Perhaps not every simpleton should see classified intelligence documents (or, uh, own a gun).
It would appear possible that too many people have access to top secret things.
How on Earth can an Airman First Class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard get access to intelligence documents that involve Russian troop movements in Ukraine, North Korean nuclear missile ranges, and government deliberations in Israel and Egypt? Clearly, either hacking is too easy or the distribution list is too wide.
We cannot know yet whether Jack Teixeira, reported gun and God enthusiast, is the whole story in the latest scandal involving the leaks of classified materials.
But if he is, he would appear to be somewhat different from Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, Chelsea Manning of the Wikileaks scandal, Edward Snowden who is hiding out in Russia, and even the bizarre Julian Assange. All of them credibly had access to the information they made public and projected both intelligence and ideology, if nihilistic.
Teixeira, on the other hand, seems a leaker fit for our benighted era — reportedly a guns and God enthusiast who was doing bravado for his digital friends and either wanted to be caught or did not appear to know that social media sites like Discord, where he allegedly posted the problem images, retain one’s IP address.
There may be more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps, like Jack Ruby (the protagonist of one of history’s more plausible conspiracy theories), he is a patsy.
But if not, the conclusion is pretty clear: Time to ramp up data security and clamp down on access to classified documents. The future belongs to cybersecurity firms.
