By Emma Tucker

The Trump administration's Signal chat blunder shows the pitfalls of its ad hoc approach to foreign policy, a mode that has sometimes left allies bewildered and the president's aides at odds. At failed DNA-testing company 23andMe, co-founder Anne Wojcicki is out of a job, but she isn't ready to entirely let go. And can AI tools like ChatGPT replace search engines like Google? WSJ's Joanna Stern made the switch -- and she isn't going back.

Today's Headlines

Trump's trade war forces America's closest allies to choose between fighting back or acquiescing. Nobody knows which strategy will ultimately work.

Corporate America's hope for a "golden age" is evaporating as markets wobble, deals drop and consumer confidence hits a new low.

A planned U.S. visit to Greenland this week, originally presented as a feel-good event, has stirred anger and anxiety instead.

A new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines that puts key Chinese hubs within striking distance is enraging Beijing.

Live From The Markets

Dollar Tree is nearing a sale of its Family Dollar business to a consortium of private-equity investors for roughly $1 billion.

AI cloud provider CoreWeave's IPO is a huge bet that AI demand sticks, writes Dan Gallagher.

Read It Hear First

A Signal chat reveals the challenges of Trump's foreign policy style.

Other presidents have relied on the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council staff to develop and filter foreign-policy options in an orderly process. The Trump team has operated in a far less orthodox fashion as it rushes to deliver early wins. Texts by Trump's advisers about whether to attack Houthi militants in Yemen show how their ad hoc approach affected national-security deliberations, Alexander Ward reports.

23andMe went from a $6 billion giant to bankruptcy. Its former CEO won't walk away.

Can-do optimism helped former CEO Anne Wojcicki bring the DNA test to millions. It also led her to pursue expensive and ultimately failed strategies. 23andMe has burned through more than $1 billion and laid off more than half its staff. A board of directors Wojcicki stocked with her friends resigned en masse. Even with its survival uncertain, Wojcicki has vowed to buy the company back. The odds are no longer tilted in her favor, Rolfe Winkler reports.

Expert Take

Q: Is Signal secure enough for classified conversations?

U.S. national-security officials were revealed to be using Signal, messaging software that is increasingly popular in Washington, to share information about a pending U.S. military strike, and mistakenly included a journalist in the chat. Sam Schechner and Dustin Volz explain why the exchange has national-security experts and lawmakers concerned.

A: Signal is a chat app that uses a technology called end-to-end encryption. That means that it scrambles your messages on your device in a way that should only be able to be unscrambled on your recipient's device. In theory, this protects messages against anyone being able to understand them as they pass through the internet.

National-security experts say discussing classified information on an app designed for use on consumer phones would be a serious breach of security procedures and create a big risk for leaks.

The worry is that phones can be hacked. End-to-end encryption can work perfectly, but if the phone is compromised, then all bets are off because the hacker could simply read the messages off the hacked device. There is a long history of hackers, governments and intelligence agencies breaking into phones directly to read messages, whether they are encrypted or not.

See The Story

Videos of Syrian prisoners liberated after Bashar al-Assad's regime fell gave Suleiman al-Youssef, a father in Damascus, hope that his son, Shadi, was among those freed. Shadi had disappeared into Syria's prison system more than a decade ago. The Journal joined Suleiman's search for more clues about Shadi's fate.

Happening Today

Elite figure skater Amber Glenn performs her short program at the world championships. She's a favorite to win the world title this week after a stunning turnaround.

Earnings: Cintas, Dollar Tree, Chewy, Jefferies, HB Fuller, Petco

Number Of The Day:

$180

The price difference between a stay booked directly with the Grandview Inn in Hermosa Beach, Calif., and one booked via the official-sounding grandviewinn.guestreservations. com. Same room type. Same weekend. Same nightly room rate. But some copycat hotel websites -- often the first links to come up when you search for a hotel -- charge hefty fees you won't pay on the hotel's site or major online travel agencies.

And Finally...

Google Search is a mess. Even its own AI can do it better.

WSJ's Joanna Stern quit Google Search -- and its ads and search-optimized junk -- and tried getting her questions answered with ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and even Google's own AI, Gemini. While she's in favor of shifting the stale search paradigm, there are a few AI reservations.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 26, 2025 06:34 ET (10:34 GMT)

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