UKRAINE WAR - 1 YEAR AND GOING.

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

Yeah, they found the idiot that released the papers. Literally, someone from the Air National Guard, of all things.

Also, don't read the comments on the video, it's pretty toxic.

[Broomstick]

It seems at this point (more information may come to light that changes this) we have a young man with some sort of access to top secret information (he had something to do with IT work at the base) who started uploading top secret documents to a group he gamed with to... score points during internet discussions? Impress people? Gain some sort of status?

Definitely a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" category of misbehavior. The penalties for this sort of thing can really fuck up the rest of your life.

[Gandalf]

It seems at this point (more information may come to light that changes this) we have a young man with some sort of access to top secret information (he had something to do with IT work at the base) who started uploading top secret documents to a group he gamed with to... score points during internet discussions? Impress people? Gain some sort of status?

Definitely a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" category of misbehavior. The penalties for this sort of thing can really fuck up the rest of your life.

There's big online status points in being the knowledgeable military stuff guy during a conflict, so that tracks well.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

It seems at this point (more information may come to light that changes this) we have a young man with some sort of access to top secret information (he had something to do with IT work at the base) who started uploading top secret documents to a group he gamed with to... score points during internet discussions? Impress people? Gain some sort of status?

Definitely a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" category of misbehavior. The penalties for this sort of thing can really fuck up the rest of your life.

There's big online status points in being the knowledgeable military stuff guy during a conflict, so that tracks well.

Especially if it's proven that lives have been/will be lost as a result of this. Which begs the question, what can he be charged with as the actions of an individual that puts Ukrainian allies at risk? Though just the act of leaking top secret shit is enough to earn him a long prison sentence.

A lot of the info in it isn't much of a revelation, the concern about Ukraine's air defences running out of ammo has been suspected for a long time isn't exactly new, production of artillery shells for example has been increased so they can do that with AAA ammo.

[LadyTevar]

I would like to see a hacker make the system serve enlistment papers to Putin.

Why stop there?
Hit all 394 who signed this Legislation. Add in those Oligarchs who have been sitting back watching Putin sink Russia to the ground. Hit every single Russian Official who's not already in the military machine.

Failing that, hit EVERYONE at once.

That would force the government to follow up with their entire population, and could force a general revolt.

THAT would be a great plan

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Why stop there?
Hit all 394 who signed this Legislation. Add in those Oligarchs who have been sitting back watching Putin sink Russia to the ground. Hit every single Russian Official who's not already in the military machine.

Failing that, hit EVERYONE at once.

That would force the government to follow up with their entire population, and could force a general revolt.

THAT would be a great plan

Let's hope they've thought of that and are working to make it happen!

[Ralin]

It seems at this point (more information may come to light that changes this) we have a young man with some sort of access to top secret information (he had something to do with IT work at the base) who started uploading top secret documents to a group he gamed with to... score points during internet discussions? Impress people? Gain some sort of status?

Definitely a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" category of misbehavior. The penalties for this sort of thing can really fuck up the rest of your life.

Don't have a link handy, but from what I read elsewhere it seems that he was a 21 year old National Guard IT guy who leaked the documents to his personal Discord server of a couple dozen mostly teenaged military nerds to encourage them to hero-worship him more for being so wise and up on how the world really works, and one or more of them predicatably spread the information elsewhere.

Also they liked to post racist jokes and white supremacist memes.

Long story short, yeah sounds exactly as stupid as you'd expect.

[Solauren]

Failing that, hit EVERYONE at once.

That would force the government to follow up with their entire population, and could force a general revolt.

THAT would be a great plan

Let's hope they've thought of that and are working to make it happen!

Since it's basically mass spamming all of Russia AND the Russian government at once, i can imagine that would be the first thing to try.

[Zaune]

Don't have a link handy, but from what I read elsewhere it seems that he was a 21 year old National Guard IT guy who leaked the documents to his personal Discord server of a couple dozen mostly teenaged military nerds to encourage them to hero-worship him more for being so wise and up on how the world really works, and one or more of them predicatably spread the information elsewhere.

Also they liked to post racist jokes and white supremacist memes.

Long story short, yeah sounds exactly as stupid as you'd expect.

See, that's what keeps me coming back to this place. Our equivalent of that guy was never that stupid, and also probably knew what the fuck he was talking about most of the time.

[PainRack]

It seems at this point (more information may come to light that changes this) we have a young man with some sort of access to top secret information (he had something to do with IT work at the base) who started uploading top secret documents to a group he gamed with to... score points during internet discussions? Impress people? Gain some sort of status?

Definitely a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" category of misbehavior. The penalties for this sort of thing can really fuck up the rest of your life.

He's also a right-wing antisemitic racist, the group was called thugs and well.......


The teen who was in said group and followed OG then spread said info out on to the Minecraft discord, in an attempt to prove that the Ukraine war was real, here's some info about it.....

And from there, it spread to 4chan before Russians began spreading it on telegram, with some very bad Photoshop edits. No idea if it's a state run op OR some local amateur editing it but if it's the former......woo boy. They dumbasses.

[bilateralrope]

Speaking of dumbasses:

MTG, Homeland Security Member, Defends Suspected Pentagon Leaker

Greene tweeted that the man suspected of leaking classified documents was targeted because he is “white, male, Christian, and antiwar"

BY NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ

APRIL 13, 2023

Hours after federal authorities arrested 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira for leaking classified intelligence documents, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene launched an effort to rebrand Teixeira as a victim of President Biden’s administration.

Greene, who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee, tweeted that Teixeira was “white, male, Christian, and antiwar,” and thus “an enemy to the Biden regime.”

“He told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more,” Greene wrote. According to Fox News, the 14 special forces stationed in Ukraine are part of the embassy’s staff, not combat troops.

“Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?” Green added.

Teixeira had posted the documents on a private Discord server called “Thug Shaker Central,” a member of which later reposted the documents to other public forums. Members of the server who spoke to The Washington Post said there was no intent to whistleblow regarding the documents, but rather that the chatroom simply had “some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games; we like war games.”

Greene’s stance on the matter of the security breach is a stark reversal from her position on previous leaks. In 2022, the congresswoman called the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade “basically like an insurrection of the Supreme Court,” and demanded an investigation into the source of the breach.

[Broomstick]

We know where the fascist MTG stands on a lot of issues so this statement by her is not only unsurprising it could be called expected.

[LadyTevar]

Speaking of dumbasses:

MTG, Homeland Security Member, Defends Suspected Pentagon Leaker

Like we needed more proof she was a dumbass?

I wanna know what's her angle here. Is it the idea that the kid was "White Christian" like MTG's base (as well as seemingly anti-Semitic racist, also like her base)? Or is this just knee-jerk "FUCK BIDEN" reaction?

[Ralin]

Man. If some rando National Guard IT guy can leak this sort of stuff for shits and giggles and only get caught because he distributed it to literal children and man-children it must be incredibly fucking easy for actual intelligence agencies to set up the same thing and make it a steady pipeline.

[LadyTevar]

Man. If some rando National Guard IT guy can leak this sort of stuff for shits and giggles and only get caught because he distributed it to literal children and man-children it must be incredibly fucking easy for actual intelligence agencies to set up the same thing and make it a steady pipeline.

Kinda scary how easy that is, when all you have to do is find someone with the info you need and an ego you can stroke.

[Broomstick]

Really - "find someone with the info you need and an ego you can stroke" is probably how most espionage has been done over the ages. The details change but the basic concept is the same.

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

Really - "find someone with the info you need and an ego you can stroke" is probably how most espionage has been done over the ages. The details change but the basic concept is the same.

HUMINT is god. Anyone telling you else is lying to your face. You get far more milage out of HUMINT than SIGINT.

Funnily enough, I've seen some people use this conflict as the ultimate sign that SIGINT trumps HUMINT.

[Zaune]

I bet the SIGINT people don't have to wade through nearly as much internet drama to get to the actually useful stuff though.

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

I bet the SIGINT people don't have to wade through nearly as much internet drama to get to the actually useful stuff though.

To be honest, internet drama is how you sneak in, so to speak. Look how 2016 went because of other internet dramas covering elements of Russia's military espionage operations that year (specifically memetic weapons and hacking into databases). We literally didn't know until the dust had long settled.

Think of internet drama as part of a sleight-of-hand trick.

[Ralin]

So what's stopping the Russian intelligence service from recruiting a guy like this out of college, screening him to make sure he's not a fucking mouthbreather, giving him a summer course somewhere on IT stuff and How To Be A Good Spy and then sending him to enlist and having him pass stuff like this to his handler a few times a year in exchange for a couple thousand dollars a month or something? And then keep doing that for the next ten years or so instead of pulling something like this?

[bilateralrope]

Would Russia be able to guarantee that whoever they recruit will be sent somewhere with access to information they want ?

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

So what's stopping the Russian intelligence service from recruiting a guy like this out of college, screening him to make sure he's not a fucking mouthbreather, giving him a summer course somewhere on IT stuff and How To Be A Good Spy and then sending him to enlist and having him pass stuff like this to his handler a few times a year in exchange for a couple thousand dollars a month or something? And then keep doing that for the next ten years or so instead of pulling something like this?

Largely because they no longer have the budget or manpower, people forget that the Russian economy effectively collapsed during the '90s and never truly recovered. Doing that sort of thing is just stupid expensive (and manpower intensive), even at the best of times, and with the budgets never recovering the slashes of the '90s, they take any break they could get.

[Ralin]

Would Russia be able to guarantee that whoever they recruit will be sent somewhere with access to information they want ?

No, but recruit a dozen or so and you'll eventually land one somewhere. Especially if you make sure they're good at IT or whatever is likely to get them picked for this sort of position. Wasn't he some kind of system administrator or something?

Can't imagine the duds wouldn't be just as happy to get paid the same amount for doing nothing as they were for committing massive life-ending crimes. Or the handler could just cut contact. What's he going to do? Say he wants out of his contract because he only signed up based on what the guy who wanted him to spy promised him?

Largely because they no longer have the budget or manpower, people forget that the Russian economy effectively collapsed during the '90s and never truly recovered. Doing that sort of thing is just stupid expensive (and manpower intensive), even at the best of times, and with the budgets never recovering the slashes of the '90s, they take any break they could get.

You're talking about setting up a couple spymasters to act as handlers and provide training (of the "Don't do this, don't do this, this will get attention" variety) coupled with paying X Americans the monthly wages of a full-time Wal-Mart associate.

[bilateralrope]

You're talking about setting up a couple spymasters to act as handlers and provide training (of the "Don't do this, don't do this, this will get attention" variety) coupled with paying X Americans the monthly wages of a full-time Wal-Mart associate.

How many recruits do you think each handler will be handling ?

Because each recruit probably knows enough to compromise the handler if they go to the authorities. Or if someone notices them and offers a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperation. Take out the handler and, even if they don't sweep up everyone he's handling, they still cut off the money.

Then there is the problem of the extra money. How do you propose giving it to the recruits ?

What happens when one of them spends enough of it to be noticed ?
For example, a medical bill that puts the recruit in a choice between bankruptcy or spending the espionage money.

No, but recruit a dozen or so and you'll eventually land one somewhere. Especially if you make sure they're good at IT or whatever is likely to get them picked for this sort of position. Wasn't he some kind of system administrator or something?

Howe long do you think it will take before recruitment and gaining useful access ?

[Ralin]

How many recruits do you think each handler will be handling ?

I don't know enough to say what would work best.

Because each recruit probably knows enough to compromise the handler if they go to the authorities. Or if someone notices them and offers a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperation. Take out the handler and, even if they don't sweep up everyone he's handling, they still cut off the money.

Would probably be best to vary it up so the handler and the recruiter are different people and the former never meets them again.

Then there is the problem of the extra money. How do you propose giving it to the recruits ?

Unmarked envelope or paper bag, I expect.

What happens when one of them spends enough of it to be noticed ?
For example, a medical bill that puts the recruit in a choice between bankruptcy or spending the espionage money.

Fair question. 1) That's what the 'don't be a dumbass' training is for. That can only go so far because clearly idiot-proofing is impossible, but past that 2) I'd mostly just count on low-level people's spending not being monitored that closely.

Howe long do you think it will take before recruitment and gaining useful access ?

Crapshoot, but wasn't this guy like 21 years old?

I mean, I don't have all the details planned out and a lot of them are things that could blow the whole thing. But I have to assume the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (yes I had to Google the name) has people whose job it is to work this sort of operation out.