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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By AROKIE: Fuck me...so some dumb fucking incel dumped all this shit online to impress some gamer boys.. little dis he know he could be changing history due to his antics. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By AROKIE: Originally Posted By HIPPO: https://wapo.st/3UvaNTQ Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post April 12, 2023 at 9:36 p.m. EDT Click To View Spoiler (Illustration by Lucy Naland/The Washington Post; iStock) The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic. United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people. The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals. Story continues below advertisement OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them. “He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said. A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were posted shares information on the man behind the leak, who some call “OG.” (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.” In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies. This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured. What to know about the Discord leaks His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official. “An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement. Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further. The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server. The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s. “He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said. Story continues below advertisement In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target. The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure. “I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts. “It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.” A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the contents of the files. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The member met OG about four years ago, on a different server for fans of Oxide, a popular YouTuber who streams videos about guns, body armor and military hardware. He said a group of avid members found the server too crowded and wanted a quieter place to talk about video game tactics, so they broke off into their own, small group. More like-minded Oxide fans joined the private Discord server, which came to be named “Thug Shaker Central,” and whose membership OG would effectively control as the administrator. “We all grew very close to each other, like a tightknit family,” the member said. “We depended on each other.” He said that other members, and OG especially, counseled him during bouts of depression and helped to steady him emotionally. “There was no lack of love for each other.” OG was the undisputed leader. The member described him as “strict.” He enforced a “pecking order” and expected the others to read closely the classified information he had shared. When their attention waned, he got angry. Late last year, a peeved OG fired off a message to all the members of the server. He had spent nearly an hour every day writing up “these long and drawn-out posts in which he’d often add annotations and explanations for stuff that we normal citizens would not understand,” the member said. His would-be pupils were more interested in YouTube videos about battle gear. “He got upset, and he said on multiple occasions, if you guys aren’t going to interact with them, I’m going to stop sending them.” That’s when OG changed tactics. Rather than spend his time copying documents by keyboard, he took photographs of the genuine articles and dropped them in the server. These were more vivid and arresting documents than the plain text renderings. Some featured detailed charts of battlefield conditions in Ukraine and highly classified satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities. Others sketched the potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the United States. Another featured photographs of the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the country in February, snapped from eye-level, probably by a U-2 spy plane, along with a diagram of the balloon and the surveillance technology attached to it. Story continues below advertisement OG shared several documents a week, beginning late last year. Posting pictures to the server took less time. But it also exposed OG to greater risk. In the background of some images, they could see items and furniture that they recognized from the room where OG spoke to them via video on the Discord channel — the kind of clues that could prove useful for federal investigators. The dramatic and yet nonchalant presentation also reminded the group that OG could lay his hands on some of the most closely guarded intelligence in the U.S. government. “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member said. “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.” In a sense, OG had created a virtual mirror image of the secretive facility where he spent his working hours. Inside the Discord server, he was the ultimate arbiter of secrecy, and he allowed his companions to read truths that “normal citizens” could not. A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the online community. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The photographs of printed secret documents now seen by millions may offer clues to the federal agents searching for OG. Reality Winner, who leaked secret National Security Agency documents to the news website the Intercept in 2017, was compromised by secret markings on printouts that helped narrow the search. OG’s documents look to have been printed on ordinary paper and were creased after having been folded in four. Sometimes, the photographs OG took of the documents appeared to have been taken over a bed. Items such as Gorilla Glue, a scope manual and nail clippers appeared in the margins. Other previously unreported images reviewed by The Post showed printed documents lying on top of a glowing red keyboard. The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine. At least one of the documents appeared to have been printed from Intellipedia, a data-sharing system that intelligence agencies use to collaborate and post reports and articles. The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests. “He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the member said. The room on the server where he posted the documents was called “bear-vs-pig,” meant to be a snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict. But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.” OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. The attack left 10 dead, all of them Black, and wounded three more. OG said federal law enforcement officials let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding, a baseless notion that the member said he believes and considers an example of OG’s penetrating insights about the depth of government corruption. OG’s group itself had a dark side. The Discord server’s eventual name, Thug Shaker Central, was a racist allusion, and signaled to members that they were free to hurl epithets and crude jokes. The young member expressed some regret for their behavior but seemed to shrug off the offensive remarks as a clumsy attempt at humor. It was not “a fascist recruiting server,” he told The Post. Story continues below advertisement One thing the members were not supposed to do was talk about the secrets OG had shared with them, including the classified documents. “Most people in the server were smart enough as to kind of realize that … they shouldn’t be posted anywhere else,” the member said. And yet, the group contained foreign citizens — including from Russia and Ukraine, the members said — a defiance of the NOFORN warning printed across the top of so many documents OG shared. The member estimated that the server hosted people from Europe, Asia and South America. “Just about every walk of life.” Of the roughly 25 active members who had access to the bear-vs-pig channel, about half were located overseas, the member said. The ones who seemed most interested in the classified material claimed to be from mostly “Eastern Bloc and those post-Soviet countries,” he said. “The Ukrainians had interest as well,” which the member chalked up to interest in the war ravaging their homeland. For years, U.S. counterintelligence officials have eyed gaming platforms as a magnet for spies. Russian intelligence operatives have been suspected of befriending gamers who they believe work for intelligence agencies and encouraging them to divulge classified information, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. It’s not clear whether any of those efforts have been successful. But if foreign operatives finagled an invitation to OG’s server, they would have been free to view the documents and make copies of them, as some members did. The server sprouts a leak All winter, OG uploaded documents to the server. No one talked about sharing them elsewhere. Then, unbeknown to the group, on Feb. 28, another teenage user from the Thug Shaker Central server began posting several dozen photographs showing classified documents on another Discord server affiliated with the YouTuber “wow_mao.” Some of the documents offered detailed assessments of Ukraine’s defense capabilities and showed how far U.S. intelligence could see into Russia’s military command. On March 4, 10 documents appeared on “Minecraft Earth Map,” a Discord server focused on the popular video game. A user operating the account that posted the smaller tranche of images told The Post they obtained them on wow_mao. Secret and top-secret documents were now available to thousands of Discord users, but the leak wouldn’t come to the attention of U.S. authorities for another month. Meanwhile, OG stopped sharing images in the middle of March. On April 5, classified documents assessing the war in Ukraine were posted on Russian Telegram channels and the message board platform 4chan, and began migrating to Twitter. One image, showing a March 1 Ukraine status update, had been crudely doctored to inflate the number of Ukrainian casualties and downplay those on the Russian side. The next day, shortly before the New York Times first reported on the leak, OG came into the server “frantic, which is unusual for him,” the member said. “He said something had happened, and he prayed to God that this event would not happen. … But now it’s in God’s hands.” Story continues below advertisement For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said. “I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest,” he said, resisting comparisons to Edward Snowden, who shared classified documents about government surveillance with journalists. Remarkably, the member said he has been in touch with OG in the past few days, even as an FBI manhunt is underway and the Pentagon launches its own inquiry into the leaks. After shuttering the Thug Shaker Central server, OG moved the community to another server to communicate with his online family. He “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do,” the member said. “He’s fully aware of what’s happening and what the consequences may be. He’s just not sure on how to go about solving this situation. … He seems pretty distraught about it.” In his final message to his companions, OG admonished them to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” the member said. That included any copies of the classified documents OG had shared. When it dawned on them that OG was in grave peril and intended to disappear, the members of Thug Shaker Central “full-on sobbed and cried,” the young member said. “It is like losing a family member.” In hours of interviews, he continued to express admiration and loyalty to a man who may have endangered his young followers by allowing them to see and possess classified information, exposing them to potential federal crimes. “I figured he would not be putting us in any sort of harm’s way,” the member said. The exposure of the documents has severed friendships and cut him off from the man who buoyed his confidence and made him feel safe. The member said that the stress of the loss, coupled with the enormity of the leaks, has left him worried and sleepless. Now he says he believes that the world should see the secrets OG passed along to a tiny group. He argued that the public deserves to know how intelligence agencies spend their tax dollars, and was particularly outraged that the documents show U.S. surveillance of foreign allies. But what the young man regarded as a revelation will come as no surprise to the countries whose officials the U.S. has been monitoring for decades. While rarely discussed, and embarrassing for Washington when exposed, it’s widely understood that the U.S. intelligence community monitors many friendly governments, just as foreign allies try to do the same. Story continues below advertisement Thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media. Despite what his young followers thought, OG would have had no special knowledge compared with his peers. He possessed no special power to predict events. Rather, he appears to have persuaded some highly impressionable teenagers that he’s a modern-day gamer meets Jason Bourne. The member said he’s confident the authorities will find OG. But when they do, he won’t be charged. Instead, he believes, OG will be imprisoned without due process at Guantánamo Bay or disappeared to a “black site,” if he’s not “assassinated” for what he knows. The member, as well as the OG follower who corroborated his account, found no fault in their leader’s actions and instead said they blame the teen who posted the documents on the wow_mao server for wrecking their community. “Maybe we should have had better opsec,” the member said, harnessing the jargon of military and intelligence personnel for “operations security.” He insisted said he will not divulge OG’s identity or location to law enforcement until he is captured or can flee the United States. “I think I might be detained eventually. … I think there might be a short investigation on how I knew this guy and they’ll try to get something out of me. They might try to threaten me with prison time if I don’t reveal their identity.” To date, no federal law enforcement officials have contacted the young group member. Asked why he was prepared to help OG even at the risk of his own freedom, the young man replied without hesitation: “He was my best friend.” Fuck me...so some dumb fucking incel dumped all this shit online to impress some gamer boys.. little dis he know he could be changing history due to his antics. Unlike that Reality Winner shithead, this one should be tried and placed in front of a firing squad. Livestream it on Discord. Maybe others will take the hint. |
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There's nothing wrong with a little personal baggage, it's owning the whole luggage store that's the problem.
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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I can’t see how that information should have ever been so widely available that a national guard enlisted airman at Cape Cod or wherever should have had access to it. GWOT made us sloppy. The Taliban, ISIS and Islamic fundamentalists in general don’t have a strong HUMINT program. The radical level of sharing that worked there is reckless against Russia, who is sloppy now but has a history of outplaying us in the Great Game. It’s suicidal against China, who has us penetrated thoroughly.
ETA: A lot of the info we saw released should never have been put in any slide deck. Locations of SAMs? The sort of Americans who need to look at that don’t need it in a slide deck for a briefing. They need to map it for analysis and then report if it’s effective to the people who need to know if we should send more, or train more, but have no need to see the locations. |
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Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest: Agreed, supposedly this is him. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ftm-hkfXoAAhfBP?format=jpg&name=medium View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest: Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Originally Posted By RockNwood: Originally Posted By AROKIE: Originally Posted By spydercomonkey: New Leaked Documents Show Broad Infighting Among Russian Officials The additional documents also suggest the breach of American intelligence agencies could contain far more material than previously believed. https://archive.ph/BmFQT The depth of the infighting inside the Russian government appears broader and deeper than previously understood, judging from a newly discovered cache of classified intelligence documents that has been leaked online. The additional documents, which did not surface in a 53-page set that came to wide public attention online last week, paint a picture of the Russian government feuding over the count of the dead and wounded in the Ukraine war, with the domestic intelligence agency accusing the military of obscuring the scale of casualties that Russia has suffered. The new batch, which contains 27 pages, reinforces how deeply American spy agencies have penetrated nearly every aspect of the Russian intelligence apparatus and military command structure. It also shows that the breach of American intelligence agencies could contain far more material than previously understood. In one document, American intelligence officials say that Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., has “accused” the country’s Defense Ministry “of obfuscating Russian casualties in Ukraine.” The finding highlights “the continuing reluctance of military officials to convey bad news up the chain of command,” they say. F.S.B. officials, the document says, contend that the ministry’s toll did not include the dead and wounded among the Russian National Guard, the Wagner mercenary force or fighters fielded by Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. The sundry fighting forces that the Kremlin has deployed in Ukraine have sometimes acted at cross purposes, further complicating Russia’s military effort. The F.S.B. “calculated the actual number of Russians wounded and killed in action was closer to 110,000,” the document says. The new documents also provide fresh details about a very public dispute in February in which Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the business mogul who runs the Wagner force, accused Russian military officials of withholding urgently needed ammunition from his fighters. Mr. Putin attempted to resolve the dispute personally by calling Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Shoigu into a meeting believed to have taken place on Feb. 22, one document reports. “The meeting almost certainly concerned, at least in part, Prigozhin’s public accusations and resulting tension with Shoygu,” the document says, using an alternative transliteration of the minister’s name. One slide that appears to have been produced by the military’s Joint Staff and dated Feb. 23 concludes that Russia has failed to disrupt the massive flow of Western arms and equipment into Ukraine since the start of the war, and asserts that the Kremlin’s battered military will not be able to change that anytime soon. “During the next 6 months, Russia’s economic challenges and degraded conventional capabilities very likely will further impede its efforts, creating a mostly permissive environment for continued lethal aid deliveries,” the document said. FFS!! they need to stop these fucking leaks... It was just announced Gen Mark “Loose Lips” Milley is retiring this year. Coincidence? At 65 for a political animal that loves the limelight? Hmmm Hopefully someone makes absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt, that access to any and all documents is revoked the second his "retirement" is official. Too damn many people walking around after leaving their .gov position with access IMHO. Agreed, supposedly this is him. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ftm-hkfXoAAhfBP?format=jpg&name=medium Npr had the reporter that got the files talking about how the people on the channel were trying to set the record straight that they wanted to make certain everyone knew he wasn't a plant or a Russian spy and loves his country. You could just hear the smile growing on the reporters face as he was explaining this and all I could think about was you dumbasses. They topped it off with saying we don't know if the authorities know who it is, OF COURSE THEY KNOW! |
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Originally Posted By Ryan_Scott: I can’t see how that information should have ever been so widely available that a national guard enlisted airman at Cape Cod or wherever should have had access to it. GWOT made us sloppy. The Taliban, ISIS and Islamic fundamentalists in general don’t have a strong HUMINT program. The radical level of sharing that worked there is reckless against Russia, who is sloppy now but has a history of outplaying us in the Great Game. It’s suicidal against China, who has us penetrated thoroughly. View Quote |
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Originally Posted By MarineGrunt: https://twitter.com/mschwirtz/status/1646544473361457153 Leaker found Edit. Don’t know why my tweets never show… do you have to be a member? View Quote |
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World ain't what it seems, is it Gunny?
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Originally Posted By Gingerbreadman: I wonder how large of an area can be jammed. I'm not familiar with the inertial navigation systems of these weapons, but I am a little bit familiar with those on commercial airliners. It is my understanding that an inertial navigation system needs a good starting point in order to determine where it moved to, and if it is set using bad location data, it will never know where it really is. View Quote Inertial navigation on ground vehicles is pretty damn accurate, if the surveyors put you within a meter of your location when you start the system. On aircraft (or so I’m told) it’s more of a get you within visual range of the aircraft carrier at the end of the mission type thing. Thats one reason the newest high end guided air launched systems mostly have an intelligent seeker for terminal guidance. |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By bikedamon: They should put it on tour and charge money for "selfies with a captured Russian T-90" and use the money to help fund the war. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By bikedamon: Originally Posted By Chaingun: Originally Posted By 4xGM300m: More pictures: https://i.imgur.com/XZnKvzK.jpg https://i.imgur.com/frwzA62.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4pcdN9Z.jpg https://i.imgur.com/v8Dgwro.jpg T-90A at a truck stop in Louisiana. April 2023 Any idea what the plans for it is? They should put it on tour and charge money for "selfies with a captured Russian T-90" and use the money to help fund the war. Transporting it uncovered is a big f-U to Russia. We got it and we want you to know we got it. |
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Originally Posted By fadedsun: Send it to me for…ugh..evaluation. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By fadedsun: Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Send it to me for…ugh..evaluation. Can't remember. Have they captured any T-14 Armata intact or semi-intact yet? So few of them, maybe they weren't risked? |
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There's nothing wrong with a little personal baggage, it's owning the whole luggage store that's the problem.
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Remorse is for the dead
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Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Can't remember. Have they captured any T-14 Armata intact or semi-intact yet? So few of them, maybe they weren't risked? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Originally Posted By fadedsun: Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Send it to me for…ugh..evaluation. Can't remember. Have they captured any T-14 Armata intact or semi-intact yet? So few of them, maybe they weren't risked? Not as of yet, but I'm still waiting. |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By RockNwood: Assuming all the others were actually teens. Doesn’t sound like any met in person. So who knows who all were as they represented themselves on line? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By RockNwood: Originally Posted By Prime: Originally Posted By HIPPO: https://wapo.st/3UvaNTQ Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post April 12, 2023 at 9:36 p.m. EDT Click To View Spoiler (Illustration by Lucy Naland/The Washington Post; iStock) The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic. United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people. The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals. Story continues below advertisement OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them. “He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said. A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were posted shares information on the man behind the leak, who some call “OG.” (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.” In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies. This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured. What to know about the Discord leaks His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official. “An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement. Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further. The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server. The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s. “He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said. Story continues below advertisement In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target. The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure. “I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts. “It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.” A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the contents of the files. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The member met OG about four years ago, on a different server for fans of Oxide, a popular YouTuber who streams videos about guns, body armor and military hardware. He said a group of avid members found the server too crowded and wanted a quieter place to talk about video game tactics, so they broke off into their own, small group. More like-minded Oxide fans joined the private Discord server, which came to be named “Thug Shaker Central,” and whose membership OG would effectively control as the administrator. “We all grew very close to each other, like a tightknit family,” the member said. “We depended on each other.” He said that other members, and OG especially, counseled him during bouts of depression and helped to steady him emotionally. “There was no lack of love for each other.” OG was the undisputed leader. The member described him as “strict.” He enforced a “pecking order” and expected the others to read closely the classified information he had shared. When their attention waned, he got angry. Late last year, a peeved OG fired off a message to all the members of the server. He had spent nearly an hour every day writing up “these long and drawn-out posts in which he’d often add annotations and explanations for stuff that we normal citizens would not understand,” the member said. His would-be pupils were more interested in YouTube videos about battle gear. “He got upset, and he said on multiple occasions, if you guys aren’t going to interact with them, I’m going to stop sending them.” That’s when OG changed tactics. Rather than spend his time copying documents by keyboard, he took photographs of the genuine articles and dropped them in the server. These were more vivid and arresting documents than the plain text renderings. Some featured detailed charts of battlefield conditions in Ukraine and highly classified satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities. Others sketched the potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the United States. Another featured photographs of the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the country in February, snapped from eye-level, probably by a U-2 spy plane, along with a diagram of the balloon and the surveillance technology attached to it. Story continues below advertisement OG shared several documents a week, beginning late last year. Posting pictures to the server took less time. But it also exposed OG to greater risk. In the background of some images, they could see items and furniture that they recognized from the room where OG spoke to them via video on the Discord channel — the kind of clues that could prove useful for federal investigators. The dramatic and yet nonchalant presentation also reminded the group that OG could lay his hands on some of the most closely guarded intelligence in the U.S. government. “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member said. “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.” In a sense, OG had created a virtual mirror image of the secretive facility where he spent his working hours. Inside the Discord server, he was the ultimate arbiter of secrecy, and he allowed his companions to read truths that “normal citizens” could not. A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the online community. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The photographs of printed secret documents now seen by millions may offer clues to the federal agents searching for OG. Reality Winner, who leaked secret National Security Agency documents to the news website the Intercept in 2017, was compromised by secret markings on printouts that helped narrow the search. OG’s documents look to have been printed on ordinary paper and were creased after having been folded in four. Sometimes, the photographs OG took of the documents appeared to have been taken over a bed. Items such as Gorilla Glue, a scope manual and nail clippers appeared in the margins. Other previously unreported images reviewed by The Post showed printed documents lying on top of a glowing red keyboard. The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine. At least one of the documents appeared to have been printed from Intellipedia, a data-sharing system that intelligence agencies use to collaborate and post reports and articles. The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests. “He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the member said. The room on the server where he posted the documents was called “bear-vs-pig,” meant to be a snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict. But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.” OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. The attack left 10 dead, all of them Black, and wounded three more. OG said federal law enforcement officials let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding, a baseless notion that the member said he believes and considers an example of OG’s penetrating insights about the depth of government corruption. OG’s group itself had a dark side. The Discord server’s eventual name, Thug Shaker Central, was a racist allusion, and signaled to members that they were free to hurl epithets and crude jokes. The young member expressed some regret for their behavior but seemed to shrug off the offensive remarks as a clumsy attempt at humor. It was not “a fascist recruiting server,” he told The Post. Story continues below advertisement One thing the members were not supposed to do was talk about the secrets OG had shared with them, including the classified documents. “Most people in the server were smart enough as to kind of realize that … they shouldn’t be posted anywhere else,” the member said. And yet, the group contained foreign citizens — including from Russia and Ukraine, the members said — a defiance of the NOFORN warning printed across the top of so many documents OG shared. The member estimated that the server hosted people from Europe, Asia and South America. “Just about every walk of life.” Of the roughly 25 active members who had access to the bear-vs-pig channel, about half were located overseas, the member said. The ones who seemed most interested in the classified material claimed to be from mostly “Eastern Bloc and those post-Soviet countries,” he said. “The Ukrainians had interest as well,” which the member chalked up to interest in the war ravaging their homeland. For years, U.S. counterintelligence officials have eyed gaming platforms as a magnet for spies. Russian intelligence operatives have been suspected of befriending gamers who they believe work for intelligence agencies and encouraging them to divulge classified information, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. It’s not clear whether any of those efforts have been successful. But if foreign operatives finagled an invitation to OG’s server, they would have been free to view the documents and make copies of them, as some members did. The server sprouts a leak All winter, OG uploaded documents to the server. No one talked about sharing them elsewhere. Then, unbeknown to the group, on Feb. 28, another teenage user from the Thug Shaker Central server began posting several dozen photographs showing classified documents on another Discord server affiliated with the YouTuber “wow_mao.” Some of the documents offered detailed assessments of Ukraine’s defense capabilities and showed how far U.S. intelligence could see into Russia’s military command. On March 4, 10 documents appeared on “Minecraft Earth Map,” a Discord server focused on the popular video game. A user operating the account that posted the smaller tranche of images told The Post they obtained them on wow_mao. Secret and top-secret documents were now available to thousands of Discord users, but the leak wouldn’t come to the attention of U.S. authorities for another month. Meanwhile, OG stopped sharing images in the middle of March. On April 5, classified documents assessing the war in Ukraine were posted on Russian Telegram channels and the message board platform 4chan, and began migrating to Twitter. One image, showing a March 1 Ukraine status update, had been crudely doctored to inflate the number of Ukrainian casualties and downplay those on the Russian side. The next day, shortly before the New York Times first reported on the leak, OG came into the server “frantic, which is unusual for him,” the member said. “He said something had happened, and he prayed to God that this event would not happen. … But now it’s in God’s hands.” Story continues below advertisement For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said. “I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest,” he said, resisting comparisons to Edward Snowden, who shared classified documents about government surveillance with journalists. Remarkably, the member said he has been in touch with OG in the past few days, even as an FBI manhunt is underway and the Pentagon launches its own inquiry into the leaks. After shuttering the Thug Shaker Central server, OG moved the community to another server to communicate with his online family. He “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do,” the member said. “He’s fully aware of what’s happening and what the consequences may be. He’s just not sure on how to go about solving this situation. … He seems pretty distraught about it.” In his final message to his companions, OG admonished them to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” the member said. That included any copies of the classified documents OG had shared. When it dawned on them that OG was in grave peril and intended to disappear, the members of Thug Shaker Central “full-on sobbed and cried,” the young member said. “It is like losing a family member.” In hours of interviews, he continued to express admiration and loyalty to a man who may have endangered his young followers by allowing them to see and possess classified information, exposing them to potential federal crimes. “I figured he would not be putting us in any sort of harm’s way,” the member said. The exposure of the documents has severed friendships and cut him off from the man who buoyed his confidence and made him feel safe. The member said that the stress of the loss, coupled with the enormity of the leaks, has left him worried and sleepless. Now he says he believes that the world should see the secrets OG passed along to a tiny group. He argued that the public deserves to know how intelligence agencies spend their tax dollars, and was particularly outraged that the documents show U.S. surveillance of foreign allies. But what the young man regarded as a revelation will come as no surprise to the countries whose officials the U.S. has been monitoring for decades. While rarely discussed, and embarrassing for Washington when exposed, it’s widely understood that the U.S. intelligence community monitors many friendly governments, just as foreign allies try to do the same. Story continues below advertisement Thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media. Despite what his young followers thought, OG would have had no special knowledge compared with his peers. He possessed no special power to predict events. Rather, he appears to have persuaded some highly impressionable teenagers that he’s a modern-day gamer meets Jason Bourne. The member said he’s confident the authorities will find OG. But when they do, he won’t be charged. Instead, he believes, OG will be imprisoned without due process at Guantánamo Bay or disappeared to a “black site,” if he’s not “assassinated” for what he knows. The member, as well as the OG follower who corroborated his account, found no fault in their leader’s actions and instead said they blame the teen who posted the documents on the wow_mao server for wrecking their community. “Maybe we should have had better opsec,” the member said, harnessing the jargon of military and intelligence personnel for “operations security.” He insisted said he will not divulge OG’s identity or location to law enforcement until he is captured or can flee the United States. “I think I might be detained eventually. … I think there might be a short investigation on how I knew this guy and they’ll try to get something out of me. They might try to threaten me with prison time if I don’t reveal their identity.” To date, no federal law enforcement officials have contacted the young group member. Asked why he was prepared to help OG even at the risk of his own freedom, the young man replied without hesitation: “He was my best friend.” Wow. Great read and very believable. At least he impressed some kids on the internet. Assuming all the others were actually teens. Doesn’t sound like any met in person. So who knows who all were as they represented themselves on line? Real question is how may Fed Boi's and from what agencys in that Discord group? |
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There's nothing wrong with a little personal baggage, it's owning the whole luggage store that's the problem.
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Originally Posted By HIPPO: dude was probably on orders or detailed to support another mission set/agency x since he was at Bragg. Dude was in an intel unit based out of Mass. Not totally shocking. This was self-inflicted damage, not done by a FIS. Seems like the FIS piece comes in later with the doctored versions of the materials that were subsequently propagated. View Quote Agree, just…don’t know why this stuff is floating past a braggart like that. And I’m fundamentally concerned about allowing guys that young access to information. Young men are the backbone of the service, god bless them. But the same immaturity that we count on to get them to move to the sound of the guns sometimes is a liability sometimes. He isn’t be the first young man (or person of any age, but disproportionately young) that played with TS material to impress girls or boys. For this work I want someone middle aged, relatively free of insecurities, with a spouse or proven track record of acquiring sex or the respect of peers without having to expose the nations secrets. |
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"the science" /duh si-ens/ noun: progressive postmodern religious dogma not based in tested hypothesis or facts used to advance an authoritative political ideology
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Originally Posted By ITCHY-FINGER: Maybe animosity. Certainly some nervousness. Just before Xiden got elected, Ukraine named him as an official suspect in one of their corruption probes, I think involving Burisma, Hunter, etc. That all disappeared but if everything every got out, it would be hard to get re-elected in 24. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By ITCHY-FINGER: Originally Posted By RockNwood: Exactly my thought too. I do not trust Biden to NOT screw this up for Ukraine. He has animosity toward Ukraine. Maybe animosity. Certainly some nervousness. Just before Xiden got elected, Ukraine named him as an official suspect in one of their corruption probes, I think involving Burisma, Hunter, etc. That all disappeared but if everything every got out, it would be hard to get re-elected in 24. Exactly. The dummies crying 10% ignore the fact that the Ukraine govt was investigating the corruption in Burisma (Hunter) and it was Biden that threatened them with stopping $1b of aid. Biden never got money from Ukraine govt—he was using US aid as a bludgeon AGAINST Ukraine. He Is reluctantly allowing enough aid to trickle through to look like he is helping without giving Ukraine what it needs to win relatively quickly. |
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Deplorable fan of liberty
“I don’t need a ride, I need more ammunition.” |
Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Real question is how may Fed Boi's and from what agencys in that Discord group? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Originally Posted By RockNwood: Originally Posted By Prime: Originally Posted By HIPPO: https://wapo.st/3UvaNTQ Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post April 12, 2023 at 9:36 p.m. EDT Click To View Spoiler (Illustration by Lucy Naland/The Washington Post; iStock) The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic. United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people. The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals. Story continues below advertisement OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them. “He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said. A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were posted shares information on the man behind the leak, who some call “OG.” (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.” In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies. This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured. What to know about the Discord leaks His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official. “An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement. Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further. The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server. The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s. “He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said. Story continues below advertisement In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target. The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure. “I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts. “It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.” A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the contents of the files. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The member met OG about four years ago, on a different server for fans of Oxide, a popular YouTuber who streams videos about guns, body armor and military hardware. He said a group of avid members found the server too crowded and wanted a quieter place to talk about video game tactics, so they broke off into their own, small group. More like-minded Oxide fans joined the private Discord server, which came to be named “Thug Shaker Central,” and whose membership OG would effectively control as the administrator. “We all grew very close to each other, like a tightknit family,” the member said. “We depended on each other.” He said that other members, and OG especially, counseled him during bouts of depression and helped to steady him emotionally. “There was no lack of love for each other.” OG was the undisputed leader. The member described him as “strict.” He enforced a “pecking order” and expected the others to read closely the classified information he had shared. When their attention waned, he got angry. Late last year, a peeved OG fired off a message to all the members of the server. He had spent nearly an hour every day writing up “these long and drawn-out posts in which he’d often add annotations and explanations for stuff that we normal citizens would not understand,” the member said. His would-be pupils were more interested in YouTube videos about battle gear. “He got upset, and he said on multiple occasions, if you guys aren’t going to interact with them, I’m going to stop sending them.” That’s when OG changed tactics. Rather than spend his time copying documents by keyboard, he took photographs of the genuine articles and dropped them in the server. These were more vivid and arresting documents than the plain text renderings. Some featured detailed charts of battlefield conditions in Ukraine and highly classified satellite images of the aftermath of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities. Others sketched the potential trajectory of North Korean ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach the United States. Another featured photographs of the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the country in February, snapped from eye-level, probably by a U-2 spy plane, along with a diagram of the balloon and the surveillance technology attached to it. Story continues below advertisement OG shared several documents a week, beginning late last year. Posting pictures to the server took less time. But it also exposed OG to greater risk. In the background of some images, they could see items and furniture that they recognized from the room where OG spoke to them via video on the Discord channel — the kind of clues that could prove useful for federal investigators. The dramatic and yet nonchalant presentation also reminded the group that OG could lay his hands on some of the most closely guarded intelligence in the U.S. government. “If you had classified documents, you’d want to flex at least a little bit, like hey, I’m the big guy,” the member said. “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.” In a sense, OG had created a virtual mirror image of the secretive facility where he spent his working hours. Inside the Discord server, he was the ultimate arbiter of secrecy, and he allowed his companions to read truths that “normal citizens” could not. A member of the Discord group where classified intelligence documents were leaked describes the online community. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post) The photographs of printed secret documents now seen by millions may offer clues to the federal agents searching for OG. Reality Winner, who leaked secret National Security Agency documents to the news website the Intercept in 2017, was compromised by secret markings on printouts that helped narrow the search. OG’s documents look to have been printed on ordinary paper and were creased after having been folded in four. Sometimes, the photographs OG took of the documents appeared to have been taken over a bed. Items such as Gorilla Glue, a scope manual and nail clippers appeared in the margins. Other previously unreported images reviewed by The Post showed printed documents lying on top of a glowing red keyboard. The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine. At least one of the documents appeared to have been printed from Intellipedia, a data-sharing system that intelligence agencies use to collaborate and post reports and articles. The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests. “He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative,” the member said. The room on the server where he posted the documents was called “bear-vs-pig,” meant to be a snide jab at Russia and Ukraine, and an indication that OG took no sides in the conflict. But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.” OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public. He claimed, according to the members, that the government knew in advance that a white supremacist intended to go on a shooting rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. The attack left 10 dead, all of them Black, and wounded three more. OG said federal law enforcement officials let the killings proceed so they could argue for increased funding, a baseless notion that the member said he believes and considers an example of OG’s penetrating insights about the depth of government corruption. OG’s group itself had a dark side. The Discord server’s eventual name, Thug Shaker Central, was a racist allusion, and signaled to members that they were free to hurl epithets and crude jokes. The young member expressed some regret for their behavior but seemed to shrug off the offensive remarks as a clumsy attempt at humor. It was not “a fascist recruiting server,” he told The Post. Story continues below advertisement One thing the members were not supposed to do was talk about the secrets OG had shared with them, including the classified documents. “Most people in the server were smart enough as to kind of realize that … they shouldn’t be posted anywhere else,” the member said. And yet, the group contained foreign citizens — including from Russia and Ukraine, the members said — a defiance of the NOFORN warning printed across the top of so many documents OG shared. The member estimated that the server hosted people from Europe, Asia and South America. “Just about every walk of life.” Of the roughly 25 active members who had access to the bear-vs-pig channel, about half were located overseas, the member said. The ones who seemed most interested in the classified material claimed to be from mostly “Eastern Bloc and those post-Soviet countries,” he said. “The Ukrainians had interest as well,” which the member chalked up to interest in the war ravaging their homeland. For years, U.S. counterintelligence officials have eyed gaming platforms as a magnet for spies. Russian intelligence operatives have been suspected of befriending gamers who they believe work for intelligence agencies and encouraging them to divulge classified information, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. It’s not clear whether any of those efforts have been successful. But if foreign operatives finagled an invitation to OG’s server, they would have been free to view the documents and make copies of them, as some members did. The server sprouts a leak All winter, OG uploaded documents to the server. No one talked about sharing them elsewhere. Then, unbeknown to the group, on Feb. 28, another teenage user from the Thug Shaker Central server began posting several dozen photographs showing classified documents on another Discord server affiliated with the YouTuber “wow_mao.” Some of the documents offered detailed assessments of Ukraine’s defense capabilities and showed how far U.S. intelligence could see into Russia’s military command. On March 4, 10 documents appeared on “Minecraft Earth Map,” a Discord server focused on the popular video game. A user operating the account that posted the smaller tranche of images told The Post they obtained them on wow_mao. Secret and top-secret documents were now available to thousands of Discord users, but the leak wouldn’t come to the attention of U.S. authorities for another month. Meanwhile, OG stopped sharing images in the middle of March. On April 5, classified documents assessing the war in Ukraine were posted on Russian Telegram channels and the message board platform 4chan, and began migrating to Twitter. One image, showing a March 1 Ukraine status update, had been crudely doctored to inflate the number of Ukrainian casualties and downplay those on the Russian side. The next day, shortly before the New York Times first reported on the leak, OG came into the server “frantic, which is unusual for him,” the member said. “He said something had happened, and he prayed to God that this event would not happen. … But now it’s in God’s hands.” Story continues below advertisement For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said. “I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest,” he said, resisting comparisons to Edward Snowden, who shared classified documents about government surveillance with journalists. Remarkably, the member said he has been in touch with OG in the past few days, even as an FBI manhunt is underway and the Pentagon launches its own inquiry into the leaks. After shuttering the Thug Shaker Central server, OG moved the community to another server to communicate with his online family. He “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do,” the member said. “He’s fully aware of what’s happening and what the consequences may be. He’s just not sure on how to go about solving this situation. … He seems pretty distraught about it.” In his final message to his companions, OG admonished them to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him,” the member said. That included any copies of the classified documents OG had shared. When it dawned on them that OG was in grave peril and intended to disappear, the members of Thug Shaker Central “full-on sobbed and cried,” the young member said. “It is like losing a family member.” In hours of interviews, he continued to express admiration and loyalty to a man who may have endangered his young followers by allowing them to see and possess classified information, exposing them to potential federal crimes. “I figured he would not be putting us in any sort of harm’s way,” the member said. The exposure of the documents has severed friendships and cut him off from the man who buoyed his confidence and made him feel safe. The member said that the stress of the loss, coupled with the enormity of the leaks, has left him worried and sleepless. Now he says he believes that the world should see the secrets OG passed along to a tiny group. He argued that the public deserves to know how intelligence agencies spend their tax dollars, and was particularly outraged that the documents show U.S. surveillance of foreign allies. But what the young man regarded as a revelation will come as no surprise to the countries whose officials the U.S. has been monitoring for decades. While rarely discussed, and embarrassing for Washington when exposed, it’s widely understood that the U.S. intelligence community monitors many friendly governments, just as foreign allies try to do the same. Story continues below advertisement Thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media. Despite what his young followers thought, OG would have had no special knowledge compared with his peers. He possessed no special power to predict events. Rather, he appears to have persuaded some highly impressionable teenagers that he’s a modern-day gamer meets Jason Bourne. The member said he’s confident the authorities will find OG. But when they do, he won’t be charged. Instead, he believes, OG will be imprisoned without due process at Guantánamo Bay or disappeared to a “black site,” if he’s not “assassinated” for what he knows. The member, as well as the OG follower who corroborated his account, found no fault in their leader’s actions and instead said they blame the teen who posted the documents on the wow_mao server for wrecking their community. “Maybe we should have had better opsec,” the member said, harnessing the jargon of military and intelligence personnel for “operations security.” He insisted said he will not divulge OG’s identity or location to law enforcement until he is captured or can flee the United States. “I think I might be detained eventually. … I think there might be a short investigation on how I knew this guy and they’ll try to get something out of me. They might try to threaten me with prison time if I don’t reveal their identity.” To date, no federal law enforcement officials have contacted the young group member. Asked why he was prepared to help OG even at the risk of his own freedom, the young man replied without hesitation: “He was my best friend.” Wow. Great read and very believable. At least he impressed some kids on the internet. Assuming all the others were actually teens. Doesn’t sound like any met in person. So who knows who all were as they represented themselves on line? Real question is how may Fed Boi's and from what agencys in that Discord group? lol, my thoughts exactly. |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By burnka871: A T-14 has never been photographed in Ukraine View Quote I saw comments from an AFV engineer that the most recent examples of Armata still have what professionals recognize as details common to prototypical vehicles and it’s his expectation that they are years from working examples even without sanctions. |
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Originally Posted By Ryan_Scott: I can’t see how that information should have ever been so widely available that a national guard enlisted airman at Cape Cod or wherever should have had access to it. GWOT made us sloppy. The Taliban, ISIS and Islamic fundamentalists in general don’t have a strong HUMINT program. The radical level of sharing that worked there is reckless against Russia, who is sloppy now but has a history of outplaying us in the Great Game. It’s suicidal against China, who has us penetrated thoroughly. ETA: A lot of the info we saw released should never have been put in any slide deck. Locations of SAMs? The sort of Americans who need to look at that don’t need it in a slide deck for a briefing. They need to map it for analysis and then report if it’s effective to the people who need to know if we should send more, or train more, but have no need to see the locations. View Quote Agreed. For something like this to happen requires a whole lot of people to become sloppy. |
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"you ought to listen to our resident Swede, he's genetically superior." -Bohr_Adam
"They are superior beings those Swedes." -RockHard13F "Everyone knows that geese are notorious liars ... and whores." -DK-Prof |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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In Russia, the construction of 324 ships has stalled due to sanctions, - Dmitry Stoyanov, deputy general director of the profile research institute "Kurs". “Today, more than 300 ships are being built, laid down, or under construction in Russia. Such an unprecedented figure is due to the fact that some ships have been out of schedule since last year due to non-delivery of equipment by "unfriendly states," Stoyanov said at a forum in Arkhangelsk. Stoyanov complained that shipbuilders do not have money to purchase equipment to replace the one that fell under the sanctions. View Quote |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1646552685846429697
This T-72B Obr.2022 is the champion of the ERA. Even his ass is covered by K-1 and K-5 ERA modules. Parade rehearsal in Ekaterinburg. View Quote |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest: https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1646552685846429697 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ftm667TWwAEVBXy?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ftm68A4WcAIDdXh?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ftm67YbWAAAEnM9?format=jpg&name=medium View Quote |
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nothing of value here
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Originally Posted By m35ben: https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/390973/SmartSelect_20230407_141130_Photo_Editor-2773990.jpg View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By m35ben: https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/390973/SmartSelect_20230407_141130_Photo_Editor-2773990.jpg They put that shit on everything over there. |
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By RockNwood: Exactly. The dummies crying 10% ignore the fact that the Ukraine govt was investigating the corruption in Burisma (Hunter) and it was Biden that threatened them with stopping $1b of aid. Biden never got money from Ukraine govt—he was using US aid as a bludgeon AGAINST Ukraine. He Is reluctantly allowing enough aid to trickle through to look like he is helping without giving Ukraine what it needs to win relatively quickly. View Quote Biden has been off the Russian payroll for a while, I suspect he is slow rolling aid for other reasons. Personally I think he’s the same guy that was afraid to raid Abottabad and he’s afraid to smack the bear too hard. He’s mostly riding the train the national security establishment is driving. |
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nothing of value here
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Originally Posted By Cpt_Kirks: Russians are gonna keep stepping on their dicks in the black sea. Sooner or later someone will shoot back. And NOT with shitty Russian missiles. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Cpt_Kirks: Originally Posted By Haub: That would not have been good. Saved by poor maintaining or just... I cant...
Russians are gonna keep stepping on their dicks in the black sea. Sooner or later someone will shoot back. And NOT with shitty Russian missiles. Most likely. And then suddenly the world discovers the big scary Russia doesn’t launch a nuclear barrage when one of its fighters or ships are destroyed in response to their attack. And that Russia actually stops doing dumb dangerous shit when they get justifiably whacked hard. |
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Deplorable fan of liberty
“I don’t need a ride, I need more ammunition.” |
Originally Posted By swede1986: Agreed. For something like this to happen requires a whole lot of people to become sloppy. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By swede1986: Originally Posted By Ryan_Scott: I can’t see how that information should have ever been so widely available that a national guard enlisted airman at Cape Cod or wherever should have had access to it. GWOT made us sloppy. The Taliban, ISIS and Islamic fundamentalists in general don’t have a strong HUMINT program. The radical level of sharing that worked there is reckless against Russia, who is sloppy now but has a history of outplaying us in the Great Game. It’s suicidal against China, who has us penetrated thoroughly. ETA: A lot of the info we saw released should never have been put in any slide deck. Locations of SAMs? The sort of Americans who need to look at that don’t need it in a slide deck for a briefing. They need to map it for analysis and then report if it’s effective to the people who need to know if we should send more, or train more, but have no need to see the locations. Agreed. For something like this to happen requires a whole lot of people to become sloppy. The Wall fell so we no longer had a need for serious counterintelligence. Everyone is friends now! |
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DeSantis 2024
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Originally Posted By stgdz: It's also kinda sad because it confirms that some of the leaks are legit. Especially the analysis of Ukraine army and there ability to take back ground. View Quote It could be that 24 hours after he started searching for files outside of his need to know he came under investigation. If this isn't the case, we have some serious problems with data access. |
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"If their "fair share" demands that I get nothing for my labors, that it requires me to be a victim, then "public good" be dammed."
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It would be cool if they rappel down through his roof and fly out of there with him.
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It's not stupid, it's advanced!!
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Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest:
View Quote I love Poland. Girlie men of Europe do not fear! We will be your armory. We will be your forge. Arm yourselves like men of war. |
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Deplorable fan of liberty
“I don’t need a ride, I need more ammunition.” |
Seeing some vids of a "pineapple" style (old school Mk2?) grenade being dropped from drones.
It seems to have more explosive power than other small, grenade-type ordnance being dropped. School me. thnx |
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"People, ideas, and hardware...in that order!" Col John Boyd
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Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest: It would be cool if they rappel down through his roof and fly out of there with him.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtnPA-rakAAwR_d?format=jpg&name=small
View Quote If guilty he can go hang out with RebelGrey in Federal Pound-Me-in-the-Ass prison. |
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Got my 45 on so I can rock on.
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Originally Posted By Lightning_P38: Maybe, but in Intel circles the first action you take is often not arresting them, feeding them what you want leaked can be a useful tool, and the other side will still treat the material coming in as top notch. It could be that 24 hours after he started searching for files outside of his need to know he came under investigation. If this isn't the case, we have some serious problems with data access. View Quote "Even the cursed number is classified!" DS9 Scenes - Quark tries to buy a highly classified device |
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Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest: It would be cool if they rappel down through his roof and fly out of there with him.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtnPA-rakAAwR_d?format=jpg&name=small
View Quote |
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Originally Posted By Ryan_Scott: Agree, just…don’t know why this stuff is floating past a braggart like that. And I’m fundamentally concerned about allowing guys that young access to information. Young men are the backbone of the service, god bless them. But the same immaturity that we count on to get them to move to the sound of the guns sometimes is a liability sometimes. He isn’t be the first young man (or person of any age, but disproportionately young) that played with TS material to impress girls or boys. For this work I want someone middle aged, relatively free of insecurities, with a spouse or proven track record of acquiring sex or the respect of peers without having to expose the nations secrets. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Ryan_Scott: Originally Posted By HIPPO: dude was probably on orders or detailed to support another mission set/agency x since he was at Bragg. Dude was in an intel unit based out of Mass. Not totally shocking. This was self-inflicted damage, not done by a FIS. Seems like the FIS piece comes in later with the doctored versions of the materials that were subsequently propagated. Agree, just…don’t know why this stuff is floating past a braggart like that. And I’m fundamentally concerned about allowing guys that young access to information. Young men are the backbone of the service, god bless them. But the same immaturity that we count on to get them to move to the sound of the guns sometimes is a liability sometimes. He isn’t be the first young man (or person of any age, but disproportionately young) that played with TS material to impress girls or boys. For this work I want someone middle aged, relatively free of insecurities, with a spouse or proven track record of acquiring sex or the respect of peers without having to expose the nations secrets. I wouldn’t be surprised if he works in IT and has network admin or similar access. Very young guy and junior enlisted. Either he used a senior officer’s credentials to get access or he is in an IT support role and has it for that. I can’t believe under any other circumstances such a junior guy would have such broad access. Even corporations compartmentalize access to documents. And anything secret should be stored encrypted so that not just any IT person can peruse it. |
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Deplorable fan of liberty
“I don’t need a ride, I need more ammunition.” |
Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Can't remember. Have they captured any T-14 Armata intact or semi-intact yet? So few of them, maybe they weren't risked? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Originally Posted By fadedsun: Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Send it to me for…ugh..evaluation. Can't remember. Have they captured any T-14 Armata intact or semi-intact yet? So few of them, maybe they weren't risked? They all broke down before crossing the border into Ukraine? All 6 they have LOL |
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"Anytime a liberal mentions fairness, you can be assured they want something that belongs to someone else." Calgood
Proud member of the anti russian coalition |
Originally Posted By burnka871: A T-14 has never been photographed in Ukraine View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By burnka871: Originally Posted By LesBaer45: Can't remember. Have they captured any T-14 Armata intact or semi-intact yet? So few of them, maybe they weren't risked? A T-14 has never been photographed in Ukraine More likely they still remember the T-62 desaster when they lost a prototype to the Chinese. |
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"Anytime a liberal mentions fairness, you can be assured they want something that belongs to someone else." Calgood
Proud member of the anti russian coalition |
„From a place you will not see, comes a sound you will not hear.“
Thanks for the membership @ toaster |
Originally Posted By swede1986: Agreed. For something like this to happen requires a whole lot of people to become sloppy. View Quote |
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Originally Posted By RockNwood: I wouldn’t be surprised if he works in IT and has network admin or similar access. Very young guy and junior enlisted. Either he used a senior officer’s credentials to get access or he is in an IT support role and has it for that. I can’t believe under any other circumstances such a junior guy would have such broad access. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By RockNwood: Originally Posted By Ryan_Scott: Originally Posted By HIPPO: dude was probably on orders or detailed to support another mission set/agency x since he was at Bragg. Dude was in an intel unit based out of Mass. Not totally shocking. This was self-inflicted damage, not done by a FIS. Seems like the FIS piece comes in later with the doctored versions of the materials that were subsequently propagated. Agree, just…don’t know why this stuff is floating past a braggart like that. And I’m fundamentally concerned about allowing guys that young access to information. Young men are the backbone of the service, god bless them. But the same immaturity that we count on to get them to move to the sound of the guns sometimes is a liability sometimes. He isn’t be the first young man (or person of any age, but disproportionately young) that played with TS material to impress girls or boys. For this work I want someone middle aged, relatively free of insecurities, with a spouse or proven track record of acquiring sex or the respect of peers without having to expose the nations secrets. I wouldn’t be surprised if he works in IT and has network admin or similar access. Very young guy and junior enlisted. Either he used a senior officer’s credentials to get access or he is in an IT support role and has it for that. I can’t believe under any other circumstances such a junior guy would have such broad access. Being IT won’t get you SAP access unless you are read into the program, which wouldn’t be the case for an A1C comm weenie. It would make sense that this guy is an intel analyst and had direct access to this related to his duties. You can’t be just any swingin dick and have access to this stuff. You have to either be read in or get the stuff from someone who is. The DoD does a good job of locking down the high side electronically, however not much stops someone from printing shit out and taking it with them. That’s a big problem. And the argument that someone this green shouldn’t clearance for this stuff… I definitely think that holds water. Insurance companies wouldn’t even trust him to rent a car.. it might not be a bad idea to hold off on TS/SAP til one has a fully developed brain.. |
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Originally Posted By doc540: Seeing some vids of a "pineapple" style (old school Mk2?) grenade being dropped from drones. It seems to have more explosive power than other small, grenade-type ordnance being dropped. School me. thnx View Quote It’s probably old enough to have black powder or some other higher smoke producing explosive than others. |
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Originally Posted By 4xGM300m: Originally Posted By Abakan: More likely they still remember the T-62 desaster when they lost a prototype to the Chinese. Link to story? @4xGM300m https://www.warhistoryonline.com/cold-war/chinese-stole-soviet-tank-treasure-island.html?firefox=1 |
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"Anytime a liberal mentions fairness, you can be assured they want something that belongs to someone else." Calgood
Proud member of the anti russian coalition |
nothing of value here
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Originally Posted By doc540: Seeing some vids of a "pineapple" style (old school Mk2?) grenade being dropped from drones. It seems to have more explosive power than other small, grenade-type ordnance being dropped. School me. thnx View Quote It’s a Soviet F1 grenade. They have that same pineapple look. |
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I’d like to note all of the recent confusion and lack of updates.
Ukraine started to turn green and something happened. |
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Don't you tell me about galaxies! I walk them in the timeline.
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