On Thursday the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump regularly calls friends on unsecured iPhones to kvetch about issues of national importance. The report cites anonymous current and former officials who say they are speaking to the Times “not to undermine Mr. Trump, but out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.”

If these officials’ claims are accurate, the matter is deadly serious. The president has two official iPhones that have been altered by the National Security Agency to limit their functionalities and protect them from hacking and eavesdropping. These phones don’t have Trump’s contacts, so he uses a third iPhone that bears no difference from the ones ordinary civilians use. National security officials have repeatedly warned the president that the Russians and, especially, the Chinese are listening to his conversations, and that he is better advised to use one of the secure iPhones or, preferably, the secure White House landline. He is supposed, furthermore, to exchange his two official phones for clean ones every 30 days—the routine swap guarantees against malware—but he usually doesn’t because it’s inconvenient.