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It looks that this forum either missed, or lacked interest in latest OSINT/spook world apocalyptic scandal.
Normie introduction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Pentagon_document_leaks
Twitter thread with more links:
https://twitter.com/RidT/status/1645048624294895619
TL;DR: Classified Pentagon documents suddenly appeared out of nowhere on
front page of New York Timesobscure Discord server. From this place, they circulated among less and less obscure Discord servers until they, in about a month, percolated into Russian Z telegram channels (who, in fit of genius, crudely changed in photoshop the casualties numbers, to make Russia look less bad).According to Pentagon insiders and online autists, the documents look genuine - internal consistency, consistency with open source information, the style, the powerpoint presentation, the bureaucratic lingo - all is correct. It is either work of expert team who studied Pentagon documents for their whole lives, or it is the real deal, the real leak.
The frantic behavior of TPTP - banning the responsible telegram channel, scrubbing the documents from Twitter and similar desperate fortifying the barn door when the horse is far beyond the horizon, also suggests authenticity.
How important they are? If FSB or GRU were monitoring "Thug Shaker Central" Discord channel and got the info when it was fresh, it could have very serious consequences. Now it is mostly of historical interest. Big mistake.
Now, the implications.
1/ US OPSEC is not as shitty as usual, it is getting worse. Any loser could walk around with his phone, take pictures of everything he wants and no one GAF. It is fortunate that no enemy agents managed to infiltrate Pentagon, only gamers who want to impress their buddies.
2/ Quality and loyalty of US personnel is getting way worse. The man responsible is supposed to be /pol/ style racist gun nut. Exactly the kind of person who is not wanted by the system, who should be stopped by even most basic background check. Another F for failure.
3/ Ukraine is not US puppet, Ukrainian government is in charge and keeps their plans and information for itself. Pentagon does not have any insider knowledge what is going on there - even their classified info is copy of official UKR announcements.
Now, what will be the consequences?
Not good for anyone. No one responsible will be punished (except the leaker, who will be made example of), and hammer will hard on anything resembling racism, transphobia and other unapproved thought. Take care.
Edit: leaker is named.
As expected. Racial science discovered long ago that while Hispanics are noble oppressed victims of white racism, Lusitanics are no good and should never be trusted.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/09/15/who-is-hispanic/
How plausible would it be for a leak like this to be manufactured by the US side? The actual American spooks easily meet the criterion of "expert team who studied Pentagon documents for their whole lives"; and I imagine US counterintelligence isn't sleeping at the wheel, so if they have a good grasp of actual Russian espionage efforts and what information they managed to procure, they could perhaps construct a bombshell document that consists of intel the Russians already have, a few additional morsels that they can verify but are not actually that consequential (in proportion to how much they would be willing to risk for such a stunt), and some big misdirections believing which might turn out absolutely fatal for Russia's effort to fend off any imminent counteroffensive.
Considering how unsympathetic the person announced as the leaker is, it doesn't sound like anyone would have moral trepidations about setting him up (e.g. by talking him into a treasonous mood and then conveniently forgetting the documents where he could find them); and any "criterion of embarrassment" reasoning about bugging the Koreans is weakened by the circumstance that this revelation had no meaningful impact after Snowden either. On the other hand, I don't have a sense for how costly a gambit this would be, particularly in terms of the "fuel budget" that is not-yet-leaked true intel you'd need to burn in order to add credibility, and if the biggest claims in it are confirmed and appear to lead to a change in RU strategy, this would be an argument for its authenticity.
It's hard to even be 100% certain that any of it's real, these days -- all I've seen in terms of "things that couldn't be faked by anyone with a keyboard" (plus the resources to fabricate the documents of course, which the US military certainly has) is a few grainy pictures of somebody being put in a paddy wagon. (which might not be so hard to fabricate from a keyboard nowadays either, but would be very easy to fabricate in meatspace if you were the US military)
Probably we will see some sort of public-ish trial to confirm that I'm being overcautious, but if not I would continue to be somewhat skeptical.
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