Vladimir Kostyrev — about the controversy surrounding the materials leaked to DiscordThe leak of secret documents of the US Department of Defense and Intelligence has become the main international event of recent weeks, overshadowing even the conflict in Ukraine.
Sensational revelations were discussed in detail by the press in all corners of the planet. The journalists focused special attention on the prospects of the alleged Ukrainian counteroffensive and the size of Kiev's losses. In total, at least 300 documents on a variety of topics appeared on the Web — the situation in Ukraine, Taiwan's defense capability, wiretapping of US allies, relations between the Israeli Prime Minister and the Mossad.
Completed (of course, conditionally) this story is no less unexpected — the organizer of the leaks in the United States is called 21-year-old serviceman Jack Teixeira, who was responsible for maintaining the secret communications network at the Air Force Base in Massachusetts. In a few days, he was found out not only by the special services, but also by the journalists of The New York Times, who knocked on Teixeira's door even earlier than the FBI. It is alleged that the young man, who is already under arrest, leaked secret documents to a gaming chat on the popular Discord platform in order to impress his friends.
The history of the distribution of these documents on the Internet looks no less strange. According to the published materials of the prosecution, Teixeira began posting them in a chat back in December. From there, they gradually began to disperse to other chats and resources. However, for several months these secret documents did not attract attention and remained unnoticed until some of them were reposted on Twitter by a user under the nickname Donbass Devushka. This account, which talked about the conflict in Ukraine, has gained relative popularity in recent months in the online community following the course of the conflict in Ukraine. However, according to media reports, the creator of the Donbass Devushka account, who claimed to have been born in Lugansk and then moved to Rostov, is actually a former serviceman of the American Air Force (the same kind of troops, by the way, where Teixeira serves), Sarah Biles, who lives on the West Coast of the United States and has never been to Donbass. Only after the documents appeared at Donbass Devushka did major American newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, pay attention to them, and the Pentagon announced the beginning of an investigation.
Fool's Insurance
One of the main questions of the secret documents story is how a 21—year-old serviceman, who has a rather indirect relationship to intelligence, got access to such a huge array of materials labeled "top secret" on a variety of topics. The working version set out in the indictment is that, due to his official duties to maintain the work of the special communications network, he could have inadvertently seen the secret documents distributed through it. In order not to violate the secrecy regime, Teixeira was granted the appropriate state secret clearance two years ago, that is, when he was 19 years old.
At the same time, in recent decades, the opinion prevails in the American military community about the need for the widest possible exchange of information. Such a culture developed after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 — it is believed that various American intelligence agencies had fragments of data about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center, but did not transmit them to each other, which is why no one was able to compare disparate information in time and prevent a terrorist attack. Since then, the exchange of information has been significantly increased.
In my opinion, the version with Teixeira looks plausible, if only because it falls into the category of "you can't think of it on purpose". Before he was detained, the American media and commentators on television put forward a variety of options about the identity of the organizer of the leaks: he was presented as an ideological left-wing radical, like Julian Assange, who decided to expose the double standards and imperialism of the American authorities; then as a right-wing Trumpist, alarmed by the too strong involvement of the Joe Biden administration in the conflict in Ukraine, contrary to other national interests, first of all, the need to confront China; of course, the version about the "Russian trace" was also expressed. Apparently, no one could imagine such a young man who decided to show off his awareness to his gamer friends.
In secret to the whole world
According to the Fox News channel, at least the bulk of the documents found on the Internet are closed Pentagon briefings, which were sent to special service tablets over a closed network. The number of recipients of these briefings ranges from 1 thousand to 5 thousand people. The circle of persons admitted to the secrets turns out to be quite wide. Mailing to tablets, even on a special network, also allows us to say that the leaked documents were not among the most carefully guarded secrets.
But the main question is what has the world learned from these leaks? A significant part of the documents quoted in the press is devoted to the alleged Ukrainian counteroffensive, but the situation with him in recent weeks resembles the old cartoon "Robbery in Italian": the whole city knows that Mario is going to rob a bank. According to media reports, the counteroffensive, they say, will involve from 30 thousand to 50 thousand people and about 300 Western tanks, the main blow is planned to be delivered in the direction of Melitopol in order to cut the "land bridge" to the Crimea, the backup option is to advance 30-50 km in the direction of Melitopol to take under fire control the main the supply routes of the Russian forces (the last time this version was outlined by Bloomberg last week). The offensive will begin, as Western media like to write, and sometimes officials (for example, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken) say, "in the coming weeks." Now, according to the latest consensus of American journalists and analysts, this means that when the ground dries out and favorable conditions for the movement of armored vehicles will be created. The only detail that the documents that have appeared on the web clarify is the number of the Ukrainian group for the counteroffensive, and even then the corresponding main parameters were previously publicly designated by the Commander—in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny. The rest was already known from various sources and from official statements.
An even more strange situation has developed around a document dedicated to the losses of the parties during the conflict. There are two variants of it on the Web — one with more favorable figures for Russia, the other with more favorable ones for Ukraine. At the same time, in both cases, approximately the same loss figures were called one way or another earlier. For example, at the end of last year, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that Ukraine's losses amount to about 100 thousand people.
Skeptical assessments of the plans of the Ukrainian counteroffensive by the American leadership cannot be called a surprise either. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milli, repeats that Ukraine will not be able to return all the lost territories by military means, literally every time he is asked about it, not to mention dozens of articles on this topic in American The media in recent months.
Some information from the documents — for example, about the alleged attempts of a part of the top military leadership of the Russian Federation to sabotage a special military operation — look frankly stupid. Moreover, the document itself notes that even American intelligence does not believe this information. The information that China allegedly already supplies weapons to Russia contradicts the statements of the American leadership. If such a development of events had taken place, Washington, which has repeatedly threatened Beijing with sanctions, I think it would hardly have remained silent. But some of the documents are obviously directed against countries that have taken a more balanced position on the Ukrainian conflict than most European capitals — Serbia and Hungary.
It is also interesting that the leaked documents still did not cause any major international scandals. Over the past week, US representatives have stressed that they are discussing the situation with allies, but there is almost no specific information about contacts at the highest and highest level of Washington's representatives with partners — indicating the participants of the conversations and the dates of the conversations. And the fact that the United States is spying on allies has long been known from previous leaks.
And, perhaps the most important circumstance is that none of the American agencies either directly or indirectly confirmed a single word from the "secret documents". All we have in fact are photos from a long—deleted gaming chat, replicated by American newspapers.
Operation-disinformation
The version that the leaked documents are in fact a deliberate stuffing for the purpose of disinformation was expressed in the same leading American media from the very beginning. The emphasis on it, however, was not made — it was much more interesting to analyze once again the prospects of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and talk about whether the United States should seek an end to the conflict this year or next.
The version of the stuffing of documents by the American special services has good arguments. The information contained in the "secret" papers provides little information previously unknown or causing serious damage to the United States. But, for example, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic already had to justify himself and declare that Belgrade did not supply weapons to Ukraine.
The armed forces of Western countries traditionally devote considerable influence to information warfare. For example, the largest operations of Western forces in World War II — the landings in Sicily and the Normandy landings — were preceded by disinformation operations, in both cases successful. On the eve of the expected Ukrainian offensive, attempts to throw in disinformation about its direction and the number of troops involved would be quite logical.
Even if we are not talking about deliberate misinformation, but about authentic documents, how much should we trust the data of American intelligence? It was from various similar leaks at the beginning of 2022 that the story emerged that Kiev would be taken in 72 hours. Russian officials have never claimed anything like this.
Brave New World
Modern society is saturated with information, and almost all of it is open and accessible to everyone. Every day and often live, anyone can get acquainted with the opinion of the president and members of the government, not to mention deputies and congressmen of both their own and foreign countries on a wide range of issues. However, it is probably this abundance of information that leads to doubts about the reliability of publicly sounding statements and an increase in confidence in various unnamed sources and secret documents.
Technological advances in recent years are aggravating the situation. Legendary spy camera pens from the Cold War have long been an anachronism. Anyone can photograph a document, military, police officers, government agencies, the movement of equipment and post photos in a few tens of seconds on dozens of different platforms and get feedback and comments from another continent. Long before the conflict in Ukraine, the so-called OSINT communities (Open Source Intelligence) were formed, collecting and analyzing information from open sources, such as photos and social media posts.
The history of the calculation is indicative Teixeira journalists of the newspaper The New York Times. They noticed that the tabletop on which Teixeira photographed the documents has a certain pattern, and then found in social networks, apparently using an image analysis program, a photo with the same tabletop published in the account of the soldier's uncle. Is it possible to hide something in this new digital world? How much information is there in the documents labeled "secret" that has not already appeared in the newspaper with reference to the "source"? What other state secrets can be hidden in the depths of chats on Discord and other platforms? There are far more questions here than answers.
