”

The conspiracy theorists and buffoons have moved out of the shadowy mirror world of X and into real life, where they have taken over the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and the armed forces. They have set their sights on Canada and Greenland.

But they are so brazen, so outlandish, that suddenly it seems the whole world is awake to the tremendous threat their disinformation represents. I don’t know if it will be enough, but it is something to see this large and powerful consensus build, out in the open, in real life.