Pentagon leak appears to have been initially shared on the video game chat platform Discord

[ImNotGod]

A damaging batch of documents leaked from the Pentagon appears to have been initially shared on the video game chat platform Discord in an effort to win an argument about the war in Ukraine, according to open-source intelligence analysts.

The bizarre provenance of the leak may seem unusual but it is far from the first time that a dispute between gamers has sparked an intelligence breach, with the overlapping communities causing problems for military and gaming platforms alike.

The existence of the leaked cache was exposed as documents showing estimated casualties in the Bakhmut theatre of battle began circulating on public social networks last week.

Two versions of those documents, one of which had been crudely digitally altered to understate Russian casualties and overstate Ukrainian ones, were passed around among observers of the war. One, with the correct figures, stemmed from a leak to 4chan, the chaotic image board best known for birthing the “alt right” movement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/11/pentagon-leak-traced-to-video-game-chat-group-users-arguing-over-war-in-ukraine

[yaesu]

2. I wonder how many gamers Putin has turned? It must be expensive living in

Moms basement playing games 24/7, they could probably use a few ruble. Or maybe the gamers working at the Pentagon have more ego than love of country, who knows.

[Fullduplexxx]

3. Hey trump humpers leak all you want he is still going to go to prison

[....probably)

[GoCubsGo]

5. I'm thinking he's actually Ground Zero for the leaks.

How many of those documents spent time in those boxes at Merde a Lardo, before being turned over to Putin, the Saudis, and Xi?

[Fullduplexxx]

9. He did it either himself or he told who ever has them to do it

[edisdead]

4. Discord is not really a video game focused platform anymore.

Thats where it grew out of but it is bigger than that. And had all sorts of issues.

[Sympthsical]

8. "Video game chat platform" - LOL

Discord is just a social chat platform.

Yes, there's a lot of gamers on it. Also regular streamers, influencers, YouTube content creators, etc. etc. Pretty much anyone on the internet you can think of. I'm on several Discord servers for school (study groups, etc).

"Bizarre provenance" Yes. A social media platform with nearly a quarter of a billion users is such an out of the way place to find things! Truly the back of beyond. Next week: hard-hitting expose' on that little known website - Reddit.

New rule: Anyone writing an article involving the Internet has to actually know how the Internet is used.