The Discord Leaks were a major leak of classified United States intelligence that occurred in April 2023. Two sets of leaked classified foreign intelligence documents of the United States began circulating on Twitter, Telegram, and 4chan. Jack Teixeira, an airman first class of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, had allegedly photographed printouts of the documents at his parents' home in Dighton, Massachusetts, and posted them to the instant messaging platform Discord on a server named "Thug Shaker Central". The earliest posts dated to October 2022.
The documents are primarily related to the Russo-Ukrainian war, but also include foreign intelligence assessments concerning nations including North Korea, China, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. A subset of documents was shared to Discord servers for a YouTuber and a Minecraft map in late February and early March 2023. In April, a 4chan user posted several documents on the website's political imageboard /pol/. The documents were then spread throughout pro-Russian Telegram channels; at least one image was altered to show more Ukrainian casualties than Russian casualties.
The leaked documents contain operational briefs from the Joint Staff. Regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war, the documents suggest difficulties for both Russians and Ukrainians, in equal part; while one slide suggests that more Russians have died in the war than Ukrainians, several documents covering the battle of Bakhmut suggest difficulties for Ukrainians in countering Russian flanking maneuvers and supply shortages in the area. Additionally, relations between Russia and other nations are covered, with multiple documents detailing efforts by Russian military intelligence agency GRU and paramilitary organization Wagner Group in promoting Russian ideals while downplaying American values. Other documents reveal attempts by Wagner Group to acquire weapons in Turkey, a NATO member. One set of documents alleges that Mossad encouraged staff and citizens to participate in judicial reform protests.
The leak spurred a diplomatic crisis between the United States and the Five Eyes. An interagency effort—composed of the Department of Defense, the White House, the Department of State, and the United States Intelligence Community—are assessing the leak. Concurrently, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a criminal inquiry into the leaker. U.S. officials accused Russia of being behind the leak. Ukraine and Russia downplayed the leak, with both countries saying that the documents contain distorted figures. Specific claims in the leaks have been denied by some countries, such as by South Korea and Egypt. On April 13, 2023, the FBI arrested Teixeira in connection with the leak.
Background
In October 2021, the United States became aware of efforts by Russian president Vladimir Putin to quickly increase military spending in Russia by diverting funds from the country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and sources within Russia, the U.S. believed that Putin intended to invade Ukraine. Speaking to President Joe Biden, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley stated Russia would attempt a multidirectional shock and awe attack. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the U.S. has provided the Ukrainian government with intelligence on Russia. Representative Adam Smith, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the U.S. provides "some intelligence" to Ukraine on MSNBC's Morning Joe, but reserved that the U.S. was not providing the "kind of real-time targeting" that the U.S. has provided in other conflicts. White House press secretary Jen Psaki commented that the U.S. provided more significant intelligence than what Smith described. Responding to Politico, a spokesperson for Smith called the United States' intelligence "rapid".
Document dissemination
The documents are believed to have been first posted in early March 2023 to a large audience in a Discord server for British-Filipino YouTuber wow_mao. They gained wider attention after they were posted two days later on the "Minecraft Earth Map" Discord server, in a discussion in which one user cited them in an argument with another.
A Bellingcat investigation found that the documents had been posted in a Discord server for the YouTuber Oxide. Several sources interviewed by Bellingcat stated that the documents were posted as far back as October 2022, and were posted by a server administrator known as "OG" in a channel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Speaking to The Washington Post, Oxide—who currently serves in the United States Army in the Pacific Northwest—told the publication that he had banned various users in his own Discord server a year prior, including some for posting a meme video of a black man in a gay porn film, dubbed the "thug shaker". The banned users then moved to the Thug Shaker Central server.
According to The Washington Post, OG regularly brought home documents from an unnamed military base. Users of the server formed a bond with OG as he posted the documents, believing him to be a trusted source, with some knowing his full name and state. An investigation by The New York Times, following a digital evidence trail, found that OG is likely Jack Teixeira (born 2001), an airman in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. According to The New York Times, details on the margins of the document photographs match those in Teixeira's childhood home. Teixeira was promoted to airman first class in July 2022, and became a cyber transport systems journeyman stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod. On other social media platforms, Teixeira was also known as jackthedripper. According to the court documents, a social media user suspected of being Teixeira began releasing classified information on an unspecified social media platform in the form of "paragraphs of text" as early as December 2022.
On April 5, an anonymous user on the /pol/ imageboard on 4chan posted several images of the documents, with that user's documents circulating via pro-Russian Telegram channels. One such channel, "Donbass Devushka", republished these images. The images posted to Donbass Devushka and to /pol/ are identical, except for one image, where the number of Ukrainian casualties outweighs Russian ones, suggesting that the image was altered, possibly by Donbass Devushka. The Wall Street Journal reported that Sarah Bils, a former aviation electronics technician 2nd Class, last stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, is allegedly behind the Donbass Devushka social media accounts that posted at least four of the classified documents. Malcontent News reported that the "reputable members of the pro-Ukrainian online movement" NAFO, worked with Malcontent to identify Bils as one of the personas behind Donbass Devushka.
The New York Times initially reported on the documents two days after they were posted on Telegram. The documents continued to be spread on Twitter. In response to a tweet about the leak, Twitter CEO Elon Musk alluded to the Streisand effect, and suggested that Twitter would not take down the documents. Discord is "cooperating with law enforcement" in regard to the leak. On April 21, The New York Times reported that a user whose profile matched Teixeira had shared the documents to another Discord server beginning on February 25, 2022, days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. 64 photographs of the leaked documents were published by Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Contents
The documents—primarily in the form of pictures of charts and graphs—concern intelligence that the United States holds on other nations, including North Korea, China, and Iran, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The number of documents is estimated to be over 100 pages. The documents appeared online as photographs of documents atop an apparent hunting magazine, with other objects such as zip lock bags and Gorilla Glue scattered throughout the photographs. Senior U.S. officials have attested to their legitimacy, believing that the documents are intelligence and operational briefs from the Joint Staff within the Pentagon. The documents appear to be compiled from multiple sources, including the National Security Agency (NSA), the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) of the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); in the lattermost case, one section of the documents originates from a daily intelligence update.
In releasing the documents, the documents were first photographed and then uploaded online. According to Javed Ali, a former U.S. counter-terrorism official, the uploader of the documents may have taken steps to conceal their IP address and timestamps from the photographs in an effort to feign anonymity. The classified material would have been limited to a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), where electronic devices connected to the Internet are prohibited. A senior U.S. official stated that hundreds—potentially thousands—of government officials may have obtained the documents.
Russo-Ukrainian War
Battle of Bakhmut
One document dated late February 2023 detailed Russian flanking maneuvers near Bakhmut, discussions by the Ukrainian military about how to respond, and supply shortages in the area. An intelligence assessment states that as of February 25, Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut were nearly encircled; a senior Ukrainian official noted that morale was low among Ukrainian soldiers. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's director of military intelligence, described the Ukrainian position as "catastrophic", and offered to deploy elite units, including the Kraken Regiment, to safeguard the single supply line and prevent encirclement. Deployment of reinforcements, including elite units, ultimately prevented the encirclement, but at a strategic cost, depleting seasoned forces that may have been in reserve for the spring counter-offensive.
Casualty estimates
The documents also cover information on U.S.-provided military resources Ukraine has access to, purported Pentagon estimates on Russian and Ukrainian casualties, and alleged information on Ukraine's planned counteroffensive. Several documents also offer "low confidence" estimates for the number of casualties, with the U.S. estimating 189,500 to 223,000 Russian casualties, compared to 124,500 to 131,000 Ukrainian casualties. One document also states that the number of soldiers killed in action in the Armed Forces of Ukraine is between 15,500 and 17,500, while those of the Russian Armed Forces is between 35,500 and 43,000.
The documents also allege that the Spetsnaz GRU has suffered significant casualties as a result of the unit's use in the war.
Russian military planning
In one top secret document, plans by the Russian General Staff to counter NATO-provided tanks were detailed. One such plan involves paying Russian soldiers who destroy NATO tanks. The documents also show U.S. awareness of Russian military planning, such as plans to destroy a hangar containing drones near Odesa.
Russia–NATO aircraft encounters and near shootdown
According to one document, a Russian fighter jet nearly shot down a British surveillance plane off of the coast of Crimea. The incident, referred to as a "near-shootdown" of a Rivet Joint—a moniker referring to a variant of Boeing RC-135s—from the United Kingdom, occurred in September 2022. The incident was disclosed in October by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, to the House of Commons. Wallace specifically named two Sukhoi Su-27 jets as flying "recklessly", with one of the jets firing a missile at the Rivet Joint; Wallace believed the firing was a technical issue. Under the North Atlantic Treaty, such an attack could have provoked a larger response from NATO as a whole had the missile hit the plane. The document, labeled as classified for non-U.S. citizens, was among others detailing encounters that Russian fighter jets had with foreign aircraft, including the 2023 Black Sea drone incident. According to the document, French and British aircraft flew crewed reconnaissance flights between the near-shootdown and February 26, 2023. Two U.S. defense officials later stated that the pilot of the Russian fighter jet misunderstood commands from a radar operator.
Weapons use by Ukraine
The documents suggest that Ukraine's air defense against aircraft—largely made up of the S-300 and Buk missile systems—will be depleted by May. Several documents refer to Ukraine using weapons within Russia. According to one document, in late February, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to strike within the Rostov Oblast. Another document states that China could increase aid to Russia if Ukraine struck within Russia. The documents also exposed LAPIS, an advanced satellite system used by the Ukrainian military.
Documents also outline a proposed "Combat Power Build" consisting of 9 planned brigades supplied by the United States and allied partners.
Weapons use by Russia
One document detail how Russia has attempted to disrupt Starlink systems provided by SpaceX to Ukraine.
Western special forces
The documents included the list of countries which have small contingents of military special forces operating inside Ukraine; the United Kingdom sent the largest number of soldiers at 50, followed by Latvia (17), France (15), the United States (14) and the Netherlands (one). The United States special forces were detailed to the U.S. embassy in Kyiv to provide security for VIPs and to assist with oversight of U.S. equipment and supplies being sent to Ukraine.
Countries
Russia
A document details efforts by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, to engage in information warfare in Africa that promoted "Russian foreign policy" while downplaying public opinion about the United States. The Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group is also mentioned. One document states that Wagner Group emissaries met with authorities from Turkey in February, suggesting that Wagner Group could obtain the weapons from an outpost in Mali. The intelligence findings suggest that Wagner chief's Yevgeny Prigozhin's claims that the Russian Defense Ministry has been skimping on ammunition supplies to Wagner may have been grounded in fact. Another document provides an estimate of the number of Wagner personnel in Mali, noting that the large Wagner presence has raised security concerns in neighboring Ivory Coast.