Speaker 1: Ah, it's it could happen here a podcast about things
Speaker 1: falling apart, and today I'm I'm happy that we're we're
Speaker 1: recording this right now, James and Garrison, because we all
Speaker 1: just got a historic example of something falling apart. Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's Big silly rocket. We're recording this about a day
Speaker 1: or so after it exploded in mid air over the
Speaker 1: Gulf Coast, showering a turtle sanctuary with toxic waste. It's
Speaker 1: such a such a fun news.
Speaker 2: It's comically perfect.
Speaker 1: It is. Really, it is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Perfect unless it crash landed in a kitten farm. That
Speaker 2: couldn't really be Yeah perfect, No, I mean it. What's
Speaker 2: nice is that it's given me. It's made me feel
Speaker 2: young again because when I was a wee lad, I
Speaker 2: was attending a speech a debate rally in Cooper, Texas,
Speaker 2: when the last Space Shuttle to explode exploded directly over us,
Speaker 2: blowing out a bunch of the windows in the building
Speaker 2: and raining.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. It was. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I whenever whenever a Space shuttle explodes over of some sort,
Speaker 1: explodes over Texas, I get powerful nostalgia.
Speaker 2: Well, they they slipped the surly bonds of Verse to
Speaker 2: blow out the windows in a high school in Kobe, Texas.
Speaker 1: That's that's how the line goes. It makes me think
Speaker 1: of all the other things I was doing that day,
Speaker 1: which was namely playing Lord of the Rings risk in
Speaker 1: a high school gym as we as we were wont
Speaker 1: to do great game, one of the better, one of
Speaker 1: the better risk covers. What are we talking about today, friendos, buddies,
Speaker 1: well shaple pals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking.
Speaker 3: About talking about one one man having having a fun
Speaker 3: time on Discord dot com.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doing the human equivalent of being a space ship
Speaker 1: that explodes in the sky.
Speaker 3: Yes, I suppose Discord's not really a dot com. It's
Speaker 3: it's more, it's more, it's more of a more of
Speaker 3: an application now, but yes, it is what.
Speaker 2: Good Discord and that I'm permanently banned from.
Speaker 1: Please what did you do to Discord? You get from Discord?
Speaker 1: I should a video?
Speaker 4: Who's on Discord?
Speaker 1: Right? Like the worst people?
Speaker 4: All of the worst people?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We tried to start a Discord for the fundraising live show,
Speaker 2: and I tried with several emails, and every time it
Speaker 2: came back with ban evasion.
Speaker 4: Wow, that is extremely funny James.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I posted with chickens and it has never forgiven me.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, I mean, you know, those chickens didn't consent
Speaker 1: and they were technically naked, so I think it does
Speaker 1: count as revenge point.
Speaker 2: My chickens are always close. Little chicken pe.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're one of the pansies. There's a big
Speaker 1: conflict in chicken owners and James has taken aside. So
Speaker 1: we're talking this week about the discord, and this is
Speaker 1: one of those things we came into this kind of
Speaker 1: debating how much detail to go into. But when we
Speaker 1: brought this up, like this is something that gare, James
Speaker 1: and I is like a major thing in our bubble
Speaker 1: for the last like week, so we've all been following it.
Speaker 1: But when we brought this up in the work chat,
Speaker 1: Daniel had no idea that this had gone on. So
Speaker 1: we're going to start with a pretty basic overview of
Speaker 1: what what people are calling the largest leak of top
Speaker 1: secret US military and defense data since you know Snowden.
Speaker 1: So we're we're going to go over all of that
Speaker 1: right now. I think I want to start by talking
Speaker 1: about an MMO RPG called war Thunder.
Speaker 2: This is a can you break down MMO RPG for
Speaker 2: those of us.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's like World of Warcraft. It's a
Speaker 1: big video game that is play you play online with
Speaker 1: a bunch of strangers. It's a free game. You use
Speaker 1: like modern military weapons to like fight other players. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of well known for having extremely realistic renderings
Speaker 1: and sort of depictions of the functionality of modern tanks
Speaker 1: and armored transports and fighter planes and naval vessels. Right so,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's it's a game for war nerds, right,
Speaker 1: Like you utilize like radar in a way that's broadly realistic,
Speaker 1: Like if you shoot, you know, if one tank shoots
Speaker 1: in another, the tank's weaponry works the way it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be in the real world. The armor is vulnerable
Speaker 1: where it's vulnerable in the real world. And this is
Speaker 1: like the appeal to the kind of nerds who play
Speaker 1: this game, and as you might guess, from a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who really want to, like in the most
Speaker 1: realistic way possible render and fight each other with modern
Speaker 1: military vehicles. A significant number of these dudes are members
Speaker 1: of various different like defense departments, right or at least
Speaker 1: are employed in some degree of various different national military
Speaker 1: forces several different As a result, like when arguments happen,
Speaker 1: you know, with any MMORPG, if you're playing like World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft right and like something gets nerved or something
Speaker 1: isn't working as well as it's supposed to, you'll get
Speaker 1: these like massive threads in the forums where people are
Speaker 1: like arguing about how something needs to be changed or
Speaker 1: changed back, or how there's a glitch or whatever. And
Speaker 1: because war Thunder is so based in realism, when you
Speaker 1: have these arguments online, it's often like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the F fifteen shouldn't work this way, it should work
Speaker 1: this way, and people will get into arguments about that,
Speaker 1: and then someone will as happened like a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago, I think one we'll post sensitive information about
Speaker 1: the F fifteen strike Egle in order to like prove
Speaker 1: that it would function the way that they are arguing
Speaker 1: it should function in this forum debate. That happened earlier
Speaker 1: this year, and I think with the F fifteen, it
Speaker 1: wasn't technically top secret information. It was information that US
Speaker 1: citizens were allowed to have but not allowed to post
Speaker 1: online because that's a violation of something called ear which
Speaker 1: is a thing that governs the export essentially of military
Speaker 1: information and technology. But on another situation, I think, like
Speaker 1: a year or so ago information of it. I believe
Speaker 1: the F twenty two was posted that was extremely sensitive,
Speaker 1: that was like top secret. And these are again like
Speaker 1: some dude who's got some sort of military job and
Speaker 1: has a clearance and thinks that the right way to
Speaker 1: use it is arguing about the video game War Thunder.
Speaker 1: These are not just Americans. I want to be clear
Speaker 1: about that. In July of twenty twenty one, there was
Speaker 1: a player arguing about a Challenger two tank who claimed
Speaker 1: to have been a former tank commander with the British Army,
Speaker 1: and he shared information from the Army Equipment Support publication.
Speaker 1: The information had been labeled unclassified, but it was actually classified.
Speaker 1: And other lakes has been a little more gall A
Speaker 1: French Army soldier leaked information on the Clerk main battle
Speaker 1: tank that was top secret, and a Chinese user leaked
Speaker 1: capabilities of the Chinese Armies DTC ten one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five millimeters anti tank round that should not have
Speaker 1: been leaked. So this shit keeps happening in war Thunder.
Speaker 1: It's like a joke like the war th Under account
Speaker 1: when these discord leaks happened a week or so ago,
Speaker 1: like joked about it. But like the thing that the
Speaker 1: game is known for, Yeah, is these like different people
Speaker 1: in different national defense apparati can't stop themselves from like
Speaker 1: leaking stop secret info about vehicles.
Speaker 2: It's very funny. It gets the only reason I know
Speaker 2: why war th Under exists. I think it's the only
Speaker 2: reason why we know a decent amount of what like
Speaker 2: by we here and meaning that could like I guess
Speaker 2: Western militries no, which of course we are all members of.
Speaker 2: No about the Russian main battle tanks is from war
Speaker 2: th Under leaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very funny.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you have to assume I would be surprised
Speaker 5: if no one had tried just like having you know,
Speaker 5: an agent from a national security agency in uh oh,
Speaker 5: for sure they're trying to like be like trying to
Speaker 5: like provoke arguments about Chinese tanks or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'd be shocked if that hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like the overlap between like people who might play
Speaker 2: warth Under anyway and people who might work for a
Speaker 2: national security agency, like those Van diagrams are.
Speaker 1: A circle, yeah, exactly, So it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where this happens a bunch on war thunder, but it's
Speaker 1: just kind of something that people joke about because these
Speaker 1: leaks like they're meaningful, I guess to like militaries care
Speaker 1: about them, but like you sitting at home, you hear like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: details of like the couple of construction of the new
Speaker 1: abrams like models as leak. That's not like the same
Speaker 1: as I don't know, Chelsea Manning leaking information about like
Speaker 1: war crimes by the US military in Iraq, or Edward
Speaker 1: Snowden leaking info about like the NSSA, Like it's a
Speaker 1: little less relevant to most. What we started seeing a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago is documents top secret labeled documents,
Speaker 1: like actual pictures of straight up unredacted top secret US
Speaker 1: Defense Department documents just kind of filtering out over various discords,
Speaker 1: and they were kind of appearing in random little bits.
Speaker 1: You'd see one that was like an update on the
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine that was kind of showing concerns that
Speaker 1: the US military had about the ability of the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: military to carry out the counter offensive that everybody's expecting
Speaker 1: in the near future. You had like casualty estimates from
Speaker 1: the US military. Another document that was leak had like
Speaker 1: a bunch of information inside the Russian General staff. So
Speaker 1: these are number one, very serious leaks, right you're talking about,
Speaker 1: especially with the leaks from inside Putin's kind of inner circle.
Speaker 1: You're talking about leaks that could potentially expose a major
Speaker 1: US source inside the Russian government. And you're also talking
Speaker 1: about leaks that just kind of reveal the degree to
Speaker 1: which the CIA has an enormous amount of information apparently
Speaker 1: at least about what's happening inside the Kremlin. You know.
Speaker 1: So these are very significant leaks, but they didn't appear.
Speaker 1: They weren't being like you know, kind of filtered out
Speaker 1: and released by an agency like Wiki leaks, They weren't
Speaker 1: being sent to journalists. They were just kind of showing
Speaker 1: up in these you know, Discord is basically a series
Speaker 1: of chat rooms, and they were just kind of showing
Speaker 1: up in different discords. So this is, you know, a mystery,
Speaker 1: and it's the kind of mystery that like a certain
Speaker 1: kind of person who is extremely online is not going
Speaker 1: to be able to get out of their head and
Speaker 1: is going to kind of try to trace back to
Speaker 1: its origin and in the case of this specific mystery.
Speaker 1: The nerd who could not get it out of their
Speaker 1: head and decided to trace it back to its origin
Speaker 1: was my former boss at Bellingcat, Eric Tohler. Eric is
Speaker 1: a very nice guy, probably the most talented and skilled
Speaker 1: researcher that I've ever met in my life. And you know,
Speaker 1: Eric started seeing these, like everyone else, these top secret documents,
Speaker 1: and was like, where the fuck are these coming from?
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: It's become extremely controversial among a certain set of people
Speaker 1: in the day since. But when this kind of started,
Speaker 1: Number one, you can't really deny there was an intense
Speaker 1: public interest in figuring out what the origin point of
Speaker 1: these was, because that was the only way to figure
Speaker 1: out are the these actual leaks. When you see something
Speaker 1: that's just like listed as a top secret document randomly
Speaker 1: on the internet, if you call up the US government
Speaker 1: and you say, hey, is this real top secret in
Speaker 1: They're not going to say yes, right Like, you don't
Speaker 1: get that response from them, I mean.
Speaker 3: And especially right now with all of like the AI
Speaker 3: chat generation tools, generating fake documents is one of the
Speaker 3: main things people are doing for disinfo. Generating like fake
Speaker 3: soce fake documents. Of course, you can like edit things
Speaker 3: the further to like make them seem more realistic. But yes,
Speaker 3: someone who was extremely curious is going to wonder if
Speaker 3: this is actually like a real thing or if this
Speaker 3: is just some like bullshit prank or something.
Speaker 1: And there were edits of these documents did also go violin.
Speaker 1: In fact, Tucker Carlson, one of the original documents shows
Speaker 1: kind of US estimates for killed in action on Ukraine's
Speaker 1: on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side in
Speaker 1: the war. Obviously, it showed more Russian casualties than Ukrainian casualties,
Speaker 1: which is consistent with all previous reporting, but the edit
Speaker 1: of it showed something like many times as many Ukrainian
Speaker 1: dead as Russian dead, which is, you know, something that
Speaker 1: was valuable for the people who are trying to argue that,
Speaker 1: like this war is unwinnable on behalf of the Ukrainians.
Speaker 1: Guys like Tucker Carlson, who covered the leaks on his
Speaker 1: show and knowingly used the fake edit of the league,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I have to assume it was knowingly
Speaker 1: because it had been very well exposed by that point.
Speaker 1: So there's really no other explanation I think. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the fact that there were edits of these documents that
Speaker 1: were not legitimate going around, it's just kind of part
Speaker 1: of why there was a legitimate public interest in trying
Speaker 1: to figure out where the fuck are these things coming from.
Speaker 1: Eric is again an extremely good researcher, and through a
Speaker 1: mix of open source intelligence and eventually just kind of
Speaker 1: like calling up people and talking to them, he found
Speaker 1: what appeared to be the source of these leaks, which
Speaker 1: was an invitation only clubhouse on discord of like thirty
Speaker 1: ish people, most of whom were teenagers. Over time, it
Speaker 1: kind of became clear that this group was a bunch
Speaker 1: of kind of young people who had gotten together during
Speaker 1: the pandemic to talk about, you know, games. These guys
Speaker 1: are all gamers. Most of them were like kids in
Speaker 1: high school. They kind of were cut off from their friends,
Speaker 1: so they wanted a place to be social. They would
Speaker 1: share memes, including like extremely racist, you know, borderline Nazi shit.
Speaker 1: They would like watch movies over and like chat over
Speaker 1: kind of the voice app. They were all what you
Speaker 1: call trad cats, which is like basically weirdo Catholic fundamentalists,
Speaker 1: like I think a lot of them deny Vatican two,
Speaker 1: that sort of shit. It's like a whole thing. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were that at least, so there were
Speaker 1: a lot of like praying in anyway, a bunch of weirdos.
Speaker 1: And the head of this group of weirdos was the
Speaker 1: oldest of them, a guy who was known on like
Speaker 1: in the discord as og and Og. He's a was
Speaker 1: you know, in the Land of the teenagers, the person
Speaker 1: in their early twenties who can buy an AR fifteen
Speaker 1: is king. And so this guy is in his early twenties.
Speaker 1: He's in the military, which he talks about. He posts
Speaker 1: videos of him like shooting guns and like you know,
Speaker 1: saying racial slurs and like signposting to these like you know,
Speaker 1: weird memes and stuff that they're all into, which to
Speaker 1: them like makes him seem extremely cool. Right. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things when you kind of read the different
Speaker 1: coverage of this, it's there's a little bit of like
Speaker 1: weird culty stuff going on. I don't know if I'd
Speaker 1: say that it was a cult in more than just like.
Speaker 4: In every discord server is a cult exactly.
Speaker 1: The insular online communities like this very often reproduce aspects
Speaker 1: of cult dynamics.
Speaker 6: Right, Hey, everybody, Robert here.
Speaker 1: We had a little audio error obviously in the recording.
Speaker 1: I wanted to clarify this section because it was kind
Speaker 1: of garbled. The name of the discord server they were
Speaker 1: in was thug Shaker Central, which is potentially a reference
Speaker 1: to one of a couple of things. You'll find some
Speaker 1: disagreement about this online, but it's not really relevant. That's
Speaker 1: the discord name that they've worked under. You get, like
Speaker 1: the overall point of this, it's a bunch of like
Speaker 1: kids who are fans of games. They're fans of like
Speaker 1: this this YouTuber Oxide. It's like a little group of
Speaker 1: dudes who got together via fandom and the pandemic and
Speaker 1: over the course of years developed like a shared culture.
Speaker 1: And part of the shared culture is this guy og
Speaker 1: who's the older one of them, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: keep them aware of what he thought was important about
Speaker 1: kind of global politics, and that particularly included aspects of
Speaker 1: like battlefield conditions in Ukraine, information about North Korean ballistic missiles,
Speaker 1: all of this kind of stuff that he had access
Speaker 1: to because spoilers. He was in an Air National Guard
Speaker 1: wing as an intelligence and like it was in the
Speaker 1: intelligence sector of like an air National Guard ring, and
Speaker 1: he had a security classification, right, And once this all
Speaker 1: got revealed, people are like, why the fuck is a
Speaker 1: twenty one year old because that's this guy's age have
Speaker 1: access to top secret data, And everyone who knows anything
Speaker 1: about the way our government classifies information was like, most
Speaker 1: of the people access are like twenty Yeah, fights are
Speaker 1: wars fifty year olds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it does genuinely like you know, like
Speaker 2: if we've been around war and conflict of the people
Speaker 2: who do it quite long, I think most people would
Speaker 2: be genuinely burn away that most people doing it are children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this has caused like obviously some problems before
Speaker 1: for the Defense Department, but it's also like it's kind
Speaker 1: of a thorny problem because like most of your workforce
Speaker 1: are always going to be young kids. These are spoilers
Speaker 1: shitty jobs often and that's the only one who will
Speaker 1: do a.
Speaker 6: Lot of them.
Speaker 1: And also, just like if you're fighting a war, most
Speaker 1: of the people you have that are going to be
Speaker 1: tasked with field intelligence are going to be in this age.
Speaker 1: And see, it's not at all weird that this guy
Speaker 1: had access to this shit. What is weird is that.
Speaker 1: So he starts off kind of like arguing, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes he'll bring up stuff that he knows that's from
Speaker 1: classified documents while he's arguing, you know, about the war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine or whatever with these friends online, and then
Speaker 1: he starts doing like a series of regular updates where
Speaker 1: he'll basically he'll type out details from like a bunch
Speaker 1: of different top secret documents and these massive, long and
Speaker 1: apparently kind of hard to read posts, and he'll just
Speaker 1: like post them into the chat to kind of keep
Speaker 1: his friends abreast of what he thinks is, you know, important.
Speaker 1: But he gets frustrated over time that like they're not
Speaker 1: reading this shit because it's really boring and like kind
Speaker 1: of weird to just infoed up top secret info, and
Speaker 1: they don't. These kids don't again, like these other folks
Speaker 1: are like in high school. They don't really realize where
Speaker 1: he's getting the info or what he has, but they do.
Speaker 1: The folks who do pay attention recognize over time that
Speaker 1: like stuff will happen in the real world that corresponds
Speaker 1: to something, and he posted a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: and they're like, wow, he seems to have like actually
Speaker 1: really good information. Eventually, og gets frustrated because he's not
Speaker 1: no one's paying attention to his posts, so he starts
Speaker 1: taking photos of just the top secret documents themselves and
Speaker 1: posting them in the discord day.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Now this is unbelievably illegal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really crossed a line there. I just don't
Speaker 2: believe it would be dumb by the way it was
Speaker 2: illegal before, but this is really illegal in terms of
Speaker 2: like allowing yourself making it so much easier for the
Speaker 2: consequences of you're fucking around to find you like that.
Speaker 2: He crushed the rubicon right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, and and now we have to face the
Speaker 3: hard question is this guy an illegalist king or is
Speaker 3: he more problematic? And this is this is the question
Speaker 3: that we have to actually focus on now stop because
Speaker 3: it is. It is, on one hand, pretty funny. It's
Speaker 3: exceedingly funny.
Speaker 1: There's zero argument there among people who aren't shiptheads. It's
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah, it's very.
Speaker 2: Funny that like he could be doing an illegalism with
Speaker 2: that with with zero intention of doing so.
Speaker 1: Now, I do think there's a some people have kind
Speaker 1: of errantly called him a whistleblower.
Speaker 4: I just not that's not active. That is that is
Speaker 4: not what he's doing.
Speaker 3: He's a Nazi who's posting topsycret information to impress children online.
Speaker 1: That's right, Garrison. I do think we have to. I
Speaker 1: think we have to. Let's let's dig into that a
Speaker 1: little bit, because a whistleblower is somebody who exposes information
Speaker 1: from inside of an organization for some sort of purpose. Right.
Speaker 1: They believe that what's going on is wrong. They think that,
Speaker 1: like there's they believe there's some sort of public interest
Speaker 1: in information that is being kind of siloed inside of
Speaker 1: an organization that they're a part of, and they release
Speaker 1: that organization. Right, Fundamentally, that's what a whistleblower is. This
Speaker 1: guy was telling his friends and this thirty person discord,
Speaker 1: do not post these anywhere else. This is not stuff
Speaker 1: that you're allowed to share. This is just for your
Speaker 1: eyes because we're friends. Right. He does not intend for
Speaker 1: this to get out. But here's the thing. All of
Speaker 1: his friends in this group are like dumb kids, and
Speaker 1: just like those people on war Thunder, they start getting
Speaker 1: into arguments with people outside of the discords yet and
Speaker 1: other discords discords. One of them is a fan discord
Speaker 1: for some other YouTuber. One of them is the discord
Speaker 1: is a Minecraft discord, and they get into arguments with
Speaker 1: random other users about like the war in Ukraine and stuff.
Speaker 1: And when they're having those arguments, they'll hear someone make
Speaker 1: a point and they'll think back to a top secret
Speaker 1: document that OG posted, and they'll be like, well, I
Speaker 1: know you're wrong because I've seen some CIA like satellite
Speaker 1: footage that shows that this isn't accurate. And rather than
Speaker 1: being like, well, I guess I can't prove this person
Speaker 1: wrong on the Internet without exposing my friend in our
Speaker 1: private discord to being imprisoned for the decade, they just
Speaker 1: grabbed top secret documents that he posted and they post
Speaker 1: them in these other discords, and that's how this shit
Speaker 1: breaks containment right now. It's one of those things I
Speaker 1: do want to note that, like, these are not generally speaking,
Speaker 1: super pleasant people. OG is the kind of guy who,
Speaker 1: like one of his big arguments that he tries to
Speaker 1: like make to these kids, he like claims that based
Speaker 1: on the top secret info he has, which he posts,
Speaker 1: nothing that proves this. The mass shooting in Buffalo, New
Speaker 1: York by that Nazi at that majority you know, black
Speaker 1: frequented grocery store, that that was like a government plot
Speaker 1: to institute gun control, and shit, it was a false flag.
Speaker 1: So he's not just posting good. He's like lying here too,
Speaker 1: because obviously there's no intelligence to post backing that up.
Speaker 1: He just he's just kind of trying to It's a
Speaker 1: mix of he's trying to like prove that, you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to make arguments about like what's happening, you know,
Speaker 1: in various overseas conflicts using a US intel, But he's
Speaker 1: also just like spreading different kind of conspiracy theories that
Speaker 1: he has to these kids who are by and large
Speaker 1: looking up to him. There's a couple like the Washington
Speaker 1: Post has done some really deep reporting where they talk
Speaker 1: to some of these kids where they're like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: we loved him. Like when you realize this shit had
Speaker 1: broken containment, he like called us and we were all
Speaker 1: crying because we knew he was going to go to prison.
Speaker 1: Like there they seem legitimately distraught. Yeah, there's like lines
Speaker 1: like he said something had happened and he prayed to
Speaker 1: God that this event would not happen, but now it's
Speaker 1: in God's hands. Like these are like weirdo, ashy kids
Speaker 1: I hesitate to, like condemn like the literal children too
Speaker 1: much because they're very vulnerable. This guy is like, this
Speaker 1: guy is a bad person who is deep, like in
Speaker 1: a very fucked up way, influencing this group of like
Speaker 1: thirty ish teenagers on the internet in his like weird politics.
Speaker 1: It's not great. Now, that's separate from the question of,
Speaker 1: like is there a value to these leagues, which we
Speaker 1: can talk about in a little bit. But so as
Speaker 1: we've talked about, Eric Tohler tracks down where this is happening,
Speaker 1: tracks down like the name og publishes a piece on
Speaker 1: Belling Cat. It's sort of ripped off by like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it does like every other newspaper in the world,
Speaker 1: and then additional reporting is done. Belling Cat and the
Speaker 1: New York Times team up and they eventually like track
Speaker 1: down and publish an article on who this guy is
Speaker 1: an airman named Jack Tik Sarah, And they publish an
Speaker 1: article about that about a day before this guy gets
Speaker 1: arrested by the FBI. And it's one of those things,
Speaker 1: one of the if you look at the FBI Affi David,
Speaker 1: it kind of makes clear how the FBI cracked this
Speaker 1: guy down and found him because they did so you know,
Speaker 1: using the resources they had before The Times did online.
Speaker 1: People have been going after The Times and Eric for
Speaker 1: like revealing this guy to the government, which is not
Speaker 1: the case. Basically, once it became clear what had gotten leaked,
Speaker 1: the FBI, because they had access to you know, the
Speaker 1: systems by which people utilize and get access to sensitive
Speaker 1: compartmented information, found out who had most recently, like on
Speaker 1: the days that kind of correspond to the leaks, pulled
Speaker 1: up information about that and narrowed it down to this
Speaker 1: guy Jack, and they had access to Like one of
Speaker 1: the things they did is they called Discord and talked
Speaker 1: to Discord, and Discord helped them track down where the
Speaker 1: leaks were originating from. And then because they could see
Speaker 1: that the account that had posted you know, the top
Speaker 1: secret data originally was a paid account, they were able
Speaker 1: to like provide the FBI with this guy's home, a
Speaker 1: dress and shit. This is exactly what you'd expect for
Speaker 1: the f.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the FBI has a lot of non
Speaker 3: open source means to do this type of investigation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are not doing what Eric is doing and
Speaker 1: just kind of like clicking through shit for hours and
Speaker 1: hours and hours until they figure out where it's come from,
Speaker 1: Like they have they are the FBI, they have access
Speaker 1: to other things, and.
Speaker 2: It's what you'd expect from discord too, right, Like they
Speaker 2: will comply with whatever.
Speaker 1: Yes, they absolutely these are top secret that like if
Speaker 1: they don't have a legal choice here, they're a gigantic company,
Speaker 1: they're going to comply. So this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where like one of the there's this big argument,
Speaker 1: I don't even even though it's big, but there's definitely
Speaker 1: like a weird chunk of the left that has like
Speaker 1: leaned on because the right has immediately started calling this
Speaker 1: guy a whistleblower, fucking Marjorie Taylor Green was like he's
Speaker 1: a Christian and he's a leaker trying to expose crucial
Speaker 1: details about our government, And no he wasn't. He was
Speaker 1: like trying to fucking groom some teenagers and they posted
Speaker 1: without as permission.
Speaker 3: And a lot of a lot of the more conspiracy
Speaker 3: type stuff is like trying to call out like you know,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of the more conspiracy related stuff is
Speaker 3: related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and making it
Speaker 3: seem like the US is doing things that are wrong
Speaker 3: and secretly helping the Ukrainians too much, and it kind
Speaker 3: of it it plays into this weird, weird thing that
Speaker 3: people have against the way Biden has been handling the
Speaker 3: geopolitics around the Russian invasion, and it's like it it
Speaker 3: plays into a whole bunch of right when you're talking
Speaker 3: points we've seen around Russia.
Speaker 4: You know, we've seen this.
Speaker 3: Type of stuff get talked about by Tucker Carlson quite often.
Speaker 4: There' there's a there's a whole bunch.
Speaker 3: Of like little nodes that this that that this touches on,
Speaker 3: and we even see we even see stuff like that
Speaker 3: among like you know people who are authoritarian communists, right,
Speaker 3: who are who are still pro Russia despite Russia not
Speaker 3: being a communist country, but still like being like oh there,
Speaker 3: you know, this is something he's trying to expose the
Speaker 3: things that are people are doing wrong to Russia.
Speaker 4: And it's like okay, all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and to me it's one of them. And
Speaker 1: there's also you've gotten among some chunks of this attitude
Speaker 1: that like well, you know, I don't care why he
Speaker 1: did it or like what he is in his personal life.
Speaker 1: Any leak you know of the US military machine is
Speaker 1: good and should be you know protected. And it's like,
Speaker 1: for one thing, this guy like nobody knew where these
Speaker 1: things were coming from. There was a vested need in
Speaker 1: sort of figuring out what the origin point was, to
Speaker 1: figure out if they were accurate. But for like another thing,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Man, you can argue about like what
Speaker 1: point you know, the digging, whether or not, like the
Speaker 1: it's ethical to dig this shit back to its source.
Speaker 1: I would argue that, like people also have a right
Speaker 1: to know if there's some sort of fucking like like
Speaker 1: if the documents were fake or altered in some way,
Speaker 1: there was a reason to be trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the providence of this shit. But more to the point,
Speaker 1: like I think it's good to have access to like
Speaker 1: data from inside of our military. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: broadly positive. And when I look at these data, or
Speaker 1: when I look at what's been leaked, I don't think
Speaker 1: most of it's you know, one of the concerns that's
Speaker 1: always that always exist when you're talking about a leak
Speaker 1: of data is like, is this going to expose like
Speaker 1: potentially innocent people to any kind of harm. And there
Speaker 1: is a potential for that with some of this, because
Speaker 1: some of it dealt with Ukrainian military readiness for the
Speaker 1: upcoming offensive, and like, well, like I don't really care
Speaker 1: if some guy inside the Kremlin who's like a member
Speaker 1: of the Russian General Staff and a double I don't
Speaker 1: care if that guy, like something bad happens to him.
Speaker 1: He's probably not a great dude. But I do care
Speaker 1: about like a bunch of random Ukrainian soldiers potentially getting harmed. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say, from what I can tell from this,
Speaker 1: I think the odds of that are pretty low. It
Speaker 1: looks like this has impacted kind of the timetable for
Speaker 1: the counter offensive, but I don't know that it's I
Speaker 1: haven't seen any evidence that it's exposed things in a
Speaker 1: way that's like going to cause loss of life, although
Speaker 1: it's a little bit unclears to whether that not that
Speaker 1: might happen. But also while I think it's accurate to say,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying evidence that like a lot of people's
Speaker 1: safety have been harmed by these leaks, it's also not
Speaker 1: you know, it's not anything like what Snowden did or
Speaker 1: what Manning did. Right again, Manning revealed you know, videos
Speaker 1: like the Collateral murder video, evidence of like breakdowns of
Speaker 1: order and things that I think are accurate to call
Speaker 1: war crimes that were being kind of hidden by our government.
Speaker 1: Whereas Snowden revealed intense details about an n Essay spying program,
Speaker 1: all of that's extremely relevant to the average American. Most
Speaker 1: of this is just kind of like wonky inside baseball
Speaker 1: military stuff, which again I'm not like sad that it's
Speaker 1: gotten out, but it's also not It really does seem
Speaker 1: like a bunch of shit that like a guy pulled
Speaker 1: out based on his own kind of like weird interest.
Speaker 1: It's not there's not like a strong unifying theme around them.
Speaker 1: And again, most of it's most of its shit that's
Speaker 1: not going to be interesting to the average person. One
Speaker 1: of the documents I just read an article about because like,
Speaker 1: we don't entirely know everything that was leaked right now,
Speaker 1: right there's been there's like the Post in the Time
Speaker 1: seem to have a pretty complete archive of what was leaked,
Speaker 1: but they haven't published anything because you know they're reading
Speaker 1: through it and you know, actually reporting it out. One
Speaker 1: of the articles that just came out was about the
Speaker 1: fact that the Ukrainians made some overtures to the Kurdish
Speaker 1: led self administration in in northern northeast Syria to Rojaba
Speaker 1: to the SDF in order to talk about the potential
Speaker 1: for them attacking Russian assets in elsewhere in Syria. When
Speaker 1: this has kind of gotten out over like Twitter, it's
Speaker 1: often been like described as, oh, the Ukrainians were going
Speaker 1: to team up with the Courage to attack Russia in Syria,
Speaker 1: like like this was an actual like Siria plan would
Speaker 1: actually set the document. It seems a lot less inciting
Speaker 1: than that. Basically, what happened was some folks on the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian General staff or whatever were like looking into the possibility, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, is there any way that we could kind
Speaker 1: of anything we could pay the Kurds over in Syria
Speaker 1: to carry out an attack on the Russians. And apparently
Speaker 1: they had access to somebody who claimed to be in
Speaker 1: the SDF at least, and that person was like, we
Speaker 1: might be able to do something if you can get
Speaker 1: us some anti air defenses, right, which I don't know
Speaker 1: how Ukraine could possibly ship meaningful anti air defenses to
Speaker 1: northeast Syria. It's kind of bordered on all sides. There
Speaker 1: is some stuff. If you're a walk in the region,
Speaker 1: there's some interesting stuff about this, which is that the
Speaker 1: SDF basically responded, like, we could potentially do this, we
Speaker 1: couldn't attack Russian assets that are within the borders of
Speaker 1: the self administration. Russians are acting as peacekeepers there between
Speaker 1: Turkey and you know, it's kind of desire to invade
Speaker 1: the entire region. They're not great as peacekeepers. The Armenians
Speaker 1: will tell you that Russian soldiers are not great, great givers.
Speaker 1: But the SDF didn't want to, like shit where they
Speaker 1: were eating, right, so there was some debate about where
Speaker 1: they might be able to attack. One of the things
Speaker 1: that is really interesting about this week is that apparently
Speaker 1: Ukraine like talk to Turkey about this, because obviously the
Speaker 1: Turks consider the core of the SDF the YPG to
Speaker 1: be a terrorist organization. But when Ukraine was talking to them,
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, we might basically bribe these people to
Speaker 1: carry out an attack on Russian assets elsewhere in Syria.
Speaker 1: Turkey was like, okay, well, don't do it here or
Speaker 1: here here, because that's kind of close to some our
Speaker 1: guys might like that. That party is interesting. But again,
Speaker 1: none of this matters all that much because nothing happened
Speaker 1: as far as we know in December, Zelenski was like, no,
Speaker 1: don't proceed with looking into this. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing like the US military has, like plans for
Speaker 1: what happens if we have to fight Canada. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing defense departments do. And as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, there's there's no evidence that went
Speaker 1: much for them, like a series of phone calls right which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the SDF denies ever happened. I don't
Speaker 1: know what exactly occurred. I don't know if it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to tell. Did the Ukrainians were they talking
Speaker 1: to someone who is actually a representative of the sdfs
Speaker 1: like military hierarchy, or was this like some guy that
Speaker 1: they thought was because maybe Ukraine doesn't have great context
Speaker 1: into the air like or did the US. And it's
Speaker 1: it's not kind of clear. Did the US maybe like
Speaker 1: hook them up with somebody, but it doesn't like at
Speaker 1: the at the end of the day, you can argue,
Speaker 1: as someone who follows the region, I find this kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. It's not exactly like groundbreaking, you know, in
Speaker 1: its importance, because nothing happened, no one did anything. This
Speaker 1: is like some guys in Ukraine thought about doing a
Speaker 1: thing and then decided not to, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially interesting context, but we're not talking about the manning
Speaker 1: or the snowed in lakes here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's that particular document I think
Speaker 2: is kind of clearly they have access to people who
Speaker 2: have formally fought in Syria with the YPG right there.
Speaker 6: There are probably.
Speaker 2: Dozens of them now fighting in Ukraine without a volunteer units.
Speaker 2: Like it's it's not hard to see how this thought
Speaker 2: came up. But like you said, nothing really happened. It
Speaker 2: was just some people like spitboarling.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. There's some other like bits and
Speaker 1: stuff in here that are kind of interesting. One of
Speaker 1: them was there was a document in there about how
Speaker 1: the US had kind of like interfered in peace negotiations
Speaker 1: in Yemen due to like kind of concerns that they
Speaker 1: had about the fact that China was kind of brokering
Speaker 1: a degree of peace between the Houthi rebels in between
Speaker 1: the Saudi government. There's definitely some like slightly some somewhat
Speaker 1: shady shit from the US in there, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it didn't derail the peace negotiations.
Speaker 1: It's just like, yeah, they were like like like and
Speaker 1: a lot of it's like that where it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: this is useful context. I'm glad historians or journalists reporting
Speaker 1: it out will have that. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like the fact that like, oh hey, at
Speaker 1: one point in these peace negotiations the US was like,
Speaker 1: you know, being being kind of a kind of a
Speaker 1: dick isn't exactly like shocking. You know, It's not going
Speaker 1: to like change your overall concept of what's happening over there.
Speaker 1: It's not stuff that like is most of it's not
Speaker 1: stuff that's like massively important important. It is really interesting
Speaker 1: that the detail that our defense establishment apparently has from
Speaker 1: within the Russian government. I do think it's worth noting
Speaker 1: because we're talking, like when we talk about sort of
Speaker 1: the provenance of these and the reliability of these leaks
Speaker 1: as they regard the war in Ukraine, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about like, oh, this reveals that like
Speaker 1: the Ukraine doesn't have the capacity to carry out a
Speaker 1: counter offensive, or that the war's gone much worse for
Speaker 1: them than they think. It is kind of worth noting that, like,
Speaker 1: prior to the expanded Russian invasion, all US military intelligence
Speaker 1: suggested that the Ukrainian government was going to fold in
Speaker 1: a matter of days. So even though a lot of
Speaker 1: this is top secret info, that doesn't mean it's like
Speaker 1: one hundred percent accurate. Right Like our guys, like think
Speaker 1: back to the Iraq War, our dudes get shipped round constantly.
Speaker 1: It is again, this is all really interesting. And I
Speaker 1: will say two things. I think it's very funny that
Speaker 1: this guy nuked his entire life basically to impress children
Speaker 1: on a discord. I think it's extremely funny. I have
Speaker 1: laughed many a time at this. I also think it's like, like,
Speaker 1: as someone who is interested in this stuff, interesting that
Speaker 1: and good that we have this context. I don't think
Speaker 1: any of this is like massively surprising or shocking, Like
Speaker 1: the shit that's in that defense industry or a defense
Speaker 1: intelligence agency analysis of the Ukrainian position right now is
Speaker 1: like stuff that you would know if you were paying
Speaker 1: attention to the good ocent aggregators who have been covering
Speaker 1: the war, and if you've been like just reading good
Speaker 1: reporting on what's going on over there. I'll read a
Speaker 1: little bit of a summary from an article that's kind
Speaker 1: of going over some of the other stuff that appears
Speaker 1: to have been leaked. One details information apparently obtained through
Speaker 1: US eavesdropping on Russia's Foreign intelligence service and suggests that
Speaker 1: China approved the provision of lethal aid to Russia and
Speaker 1: its war in Ukraine early this year and plan to
Speaker 1: disguise its military equipment as civilian items. Another includes details
Speaker 1: of a conducted by Beijing on one of its advanced
Speaker 1: experimental missiles, the DF twenty seven hypersonic light vehicle, on
Speaker 1: February twenty fifth. It says the vehicle flew for twelve
Speaker 1: minutes across thirteen hundred miles and that it possessed a
Speaker 1: high probability of penetrating US ballistic missile defense systems. The
Speaker 1: documents contain new details about a Chinese spy balloon dubbed
Speaker 1: Killeen twenty three by US intelligence agencies, that earlier this
Speaker 1: year flew over the United States. They detail sophisticated so
Speaker 1: aalen's equipment. US intelligence agencies were aware of up to
Speaker 1: four additional Chinese bi balloons. The documents a and another
Speaker 1: previously unreported revelation, and so let's let's kind of break
Speaker 1: that down. One thing we have here is a basically
Speaker 1: an argument through from the US that based on their intercepts.
Speaker 1: They believe that China has approved provisioning weaponry, selling weaponry
Speaker 1: to Russia and disguising it as civilian items. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they have done this. It means that, like there's
Speaker 1: sigent that someone in our government has that says that
Speaker 1: they were. That could be disinformation from them. It could
Speaker 1: be out of date, it could be something like with
Speaker 1: this Ukraine and Syria thing that they talked about doing
Speaker 1: and then didn't do. It's interesting, I would say, if
Speaker 1: you are a defense industry reporter, it's something that would
Speaker 1: could should definitely spur you to further reporting because like
Speaker 1: that's really relevant if that's occurring. But it's not the
Speaker 1: final word on the matter. Meanwhile, you've got this thing
Speaker 1: on like, yeah, this hype masonic missile the Chinese had
Speaker 1: is good at shooting shit. Theoretically, this is, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that's that's interesting and I think
Speaker 1: is probably more accurate than you know, talking about the
Speaker 1: China providing lethal aid because you can kind of you know,
Speaker 1: theoretically you're looking at actual like data on how the
Speaker 1: missile has performed. It just seems like it's something that
Speaker 1: you've got more fidelity on But this is again to
Speaker 1: kind of contrast it with like the snowed and Manning leaks. Well,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you do if like the
Speaker 1: NSSAY is spying on people, Well, you could at least
Speaker 1: attempt to pass laws that restrict their ability to do that. Right,
Speaker 1: What do you do if there have been like war
Speaker 1: crimes committed by your military that were then cover it up, Well,
Speaker 1: you can at least attempt to prosecute people. What do
Speaker 1: you do if some other countries got a better missile? Well,
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot for you to do sitting
Speaker 1: at home and like New York City or you know,
Speaker 1: fucking Austin, Texas, Right, Like, like, what are we to
Speaker 1: do about China's hyper I don't know. My assumption generally speaking,
Speaker 1: not that this is an interesting but my assumption generally
Speaker 1: speaking is that when you're talking about Russia, China, the
Speaker 1: United States, we can all murder each other if we
Speaker 1: wanted to write like, we've all got real nice missiles
Speaker 1: at this point, and it's this, you know, the Chinese
Speaker 1: by balloon stuff is like interesting. I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: surprised by this, Like we knew there was a spy balloon.
Speaker 1: I assumed it had sophisticated surveillance technique. It's again, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that there were four other spy balloons in the area.
Speaker 1: But we simply know from older reporting that this happened
Speaker 1: like three or four times while Trump was in office too,
Speaker 1: So like, yeah, this is something we've known about. There's
Speaker 1: been reporting about. This is corroboration. That's interesting. Again, none
Speaker 1: of this is really like a sea change in our
Speaker 1: understanding of any of these conflicts. It is interesting context.
Speaker 1: Some of it's being blown up, you know, into stuff
Speaker 1: that it isn't. There's reporting and like the number of
Speaker 1: US servicemen in Ukraine that's being like spun is like
Speaker 1: we've got boots on the ground there and it's like,
Speaker 1: well they're like the seaguards and stuff. There's like twenty
Speaker 1: nine dudes that this like confirmed. Michael, Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: confirms there's not a lot of US guys on the
Speaker 1: ground there.
Speaker 2: You send a lot of people when we when we're
Speaker 2: doing wars. But yeah, like every embassy in the world
Speaker 2: has a contingent of marines who make sure that it
Speaker 2: doesn't just get Yeah. I don't want to say bang ghazied, but.
Speaker 1: H yeah, yeah, you know, big Ghazzi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine, and this is not new news to
Speaker 2: anyone who's been paying attention. But if you are Michael Tracy,
Speaker 2: this is brain melting shit.
Speaker 1: Michael Tracy is a weirdo quasi left journalist who like
Speaker 1: early on in the war, he didn't want to go
Speaker 1: into Ukraine very much, but he like hung out in
Speaker 1: Poland and took pictures of like US soldiers and like
Speaker 1: a facility that they were had been in for years,
Speaker 1: and was like, look, you know, this is evidence of
Speaker 1: the secret US support. And it's like, guys, I mean,
Speaker 1: for one thing, like look at this, Look at how
Speaker 1: much shit just leaked out because some kid wanted to
Speaker 1: impress children. If there were like like secret massive formations
Speaker 1: of US troops or even large like forces of US
Speaker 1: specops guys carrying out operations in Ukraine, how good do
Speaker 1: you think they'd be at keeping that shit secret?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: For one thing, like Special Forces guys get killed all
Speaker 1: the fucking time, Like they get killed, they get overrun,
Speaker 1: like like's it's a terrible risk for US to just
Speaker 1: like send Seal Team six in to fight the Russians
Speaker 1: when spoilers the Ukrainians have really good special forces guys
Speaker 1: every bit as good as ours actually, with a lot
Speaker 1: of cases more experience fighting this kind of war. And
Speaker 1: we're given and it's like, if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about US involvement, we're giving them their weapons. Like we're
Speaker 1: involved fucking plenty. There's just not much of a point
Speaker 1: in US like sending the green fucking berets into Bakamut, right,
Speaker 1: Like why that doesn't That doesn't help us at all,
Speaker 1: That doesn't like help our government. That's not like good
Speaker 1: for the military. It would be stupid anyway, whatever, anything
Speaker 1: else to talk about here?
Speaker 2: Do we want to talk about the Israel one?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, no, this is one of the interest although
Speaker 1: it's not. Again, basically one of the things that leaked
Speaker 1: is like the US is spying on all of its allies,
Speaker 1: which this leaks every couple of years. We're always spying
Speaker 1: on our allies, including Israel. Israel has spied on US
Speaker 1: a bunch. That's why they have nuclear weapons. Yeah, James,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is a document that basically what it
Speaker 2: alleges is that what has been alleged, perhaps incorrectly, is
Speaker 2: that it was encouraging Mossad staff to attend protests against
Speaker 2: net Yahoo when he was attempting his like auto goldpe,
Speaker 2: like his coup from within, whatever you want to call that, right,
Speaker 2: he was attempting to centralized power, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Now it's a leaked like you said, it's a document.
Speaker 2: It says that I'm quoting from it or from reporting
Speaker 2: on it. At least senior leaders of the Mossad spy
Speaker 2: service advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest
Speaker 2: the new Israeli governments proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit
Speaker 2: calls to action that decried the Israeli government, according to
Speaker 2: Singet Signals Intelligence the Infamy. So actually Netanyahu himself has
Speaker 2: been asked about this, and it's worth he appointed the
Speaker 2: Mossad director, a guy called David I think it's by Neya,
Speaker 2: and he has also us He's on the record previously
Speaker 2: in news media before this saying that he had clarified
Speaker 2: to Mosad personnel who could attend protests and who could
Speaker 2: not attend, like because at a certain point in any
Speaker 2: of these things that you're not allowed to be explicitly political, right,
Speaker 2: and folks, even at a very low point in the
Speaker 2: US military that you're not supposed to say and do
Speaker 2: certain things. So, uh, there was a petition that went
Speaker 2: out earlier, and again this has already been reported. They
Speaker 2: that were sent by intelligence offices basically saying like, we'll
Speaker 2: go on strike. And there had been again like widely
Speaker 2: reported instances other Israeli military people saying that they would
Speaker 2: go on strike or not shot up for work if
Speaker 2: these judicial reforms went ahead. So I think again it's
Speaker 2: been kind of we've really stretched. What was interesting I
Speaker 2: thought was that it had a Feiser label on fire
Speaker 2: series to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and if people aren't familiar,
Speaker 2: basically it allows US intelligence to wire tap things, which
Speaker 2: they can do it without warrant if it doesn't include
Speaker 2: a US person. So a US person is not just
Speaker 2: a citizen but also maybe a permanent resident something like that, right,
Speaker 2: like a person who has more rights than others in
Speaker 2: the United States. But in this case they seem to
Speaker 2: have got a fis a warrant, which it's very easy
Speaker 2: to get.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like a closed courtroom procedure where they go to
Speaker 2: a judge and like it's not like an adversarial argument.
Speaker 2: Now's there's no one who argues that you should get
Speaker 2: the warrant, and so in practice they really always get
Speaker 2: these warrants. But what it showed they have to just
Speaker 2: prove its intelligence asset of a foreign power, and so
Speaker 2: it showed that at some point they went for a
Speaker 2: judge and said like, hey, you know, we need to
Speaker 2: wiretap some kind of some kind of communications or I'm
Speaker 2: using wiretap in the broad sense, right specific sense. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting I think that that they have some intelligence
Speaker 2: asset in the United States and said, hey, we know
Speaker 2: this an Israeli intelligence asset, and to be clear that
Speaker 2: this could just be shit that's going in and out
Speaker 2: of the embassy, and they've decided that that they needed
Speaker 2: to wire that and keep an eye on that. Now,
Speaker 2: given given that like it's Rail's foreign policies has been
Speaker 2: talking terrible for decades, but nettan Yahoo is a new
Speaker 2: degree of crazy. Uh, it is it's unsurprising that like
Speaker 2: anyone concerned with I guess international relations would would want
Speaker 2: to know more about what, yeah, is going on.
Speaker 1: And again like that's it's interesting context. As you noted,
Speaker 1: a lot of this had been reported out previously, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we're it's it's just like it's it's it's all interesting again.
Speaker 1: I'm my, my, my. My attitude here is like I'm
Speaker 1: glad this information is out and I don't really care
Speaker 1: what happens to Jack techsi Era. Like, yeah, in my
Speaker 1: in my ideal world, the policing infrastructure that's come down
Speaker 1: on this kid would not exist. But he made this
Speaker 1: decision knowing full well what happens when you leak top
Speaker 1: se Like it's one of those things where it's like,
Speaker 1: just just within the context of shit that's fucked up
Speaker 1: in our country. The thing I'm going to be upset
Speaker 1: about is not a kid leaking top secret info to
Speaker 1: win an online argument and then having it blow up
Speaker 1: on him, right, Like, especially not a kid who's a
Speaker 1: fucking Nazi. At the end of the day, he did
Speaker 1: something that was obviously done. It's like if some guy
Speaker 1: hops on Twitter under his real name and starts posting
Speaker 1: pictures of heroin and saying, hey, guys, this is my
Speaker 1: name and address. I'm selling hella heroin. Here's photos of
Speaker 1: a felony quantity of heroin and guns. Well, I think
Speaker 1: heroin should be legal, but I'm not gonna like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna like make a crusade out of that guy's arrest,
Speaker 1: because that's stupid. Like, you know what happens if you post, Hey,
Speaker 1: here is my at home address and name. Here is
Speaker 1: all of the heroin I'm selling. Yeah, you'll probably get
Speaker 1: in trouble because you have posted online a serious crime.
Speaker 1: Obviously that could be a problem for you. That's just
Speaker 1: not my primary concern in the world when people do
Speaker 1: really stupid shit and it blows up on them, and
Speaker 1: it's like again, leakers, you look at the way Manning proceeded,
Speaker 1: You look at the way Snowden proceeded. They were aware
Speaker 1: of the danger of what they were doing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, Chelsea did years in fucking prison. Snowden fled
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 7: That's there because they were whistleblowers. They under they under
Speaker 7: they understood this is a serious like this is very illegal,
Speaker 7: and I have to try to take steps to protect
Speaker 7: myself because the government's going to come after me. The
Speaker 7: thing about Jack is like just the level of like
Speaker 7: arrogance that like I can post this shit all day
Speaker 7: long and nothing will happen. It was like, well, for
Speaker 7: one thing, this is never going like it's information you're
Speaker 7: posting online, Like I don't care. There's no way to
Speaker 7: keep stuff completely contained within a thirty person discord. It's
Speaker 7: going to leak out, and when it is, the government's
Speaker 7: gonna want to know who the fuck is leaking this ship.
Speaker 7: And you took like took pictures of this shit inside
Speaker 7: his home, like it's just dumb. I'm not gonna like.
Speaker 1: I don't at the end of the day, I have
Speaker 1: no room in my sympathy for like a a fucking
Speaker 1: fascy kid who committed the dumbest crime possible and got
Speaker 1: in trouble. Like I don't know, there's there's people who
Speaker 1: I don't know. For example, we're camping in a forest
Speaker 1: and are getting charged with terrorism and facing longer penalties. Right,
Speaker 1: Jack might do fifteen years at the most, which is
Speaker 1: like fucked up, I guess, But you know, there's people
Speaker 1: facing a lot worse for a lot less and I just,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, I don't care what happens to this kid.
Speaker 1: He seems like he sucks. I think the leaks are interesting.
Speaker 1: There's nothing in here that's like fundamentally changed my understanding
Speaker 1: of geopolitics, though, Yeah, that's where I am.
Speaker 6: I would agree.
Speaker 2: It is a useful reminder to keep your crime offline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't continue, continue to not post crimes on the internet. Again.
Speaker 1: If you're selling Heroin, don't post on Twitter. Here is
Speaker 1: my name and home address. Anyone want to buy some
Speaker 1: fucking China white, that's not a great idea.
Speaker 3: If anyone has any top secret documents, you can find
Speaker 3: me on the Star Wars the Old Republic forums.
Speaker 4: Just just post, just post them there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am part of the Jedi Initiative program, so
Speaker 3: just locate that and it'll be you.
Speaker 4: I'm sure, I'm sure I'll see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am on the the the NOZDRMO server on
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft. You can just hit me up under
Speaker 1: my uh my given name. Just d M me and
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out. You can send that ship to
Speaker 1: me over AOL instant messenger. That's how I take all
Speaker 1: of my leaks. Some secure platform.
Speaker 2: You can find me in a Mountain Project comments section
Speaker 2: where only good things happen.
Speaker 1: So we're all on war Thunder too, so you can
Speaker 1: get there too for work reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll be shipped talking your your grading problem, but
Speaker 2: also accepting national security leaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do, we do it all, all right, everybody.
Speaker 1: That's an episode.
Speaker 4: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 3: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.