Is Minecraft the new War Thunder for top-secret government documents?
Top-secret documents from the US Department of Defense have leaked online and are now being shared widely on social media. The documents reveal US intelligence on several allied nations, such as South Korea and Israel, as well as combat assessments for Ukraine. And strangely enough, these documents can be traced back to a very unlikely source: a Minecraft Discord server.
According to CNN, 53 leaked documents contain information from mid-February to early March that show weaknesses in “Ukrainian weaponry, air defense, and battalion sizes and readiness.” The documents also reveal US knowledge of how far it has penetrated into the Russian Ministry of Defense as well as the Wagner Group. The source of the leak is unknown, but open-source intelligence firm Bellingcat (via IGN) has a pretty good writeup on where and when the leak first appeared online.
While the larger leak that has been picked up by mass media outlets started in April on Russian Telegram channels, an earlier leak from March first started on Discord. Specifically, a Discord channel dedicated to recreating the entire planet called “Minecraft Earth Map.”
We don't know exactly who leaked those 100+ Pentagon documents online. But in a new @bellingcat investigation, I talked to several people on the Discord server with 20 active users where they may have first originated.https://t.co/3AFDoXB9Km
— Aric Toler (@AricToler) April 9, 2023
As with leaks in other game communities, it all started with an argument. Two people were bickering over the Ukraine War, and then someone else casually came along and said, “Here, have some leaked documents.”
That same user who casually dropped ten top-secret documents into a Minecraft channel later claimed to have found those documents on the WowMoy Discord server, a channel dedicated to a Filipino YouTuber. Bellingcat believes these documents were first obtained by a Discord community called “Thug Shaker Central” and date back to January, but that server has since been taken down.
This is hardly the first time the gaming community has leaked classified military documents, but it is the first time a Minecraft server has been the source. Usually, it’s people arguing on the War Thunder forums and the leaked documents have to do with classified performance statistics for fighter jets or main battle tanks. First, it was documents related to Britain’s Challenger 2 tank, then it was info on a Chinese tank round. Most recently it was restricted technical evaluations concerning the F-16 fighter jet and AIM-120 AMRAAM missile. War Thunder has become such a hotbed of military leaks that Raytheon was believed to have listed the game as a security risk for potential employees, although that has since been debunked.
We wouldn’t have guessed Minecraft to be in the same realm as War Thunder, but I guess this just goes to show how far gamers will go to settle an online argument.
