From blaming the obese and homebound for hacking, to anointing his 10-year-old son Barron a computer savant, to enjoying the electoral benefits of WikiLeaks’ campaign against Hillary Clinton, President-elect Donald Trump’s relationship to cybersecurity has been much like his political career: Often confusing, at times amusing, and for some, absolutely terrifying.



But if there’s one thing Trump's staff — whose boss's addiction to tweeting is legend — can do immediately to improve the security of our nation, it is this: Secure his phone.

Yesterday, the president-elect met President Obama at the White House. The two are now privy to the exact same top-secret daily intelligence briefing. But while Obama communicates with a device built and configured with safety standards approved by the NSA, Trump is still firing away tweets from his personal account, from a device that may be an iPhone, may be an Android, or may — according to reports — be whatever device is closest at hand. And it is hardly a stretch of the imagination that Trump may be sending texts, emails, or any other conceivable type of electronic communication from this or these devices.

That means anyone who can hack whatever device Trump is using may be able to glean highly classified details about America's national security.

"Mobile security is one of the most urgent and challenging questions facing the security of senior members of government," said one NSA agent, who asked to be quoted off-record as he wasn't authorized to speak to the press. He said that while the NSA had been involved in building a "simple smartphone" for Obama earlier this year, it didn't look like the type of phone you would get in a BestBuy.

"These are phones with severe limitations. You wouldn't use it the way you would use a normal phone — you can't, for instance, take photos on it," said the agent.

Which normal device Trump has been using up to this point is something of a mystery. His tweets have been posted from Twitter apps for both iPhone and Android. Last October, the New York Times reported he used a Samsung Galaxy. In February, during the standoff between the FBI and Apple over the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, Trump tweeted that he used both Apple and Samsung devices, but that he would switch to Samsung full time if Apple didn’t cooperate. In June, Bloomberg reported that Trump doesn’t keep a device on him. And a text analysis of Trump’s tweets in August by the data scientist David Robinson found that Trump tweets from an iPhone were likely written by his staff, while tweets from the Android were likely written by Trump himself.

