Federal authorities in the United States have arrested a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard for allegedly leaking more than 100 highly classified military and intelligence documents via the Discord messaging service. Jack Teixeira, aged 21, is accused of removing, retaining and transmitting classified national defense information.
Teixeira, an employee of the US Air National Guard, is set to appear in court on Friday. The leaked documents focus on assessments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China, terrorism, Iran’s nuclear program, the Middle East, North Korea’s missile program, and central Africa.
Teixeira oversaw a Discord group called Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games, according to the New York Times. The documents Teixeira allegedly leaked to this Discord group subsequently spread via 4Chan, Telegram, and Twitter accounts.
Experts say the leaks reveal not just intelligence assessments but also certain capabilities, such as U.S. intelligence visibility into high-level Russian military planning.
Teixeira is in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard and was promoted to Airman First Class in July 2022, The Times reported. It was not immediately clear if Teixeira had access to highly sensitive briefings. Senior Department of Defense officials began restricting the flow of classified information with U.S. allies as the agency’s probe continued.
One of the members of the Thug Shaker Central group said the documents leaked by Teixeira only started to get wider attention when one of the teenage members of the group took a few dozen of them and posted them to a public online forum.
