“Signalgate” — the disclosure that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared sensitive war plans over the app Signal from a personal device — was one of the early defining storylines of the Trump administration.

There was no shortage of (largely justified) outrage at the passing of high-stakes information over commercial cellular channels. But the reality is that people, including government officials, have adopted cell phones as their primary means of communication for everything today, from grocery lists to ground invasions.

In Ukraine, in spite of the risks, both sides of the conflict have heavily used commercial cellular networks throughout the war, because nothing beats them in terms of availability and efficiency.

In early June, Ukraine scored its biggest win in months by launching drone attacks at Russian airfields, and in the process it laid bare the asymmetric vulnerabilities that cellular networks present to a major military power like the United States.

Ukrainian handlers operated the drones from thousands of miles away by connecting over Russian commercial cell networks. Because Russia cannot simply turn off its commercial cellular networks, given the enormous social and economic consequences, it was left scrambling for ways to mitigate the threat.

There is a lesson in this for us. We cannot turn back time to a world where strategic, essential communication only happens in a........

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