On Saturday, President Donald Trump oversaw the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran from a makeshift Situation Room at Mar-a-Lago. Joining him were Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who was briefly believed to be a threat to national security after people mistook her fitness tracker for a highly hackable Apple Watch.
After the White House shared a photo of Trump and Wiles deep in conversation, commenters began to point out that Wiles was wearing some kind of fitness-tracking device on her wrist. “So, planning a war out of Mar A Lago and Susie Wiles is wearing what looks like an Apple watch. I guess security doesn’t matter to these clowns,” gun-control activist Fred Guttenberg wrote on X.
The National Security Agency has a list of “portable electronic devices” that are acceptable for U.S. officials to wear, and because of microphones and cellular functions, most Apple products are not up to snuff. (The Apple Pencil is the only acceptable product on the approved PED list.) However, Wiles was apparently not risking national security because she was wearing a Whoop, a different wearable device that tracks exercise, sleep, and recovery. We know this because the guy who founded it eventually jumped in to defend Wiles.
“It’s called a whoop. It does not include a microphone, GPS, or cellular capability of any kind and has long been on the NSA approved PED list,” Whoop founder Will Ahmed wrote on X in response to an Axios reporter. “Given today’s performance, it’s likely she had a green recovery, low RHR, and high HRV.”
Ahmed posted again in response to Guttenberg, writing, “There’s no story here other than a dead ayotallah [sic] and a green recovery. Whoop is an NSA approved PED without a microphone, without GPS, and without cellular capability. World leaders wear it to monitor their performance. Get your facts right.”
Actually, Wiles is kind of Whoop’s No. 1 brand ambassador. If you look at any photo of her on the job, you can see she is very serious about her Whoop. She wore it to the State of the Union, she wears it during podcast appearances, and she was even wearing it during her big Vanity Fair photo shoot. Thanks to Wiles, the company now has an exciting new avenue for advertising: Which fitness tracker is the only one you can wear while possibly inciting another “forever war” in the Middle East? The copy writes itself.