Pentagon leak traced to video game chat group users arguing over war in Ukraine

A damaging batch of documents leaked from the Pentagon appears to have been initially shared on the video game chat platform Discord in an effort to win an argument about the war in Ukraine, according to open-source intelligence analysts.

The bizarre provenance of the leak may seem unusual but it is far from the first time that a dispute between gamers has sparked an intelligence breach, with the overlapping communities causing problems for military and gaming platforms alike.

The existence of the leaked cache was exposed as documents showing estimated casualties in the Bakhmut theatre of battle began circulating on public social networks last week.

At the same time, a second set of documents, including the edited image, were being passed around pro-Russian Telegram channels.

Although the scale and sensitivity of the leaks are significant, this is not the first time that an intelligence breach has been traced back to an argument about video games. One game in particular, the vehicular combat simulation War Thunder, has become notorious for the sheer quantity of leaks linked to it.

In October 2021, for instance, classified design details about the French Leclerc tank were posted to win an argument about turret rotation speed. In July 2021, a user claiming to be a tank commander in the British army posted documents about the armour structure of the vehicle to win an argument. In January this year, design documents covering at least five separate fighter jets were posted by four different users.

The game has become such a shorthand for intelligence failures that the military contractor Raytheon was forced to deny reports that it specifically asked about War Thunder as part of a security clearance process.