On Friday, news organizations realized something quite remarkable: A trove of 100 secret US military and intelligence documents had been posted in the far-flung corners of the internet.
The files reveal closely held information about US operations, like a suggestion there are up to 100 NATO special operations officials in Ukraine, and details about casualty counts for both Russia and Ukraine. They indicate that the US has infiltrated Russian intelligence groups and has inside knowledge of hacking attempts on a Canadian pipeline. And they show in some detail what the US has gleaned from spying on partners such as Israel and South Korea.
And most bizarrely, the documents surfaced more than a month earlier on anonymous, decentralized web forums dedicated to gaming, like a Discord channel devoted to Minecraft and after that on 4chan.
The classified files emerged as recently photographed folded documents that may have appeared as daily briefings for the military’s top leaders. If they are authentic, the documents represent a major intelligence breach and offer insights into the US role in defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion and other major geopolitical arenas.
For now, the documents’ ambiguous provenance, the somewhat surprising platform on which they were first posted, the signs that at least several were doctored, and the inability to independently verify them means it’s difficult to draw sweeping conclusions. The motive for the documents’ publication is obscured by the jokey online exchanges in which they were shared.
But the US government seems to be treating the documents as legitimate. The Justice Department opened an investigation into the leaks, the Defense Department and several other government agencies are together assessing any impact on national security, and Pentagon leaders are angry and scrambling to undo the damage.
Gavin Wilde, a Carnegie Endowment expert who previously worked in the White House and at the National Security…
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