118 Comments

You raise a lot of important questions but another one is: How could someone as low status as Teixeira have access to material of this breadth and quality? I discussed this with my wife who used to work in the IT department of a major think tank. Her answer was that it was because Teixeira worked in the IT department. She says that bosses have no idea how much access their IT departments have to confidential info: and that the higher the bosses the less they know, because they understand even less about IT. It seems this general rule applies to the Pentagon.

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The bosses don't know what the IT specialists can do because they don't know anything about computers, the internet, much less "IT." It's the wild west for young people with tech skills out there.

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My wife says the same thing, she was an IT director for many years. Basically if it's on a computer everyone in IT has it or can get it.

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If computers don't work for security, what then?

Back to carrier pigeons?

Why are young people so frawn to Putin? Don't they know about Russia's problems?

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Do you have any evidence that "young people" in general are drawn to Putin? *Some* young people -- virtually all of them white and I'd bet money that most of them are male -- are drawn to authoritarians and authoritarianism. But how widespread is it? And why would Jake Teixeira and his online associates know more about Russia than your average U.S. citizen?

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That's a fair question. Often I read when I can't sleep at night, so I lost the reference,but just now I googled "NeoNazi appeals to youth " as follows:

NeoNazi appeals to youth

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/youth-action-corps-led-15-year-old-neo-nazi-aryan-nations-long 

Youth Action Corps: Led by a 15-Year-Old, the Neo-Nazi Aryan Nations' Long-Defunct Youth Organization Seems To Be Coming Back to Life | Office of Justice Programs

..........+............+

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/youth-action-corps-led-15-year-old-neo-nazi-aryan-nations-long

...........+..............+

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.mdpi.com/2673-995X/1/1/3&ved=2ahUKEwjj8d6RjbT-AhUGXaQEHVR4DPEQFnoECBgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1S-ezfZJYshPn1UY_EXIS_

...........+.........+

And this:

Washington Post

www.washingtonpost.com

Russia’s young people are Putin’s biggest fans

And that is just the top of the list.

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Reads like a novel.

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There is a reason why the likes of Teixeira and others who favor Russia over U.S. interests are also usually MAGAts! Time to disinfect every place they might be in government - elected office, appointed positions, military service, etc. I will NOT characterize humans as an infestation (that was - and is - done to minorities throughout human history), but the MAGA ideology is just that and it is steadily destroying the body politic in the U.S. unless it is treated soon. Voting in elections at all levels, and accountability for crimes, are the treatment. We cannot shy away from either.

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As a side note,I see big mouth MTG is finally getting criticism from the party for her stupid remarks supporting the leak. Let's see if McCarthy has the guts to say something https://www.yahoo.com/news/not-fit-office-brennan-graham-163209202.html

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Nah, he'll never quit that "woman" according to his acceptance speech.

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Right! He won't criticise rip offf artist Santos either. or Trump of course, but instead attacks a local DA for just doing his job.

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I did not have ____ with that

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So Texeira and his crew are Putin lovers, just like TFG and his MAGAts in Congress. The House is definitely "flea" infested! As you write, the damage is done. However, both Texeira and TFG need to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to a very long prison term for stealing classified documents.

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A military court martial is appropriate for anyone in armed services who steals classified material and publishes it. Equally a prison sentence for TFG or anyone else who steals classified material. Time to take out the flea powder.

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You never forget a flea infestation once you've lived through one. Fun fact: fleas can live in dust for a year without food. How long can documents live on the internet?

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Amen to the never forget. I didn't even have the consolation of a pet. Fresh out of college, I brought them home from a long bus trip.

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I would amend Marcy Wheeler's statement: You *never* know who is in a chatroom. There are backdoors and fake identities everywhere online

The Discord participants were not tech-savvy hackers, they were immature idiots playing with matches and gasoline.

Reminds me of the old New Yorker cartoon, "On the internet, no one knows if you're a dog." (or a spy)

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Graycie is adorable!

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One has to consider the quality of the men and women attracted to today's military, including the national guard. With too few educated enough to know that 4chan and all the other bullshit conspiracy machines pumping out absurd lies and misinformation, they are vulnerable to being convinced. They can't decipher between unreality and reality. This latest leak was done to impress his male chatroom friends. Dumb and dumber. Doesn't make me feel safe at all.

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I'm beginning to wonder if the term "intelligence" is apropos.

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A lot of systemic flaws made this leak possible, and those flaws are undoubtedly still there. Why were those documents readily available to an ordinary airman, who had neither need nor authority to see them, and who had no duties relevant to the content of the documents? Did he just stumble across them?

This incident casts doubt on the whole security apparatus and protocols and discipline of document security processes all the way up the chain of command. And heads will roll.

But the risk is that, after heads roll, business as usual will resume: nothing to see here, move on. What I am trying to say here is that the egregious, stupendous, absolutely absurd nature of this incident impugns the whole system. What is going on in the USAF?

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IT hardware specialist. Bosses have no clue what someone Working on physical computer machines can get into.

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👍Is this what Snowden was trying to point out? That IT accesses everything. I knew & trusted the filmmakers Snowden worked with. Honestly, I’ve never been certain why Obama threw the book at Snowden, I just trusted Obama knew more than I do.

But NOTHING online is private--at the very least, an IT person “translates” what bosses wind up seeing.

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"[D]ocuments readily available to an ordinary airman..."

Take another look at Lucian's post, and the comments above --- he was in the IT dept., so not exactly an ordinary airman in that respect.

Information Technology, only as secure as the technologists.

"What is going on in the USAF?"

Likely the same thing going on in the other branches of our military, maybe we have just been lucky so far with those IT departments, but you make an excellent point about how

"egregious, stupendous, absolutely absurd" this episode is, as a wake up call that really shouldn't even be necessary --- the first thing on the agenda for really valuable military secrets is to monitor who has access to them really, really closely!

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Well stated, Richard.

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No one left to watch.

Except us.

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The problem is the people in charge think they know your job better than you or else they wouldn't be in charge. When the reality is they don't know the first thing about it. Then they are constantly telling you you make too much money while driving around in Maseratis and flying around in private jets.

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Ask Colin Powell? Ha!

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An excellent missive of honesty. What ? Will they answer ?

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If you remember what the congressional hearings were like with Zuckerberg, both the house and senate members clearly demonstrated that they had no clue what he did and how Facebook made its money. It was pathetic listening to all of them display their ignorance, do we really think our military, as big as it is, has a better handle on this, than our congress did. He should be tried by the military that he's part of and if convicted spend a very long time in prison, let him be an example to everyone else that there are consequences to violating the trust we place in those who serve. The military needs to better vet people that are joining its ranks. and trust needs to be earned, not given in the name of expediency. If we need to go back to the draft in order to insure a higher level of intelligence in our military, then that's what we should do. I think the youth of our country would benefit from serving in some capacity and the nation would as well.

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I was thinking exactly the same thing about those congressional hearings, and I agree about national service.

I'm wondering about Jack Teixeira, though, specifically about how conscious (intentional?) he was about what he was doing. The consequences are the same whether he was a Putin sympathizer aiming to undermine U.S. policy or a dumb schmuck trying to impress his friends, but when it comes to punishment I think motives matter. And regardless of what happens to him as an individual, this was a huge systems fail and that needs to be dealt with stat.

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Yes yes yes !

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I vote for the Draft.

All genders.

No exemptions.

"Heel Spurs" my ass.

Just cowardice.

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Yes to universal public service. Not everyone needs to do it via armed forces. Plenty to be done in national parks, schools, day care, elder care…. My mother spent her later years with a lovely man, born and raised in Brooklyn, hadn’t even been to Manhattan until he served in the CCC in northern Maine. It completely reset his life track.

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I'm already on the record here favoring a genuinely universal draft—men, women, the functional disabled. Coming of age during the peacetime draft, I saw one guy after another advance in maturity way beyond the two years they had been away. Wartime, a different discussion for another time. Dirty job and all that, results far difterent.

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Agree wholeheartedly...with some exception as to the maturity part. Being in the army provides tons of opportunities for off duty misbehavior of all sorts -- of the "letting it all hang out" variety to blow off steam and overcome stress, at least some of which is imagined. I remember being 22 and being in the Army and let's just say I wasn't exactly a tower of either maturity or virtue, although I must say I did have my good parts, some of which were attributable to what I learned in the Army. The exception with me, however, was that much of what I learned was because of my opposition to certain policies at West Point, compulsory attendance at church among them. You tend to learn a lot and grow up a lot when the Big Hammer of the Army is coming down on you on a regular basis. But then of course, I let off steam....

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Well, your history is sorta mixed up because college and military service were. Which category was the chapel dispute in? I think of it as exclusively college, but in reality it went much farther. As for general misbehavior, that's what those years are for. The service gets you beyond that. Unless you're Hunter. (And you know I don't mean Biden.)

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The West Point experience about the Chapel case was much larger than the Academy in two ways: it was a Constitutional issue that involved all three service academies. Plus the way WP behaved was exactly the way the Army behaved when confronted with any similar situation. And West Point *was* and *is* the army. WP was good training for what I ran into later in the Army: confronted with a massive heroin problem, they're answer was to shut the hell up, grab a broom, and help sweep it under the proverbial rug. Turns out WP was good at training you to "go along to get along," and its obverse.

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Your on the right track. Thanks difny.

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A nice story ♡.

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Exactly the point I was about to make re Congressional hearings. They made it so clear that they know nothing and understand even less.

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Obviously, the techology is way ahead of the command structure in the AF, and probably the entire military. When the guys at the low end know more than the guys at the top unpleasant surprises are bound to happen. I suspect, to some exent it was ever thus. The age difference between the guys with stripes on their sleeves, and the guys with stars on their shoulders, especially these days when technology changes so quickly, and 10-year-old kids know how to do things with phones and computers that the rest of us can't figure out to save our souls. Military chain of command structures are usually bogged down by inertia, and the question is how long will it take for corrective action to be implimented right down to the lowliest of the low IT personnel. It seems to me that a major overhaul of security measures needs to happen. This includes much closer scrutiny of security personnel starting with enlistment, training, job assignment, and ongoing oversight. Much easier said than done, I realize. Are there sufficient competent people of high enough rank to challenge the culture, and change it? Lucian, you know the militaryfar better than most of us writing all this stuff. Do you think it's possible to fix this overarching problem in a reasonable time frame?

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Excellent piece.

Mainstream media tried to sell the idea all members of the group were innocent gamer teens as if they actually identified each person behind a keyboard and in the room. Only a few dares venture into the bowels of the internet, 4 and 8chan. The others boast of their time spent on...Wordle. Media's feel for spy craft is right up there with their feel for domestic and geopolitics.

Same with the young Airman who used his real name/addie when he bought the server time on Discord.

"The Big Dogs at the Pentagon are in for a lot of scratching, that’s for sure." LMRAO.

They've likely spent every waking hour down in the bowels of the Pentagon's in The Tank applying flea powder and sporting flea collars wondering how the leak might affect their future employment with the MIC.

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The Big Dogs is what the CIA is referred to when the agency steps on law enforcement agencies.

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(In a whisper. The FBI steps on other federal, state and local LE agencies and departments. The CIA is known to do the same with the rest of the IC.)

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First note: I know the difficulty of a flea infestation. A sweet but clueless neighbor of mine was looking after a friend's dog and wanted to have him come up to my apartment for a play date with my pup. The ensuing flea infestation was horrific. Everything in the flat had to be laundered, more than once. I sprayed everywhere and still I woke up every morning to little black spots on the sheets. I learned that that was flea poop. Pretty. It took a few weeks to make my smallish space flea-free. I would comb my Tallulah every day and find more of the buggers on her skin. More flea baths. Took a few weeks to win the battle. So... pay close attention!

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Second note: I know that you were cautious about your description of this guy and his like as being interested in "guns... and Christianity". I would like to see going forward to see these criminals nutcases described as "self-identifying Christians". Throw a little shade on their corruption of the word 'Christian' in its literal sense.

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Lots of Christians bend their religion to serve their own interests, just as other religions do.

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E.G.: George Santos claiming to be "Jew-ish"?

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I noticed that too.

Do you write/ journal?

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Had my own experience with a flea infestation years back. The tiny black spots are flea poop, the tiny off-white spots are flea eggs. Back in the 70s, eucalyptus seed capsules or tea tree oil were recommended but I couldn't use either without a resulting migraine! I was so happy when the flea/tick/heartworm systemic pills like Trifexis came along! Work like a charm unlike the monthly liquid application to the back of my dog's neck. Plus, the smell of the cutaneous anti-flea stuff drove my dog nuts until the smell evaporated.

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Security was always heavily stressed at my old job but the people implementing those security protocols are pretty out of touch with what’s going on in the rank and file. True story…we civilians are banned from bringing and using any device that has a camera in it, for obvious reasons. We are supposed to use only a government-supplied phone for any official work-related function. Anyone caught using any other non-issued device would have that device confiscated and you would be subjected to an official investigation that would result in your being fired from your job. OK, one day my brother is at a production meeting during one of the submarine overhauls at the Shipyard. One item was a job involving the replacement of a valve system. The Chief of the Boat went on that the work hadn’t been finished to specs, but the responsible shop superintendent said that he had documentation that everything had been done satisfactorily and back and forth, back and forth. Then the Chief takes out his smartphone and pulls up a photo of the valve and waves it under the nose of the shop superintendent…total, stunned silence in the room. The sub’s captain clears his throat, stops the meeting, and everyone files out of the room except for the captain and the Chief…who wasn’t a Chief much longer…

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First things first: Thank heavens Graycie doesn't have fleas. (Tho that possibility did give Mr. T. an analogy.)

We learn that "Members of the group, according to the Journal, admired President Vladimir Putin’s regime and its war on Ukraine.” Them and Marjorie Taylor What's-her-name. Do these people not know the name Navalny?

Maybe video games are the culprit.

Who the hell knows anymore about where the seeds of crackpottery come from?

As I think about this crazy event, a dumb 21-year-old intel incel may be the perfect poster boy for those who are blasé about freedom, democracy, and good citizenship. For many, alas, those are just quaint relics from the past. For me, let's just say I am glad I'm playing the back 9.

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It was Tracy who remembered the vet visit and came up with the analogy! And Tracy took the photo of Graycie.

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