British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged text messages for about a week with someone impersonating White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, before growing suspicious and cutting off contact, according to reporting first published by Politico. No messages of substance were exchanged before Burnham’s team flagged the communication to the proper authorities. But the incident alarmed the British Embassy enough that officials raised it directly with counterparts at the White House.
The White House says the impersonation is unrelated to a previous hack of Wiles’ own devices last year, and separate from a May 2025 wave of AI-assisted impersonation attempts targeting Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials that prompted the State Department to warn U.S. diplomats.
A Head of State Is Still Just a Phone Number
Governments spend enormous sums on encrypted diplomatic channels and vetted communication protocols, and none of it matters if a head of government can still be reached, and briefly fooled, through an ordinary text thread. Burnham caught it before anything sensitive was shared, which is the system working as intended in the end. But the fact that a convincing impersonation got that far, targeting a sitting prime minister only weeks into the job, says something uncomfortable about how easy it now is to fake being someone powerful over text.
🔥 FBI Probes Effort to Impersonate Susie Wiles:
What do you think? Should world leaders be barred from using personal or unverified messaging channels for anything touching official business? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on BeezLoop.com!
Related coverage: CBS News.
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