The leaked documents cast a bad light on the US President.
(Photo: Reuters)
Washington New details about the huge leak in the American security apparatus are becoming known every day: A 21-year-old national guard is said to have spread government secrets on the Discord video game platform, which plunged the United States into a crisis of confidence. The alleged perpetrator has to appear in court on Friday.
But the damage from the Pentagon affair is far from repaired with the indictment, which could shed light on the suspect’s motives and methods. There hasn’t been a US secret service affair of this magnitude since the Snowden revelations: dozens of US documents, some classified as top secret, have been circulating online for weeks, providing deep insights into the war in Ukraine.
Their release is a worrying signal to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, an alliance between the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. German authorities are also dependent on the Americans in their fight against terrorism and crime. But international cooperation also depends on highly sensitive information being in good hands with the most powerful partner.
The Pentagon leaks now show that the gigantic security apparatus of the USA is apparently being amateurishly protected when a low-ranking military member can simply share war-related information with his gamer friends. The leak is also said to have gone unnoticed by anyone in the US ministries for weeks, which is a scandal in itself.
At a time when the US is swearing by its national security more than ever, the affair seems almost ironic: the excitement about the Chinese spy balloon was huge and the US is banning China from its high-tech industries ever more aggressively. But an American, of all people, who has only been able to legally buy alcohol for a few months, is now endangering the national security of the USA.
Sniffing among friends: still a reality
The leaked documents are also an alarming sign of Western support for Ukraine. For the papers paint a picture of an increasingly exhausted army, whose anti-aircraft defenses have been dramatically weakened, and which may not be able to retake the territories occupied by Russia.
Intelligence reports indicate that the longer the war lasts, the harder it will be to keep up the defense. The debate about additional weapons deliveries or fighter jets could therefore flare up again soon.
A 21-year-old national guard is said to have spread government secrets on the video game platform Discord. He was arrested on Thursday.
(Photo: dpa)
The affair also undermines US President Joe Biden’s leitmotif that the world is clearly divided into good democracies and hostile autocracies. In truth, the borders are fluid, because even his own, the most powerful democracy in the world, snoops around in friendly countries and pursues his own interests.
After the Snowden leaks, it turned out that the US was spying on close partners such as Brazil, Germany and Mexico, among others. The new documents show that the US appears to be still covertly monitoring allies like Ukraine, South Korea and Israel. This is not a surprise, but it is a reality that must be taken into account in relations with the US.
Above all, however, the document affair exposes the arrogance of the US government. The secret services are not infallible, we have known that since the Iraq war at the latest. Nevertheless, US presidents steer world politics through their secret services, and Biden is no exception.
The US government recently warned that China is considering supplying Russia with weapons and ammunition for the Ukraine war. To date, Washington has not published any evidence of this suspicion.
The situation was similar with the accusation that the corona virus was the result of a Chinese laboratory accident. Some US authorities consider this theory to be plausible, but it is only at the insistence of the US Congress that the findings will soon be made public.
The US secret services are a powerful tool, the 18 US individual services and sub-agencies have an annual budget of almost 90 billion US dollars. To do this, they should at least meet this requirement: be secure against leaks and hacks, and be transparent when necessary.
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