Hegseth leaves troops exposed to spies as Pentagon ignores phone security warnings: report

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon has left American troops vulnerable to foreign surveillance by failing to fix security gaps in its $2.67 billion cellphone contracts, according to a new inspector general audit. The watchdog found the department never verified whether wireless carriers were adequately safeguarding sensitive data that could reveal where service members are and who they’re talking to, and officials also renewed contracts without properly reviewing the carriers’ security assessments, according to The Daily Beast’s PunchUp. The military had more than 568,000 wireless lines as of January under its sprawling Spiral 4 contract. Investigators warned that hackers exploiting the…