Defense Ops Debates: Breach Lessons

3 Breaches. 1 Pattern

Discord 2023. Signal 2024. Treasury 2024.

Three leaks, three different attack paths, and one common blind spot: unsecured mission comms.

Picture the next morning's brief: classified slides splashed across social media, an ops channel scraped, and the wrong key in the wrong hands. Now, the timeline moves fast: press, hearings, budget freezes.

At 11 AM ET on June 26, a 30-year Navy SEAL and a retired USAF intel chief go from covert to candid, stepping out of the secure enclave and taking the mic.

Debaters: A Navy Seal vs. an Air Force Colonel

• Alan Oshirak — 30-year Navy SEAL, former U.S. Defense & Naval Attach�
• Rich Gibaldi — retired USAF Colonel, ex-Chief of Intel Division, AFC2ISR

Moderator Tom Mersman fires five statements that split boardrooms, and the debaters will slam the Fact or Fiction button and give their take.

• “End-to-end encryption alone keeps adversaries out of mission chat.”
• “Policy - not technology - caused the Discord, Signal, and Treasury leaks.”
• “Mobility and SCIF-grade security are mutually exclusive”
• “End-user training beats technical controls for stopping the next breach.”
• “Legacy systems can’t be made mission-secure.”

What You’ll Walk Away With:

•  Real DoD leaders' verdict on the Signal leak. The moments that still make a SEAL and an Airman wince, as well as the hidden risks most post-mortems skip.
•  Mission talk, minus the alphabet soup.  Straight translation of battlefield needs - from the IT perspective to warfighters requirements.
•  Secure Comms priorities: 3 questions to answer before fulfilling comms requirements. A quick gut-check to spot holes in policy, architecture, and training - before they turn into the next headline.

Not just a front-row seat - a voice.

You weigh in through live polls and real-time chat. Slam the Fact or Fiction button, drop questions on the fly, and watch the debate pivot around your verdict.

Can’t join live? Register, and the recording lands in your inbox