Someone Is Impersonating Marco Rubio's Voice with AI to Call Trump Officials

Government employees keep getting calls from Secretary of State Marco Rubio—which would be bad enough, frankly, having to talk to that guy. But making matters worse, it seems that it’s not actually Marco Rubio but instead, an unidentified caller who is mimicking his voice with artificial intelligence software, according to a report from the Washington Post.

The technologically advanced crank caller has reportedly contacted at least three foreign ministers, a governor, and a member of Congress, according to the report. The contact attempts, which have included calls and texts, have come through Signal, and the scammers have apparently been able to set up a pretty believable impersonation campaign. Calls and messages have come through with the display name “[email protected],” which certainly seems like official-looking contact information but, per WaPo, is not actually Rubio’s real email address.

So far, the caller has left multiple voicemails and sent several texts inviting recipients to chat on Signal. According to a State Department cable that WaPo got its hands on, it is believed that whoever is behind the campaign is attempting to do some social engineering, “with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts.”

The calls, in this case, are not coming from inside the house, as the State Department and the FBI have been unable to identify who is behind them, which is… not great. Another detail that can be filed under “not ideal” is that Rubio is not the only official getting the imposter treatment. Per the cable, there have been impersonation attempts of other State Department officials via email, as well.

This has not exactly been a banner start to the second Trump administration on the cybersecurity front. While humans are always the weakest link in the security chain and susceptible to error, these guys have really been scoring own goals since the day they stepped into office. There was the high-profile Signalgate disaster that saw since-ousted national security advisor Mike Waltz accidentally add the editor of The Atlantic to a Signal chat discussing an attack on Yemen, followed by the revelation that the Trump national security apparatus apparently uses Signal all the time despite warnings from the Pentagon not to do that. And then it turned out the modified version of Signal that group of ghouls uses got hacked.

Then there was the incident back in May when White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles seemingly had her phone compromised, as government officials who were contacts in her device started receiving messages from unknown numbers, which kinda just came and went like it was no big deal. Trump basically dismissed it out of hand, like there was no way anyone would fall for such a thing.

Let’s hope these folks don’t have the nuclear launch codes written on sticky notes they keep on their desk.