No Guard Rails
The most compelling question regarding Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old National Guard airman who just got arrested for leaking classified documents to his gamer bros on a Discord server is how the hell a guy like this had access to the material and was able to share it so easily. The second most compelling question is, well, wait, so knowingly taking classified documents to your home or resort and sharing them with anyone you want is a crime? Interesting. This case is a disaster for US intelligence and will strain relations with allies and inform enemies. But it doesn’t sound like that was Teixeira’s goal. Consider this from the NYT (Gift Article): The Airman Who Gave Gamers a Real Taste of War. “In interviews, members of Thug Shaker Central said their group had started out as a place where young men and teenage boys could gather amid the isolation of the pandemic to bond over their love of guns, share memes — sometimes racist ones — and play war-themed video games. But Airman Teixeira, who one member of the group called O.G. and was also its unofficial leader, wanted to teach the young acolytes who gravitated to him about actual war, members said. And so, beginning in at least October, Airman Teixeira, who was attached to the Guard’s intelligence unit, began sharing descriptions of classified information, group members and law enforcement officials said, eventually uploading hundreds of pages of documents, including detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine and confidential assessments of Russia’s war machine. His goal, group members said, was both to inform and impress.”
+ WaPo (Free Article): He’s from a patriotic family – and allegedly leaked U.S. secrets. “Teixeira, who used online handles that include ‘jackthedripper’ and ‘excalibureffect,’ posted the images to Discord, a chat platform popular with gamers, people familiar with the case said. Some Discord members showed The Washington Post video of Teixeira shouting racist and antisemitic slurs before firing a rifle.” (Racism and antisemitism are the polar opposites of patriotism. We need to remind a lot of people of that.) Here’s the latest from CNN.
