America’s top cybersecurity and law enforcement officials made a coordinated push Tuesday to raise awareness about cyber threats from foreign actors in the wake of an intrusion of U.S. telecom equipment dubbed Salt Typhoon. The hackers are linked to the Chinese government and they still have a presence in U.S. systems, spying on American communications, in what Sen. Mark Warner from Virginia has called “the worst hack in our nation’s history.”

Officials with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI went so far as to urge Americans to use encrypted messaging apps, according to a new report from NBC News, something that’s ostensibly about keeping foreign hackers out of your communications. But using apps like Signal has received a lot more attention in recent weeks as Donald Trump is slated to take power on Jan. 20, 2025. Trump has nominated Kash Patel to become head of the FBI, a jaw-droppingly authoritarian decision given Patel’s promises to punish Trump’s political enemies and imprison journalists.

“Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible,” Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said on a press call Tuesday according to NBC News.

The unnamed FBI agent on the call with reporters echoed the message, according to NBC News, urging Americans to use “responsibly managed encryption,” which is a rather big deal when you remember that agencies like the FBI have been most resistant to Silicon Valley’s encryption efforts.

The hackers behind Salt Typoon failed to monitor or intercept anything encrypted, meaning that anything sent through Signal and Apple’s iMessage was likely protected, according to the New York Times. But the intrusion for all other communications was otherwise extremely galling. The hackers had access to metadata, including information on messages and phone calls along with when and where they were delivered. The hackers reportedly focused on targets around Washington, D.C.

The most alarming sort of intrusion in Salt Typhoon involved the system used by U.S. officials to wiretap Americans with a court order, but NBC reports the FBI didn’t provide much in the way of details on that including if any classified material was accessed. But ABC News reports officials believe the intrusion had a goal of gaining access to a much broader swath of American communications beyond classified material.

The cybersecurity divisions of the Five Eyes spy alliance between the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, also released a joint statement on Tuesday that includes a guide about how to harden your systems against the Salt Typhoon attack.

Again, the focus of these recommendations has been on protecting against threats from overseas. But just about everyone knows what’s likely to happen when Trump gets back into office. The former and future president has pledged to become a dictator on day one and has repeatedly threatened his political opponents with charges of treason. Trump even suggested last year that Gen. Mark Milley should be executed.

And while nobody knows for sure how seriously to take all of these threats, it doesn’t hurt to get your digital house in order. Because Signal may not be perfect, but encrypted apps are better than nothing when the U.S. is staring down the barrel of a fascist government. Trump is saying some pretty outrageous things even before he takes office. You can dismiss his suggestion to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada should become a U.S. state as just a joke. But this is the guy who literally tried to buy Greenland. All bets are off when he takes power again.