“Pentagon Intelligence Documents Leaked on Social Media and Online Gaming Platforms: Impact and Investigation”

An unknown number of people have been able to access Pentagon intelligence documents posted on social media and online gaming platforms since early March. The leak, the most serious since the Wikileaks case in 2010 and the revelation of the surveillance methods of the National Security Agency (NSA) three years later, has caused friction with important US allies, such as Canada, South Korea, Israel or Egypt, due to the interception of sensitive material of those countries that are now seen out in the open. The case has also altered the plans of the Ukrainian counteroffensive to liberate the east of the country, in the hands of the Russian army. While the Justice Department’s investigation continues, Washington has two priorities: finding out the source of the leak and plugging a hole that the Pentagon has described as a “serious risk” to the country’s security.

The clues left on the internet could help to find out the origin, since they delimit the number of possible suspects. What can be seen on the Internet are photographs of printed information material, in some cases on crumpled paper, about the war in Ukraine, the Middle East and Asia. Officials and analysts believe that the use of the photographs suggests that the documents, around a hundred, were leaked and not hacked. In images posted online, the files appear stacked on top of magazines and surrounded by objects such as glue tubes, paper clips and nail clippers. The first impression is that it is a briefing material for senior officials, prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA operations center.

Some sources maintain that part of the material was already published on the Discord messaging platform in January. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was first informed on April 6—hours before the leak was revealed. The New York Times―, when some of the files started appearing on a Telegram channel related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Discord channels in which some reports were published in March focused on the computer game Minecraft and in the community of a youtuber Filipino, before spreading to 4Chan and later to Twitter and Telegram. For weeks, the leaks were greeted with jokes and memes by many users of those channels, unaware of their significance.

The traces of the leak may provide a partial or complete answer to the main questions of the researchers: who accessed the documents and published them on the Internet, and why and to what extent the damage of having disclosed them. “We don’t know who is behind this; We don’t know what the reason is,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “We don’t know what else may be out there,” he added, about whether to expect any further surprises.

The documents appear authentic and contain highly classified and sensitive information, although some appear to have been altered, such as the one relating to the casualty balance in the war in Ukraine, makeup to offer more favorable data for the Kremlin, that is, significantly lower than the standard evaluation. It is a supposedly edited message that was published last week on the Telegram messaging application, very popular in Russia.

The reports on the conflict are especially detailed, with maps, inventories of battlefields and other confidential information. Some detail the composition of the special forces in Ukraine, a hundred men that includes nationals of the US, Great Britain, France, Latvia and the Netherlands; US military intelligence penetration of the Russian military (it intercepted plans to attack Odessa and Mikolaiv in March), and the Wagner paramilitary group, which allegedly tried to covertly buy weapons from Turkey. A February 23 report confirms what defense and military analysts have been saying publicly: that the fighting in the east is a “campaign of attrition” that appears headed for stagnation.

The readings of the leak contain, however, a much more complex dimension than the simple tracing of IP servers or the delimitation of online communities. The confirmation that the United States is spying on its allies, including Ukraine, and the estimate that Russia could win the war due to the weakness of Ukraine’s air defense system are the main, and not at all reassuring, messages.

Washington’s contacts with supposedly spied on allies are also part of the damage containment strategy. The Secretary of Defense spoke on Tuesday by phone with his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jong Seop, to “cooperate with the Government [de Seúl] in relation to this matter”, reads an official statement. According to the leak, the CIA intercepted discussions of the South Korean Executive on the possible sending of military aid to Ukraine, although Seoul insists that he will maintain his policy of contributing only humanitarian aid for the moment. However, as the British Ministry of Defense warned on Twitter on Tuesday, the details specified in these publications should not be “taken literally”, as they “contain the potential for disinformation”.

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