Electrospaces.net: Trump risked a compromise of his strike against Venezuela

January 8, 2026

Trump risked a compromise of his strike against Venezuela

On January 3, 2026, the United States conducted a remarkable strike against Venezuela, during which president Maduro and his wife were captured and exfiltrated to New York.

At his private residence Mar-a-Lago, US president Trump monitored this operation from a room that looks hardly secure enough to prevent adversaries from eavesdropping.

Left to right: Hegseth, Ratcliffe, Rubio and Trump at Mar-a-Lago, January 3, 2026
(White House photo - click to enlarge)

Right after the strike had been absolved, Trump's team released several photos via X (formerly Twitter) and their own social media platform Truth Social. The images show how the US president and his national security team monitored the operation and the communications equipment they used.

Present were president Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff general Dan Caine, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, as well as some other staff members.

The communications equipment

Among the communications equipment in the photos we see a Cisco 8832 IP Conference Phone and at least two Cisco 8841 IP phones with a black box attached to their back. All these phones were modified by Advanced Programs, Inc. (API) in order to provide some TEMPEST protection and appliance to the TSG Standards.

However, those technical measures are of little use when a phone is off hook or when the speakerphone is enabled and all kind of people (and antennas) can simply listen in to what is said.

Left to right: Ratcliffe, Trump and Rubio at Mar-a-Lago, January 3, 2026
(White House photo - click to enlarge)

In the photo below we see Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff working on a laptop which has two yellow labels and is connected with cables that are yellow as well. Yellow is the color code for the classification level Top Secret - Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS-SCI), which indicates that the device is connected to JWICS, the highly secured network for intelligence information and communication.

In another photo we can see that at his right hand, Cain also has another laptop. That one had a red label and was connected with a red cable. Red is the color code for the classification level Secret, which means that laptop was connected to the SIPRNet, which is the primary network for classified military communications.

Left to right: Caine, Ratcliffe and Hegseth at Mar-a-Lago, January 3, 2026
(White House photo - click to enlarge)

On the wall behind defense secretary Hegseth is a large videoscreen. The bright green bar along the top side shows that it's connected to a military or government network for unclassified information (most likely NIPRNet). At the moment of the photo, the screen showed an internet browser with on three tabs the web interface of X and "Venezuela" typed into the search bar of the front tab.

Note that Hegseth is working on a laptop that has no color label to indicate a classification level, it has only a gray label with some bar codes. This brings to mind the situation of early last year, when Hegseth had a computer in his Pentagon office that was directly connected to the public internet so he could use the Signal app for backdoor communications with the White House.

No SCIF at Mar-a-Lago?

The most remarkable thing about the meeting on January 3, is its location. According to CNN, Trump and his team met in "a discreet of the club, away from guests". The photo below shows that it was a small building with a wooden roof that looks almost like a garage or a storage room, with the area where all the highly sensitive information came in "sealed off" only by very thin black curtains:

Left to right: Ratcliffe, Trump, Rubio and Miller at Mar-a-Lago, January 3, 2026
(White House photo - click to enlarge)

Normally, these kind of meetings should at least take place in a Physically Protected Space (PPS), but preferably in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Such a SCIF can be a room, a suite of rooms or a whole building that is protected in such a way that highly classified information can be stored, processed, viewed and/or discussed without being intercepted by outsiders.

Risks at Mar-a-Lago

Already during Trump's first term as president it was noticed that there was apparently no permanent SCIF at Mar-a-Lago. When on April 6, 2017, the US conducted airstrikes against Syria, Trump and his team sat packed around a narrow table in a small side room, looking at a secured Cisco EX90 video teleconferencing screen, with on the table some devices that were never identified.

Trump and his team of policy makers at Mar-a-Lago, April 6, 2017
(White House photo - click to enlarge)

According to Trump's press secretary at the time, the room used on April 6, 2017 was a SCIF. That wasn't very convincing because everything seemed to be hastily arranged for the occasion. At best, the room was a (temporary) Secure Working Area (SWA), which is an accredited facility "used for discussing, handling, and/or processing SCI, but where SCI will not be stored."

Mar-a-Lago isn't just Trump's private residence, but also a club resort that is open to paying members and ticketed guests, staffed by workers without the same security clearances as White House staff. Although the Secret Service screens guests before they enter, they don't determine who can access the club. All this makes the place vulnerable to infiltration and/or eavesdropping by foreign intelligence.

Precedents

By contrast, when president Barack Obama and his national security team monitored the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, they did so from a small room that was part of the highly secured complex of the White House Situation Room:

President Obama and his national security team watching the killing of
Osama bin Laden in the White House Situation Room, May 1, 2011.
(White House photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

However, when Obama was on vacation at the Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts in August 2011, his secure and non-secure telephone equipment was installed in a living room that didn't seem very secure, with doors and windows open when calls were conducted:

> Read more: Obama on vacation

President Obama with John Brennan and some other assistents, August 26, 2011
(White House photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

Much better was the situation under president George W. Bush, who had a special building on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, that was equipped as a SCIF. The space was modeled like a conference room in the White House, with comfortable chairs and all the necessary communications equipment for secure and non-secure phone calls as well as for secure video teleconferencing: