US Air National Guardsman gets fifteen years for leaking military secret on a Minecraft Discord Server: 'The extent of his betrayal was breathtaking... The amount of damage unmeasurable'

A 22-year-old former US Air National Guard member has been sentenced 15 years in prison after stealing classified American military secret and sharing them on Discord server that was ostensibly devoted to Minecraft (thanks The Register). Jack Teixeira was employed by the US Air National Guard since September 2019. He worked for the 102nd Intelligence Wing in Massachusetts, until his arrest last summer.

Teixeira's early years were largely incident-free, but in 2022 he began to gain access to top secret documents and photos. In February 2022 he posted some of these on a private Discord server, where they eventually made their way to public social media channels.

The secret documents contained information on America's involvement with the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine, details about negotiations between South Korea, the USA, and China over ammunition, as well as China's development a supersonic spying drone.

A US Air Force report published last year concluded that Teixeira was the sole airman responsible for the leak. However, it determined that his chain command is partially responsible for allowing the classified data dump to happen under its watch. The report stated that Teixeira had been "observed viewing intelligence content on TS-SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented information) websites" in August of 2022. His supervisor failed to document the incident as they should have. Shortly after, Teixeira was seen viewing secret documents and making notes on a Post-It.

Teixeira would later confess that he began posting classified information to boast to his friends. He was an avid gamer, and the Discord server he used had around 25 members who all seemed to have similar interests, including assassination theories, mass murder and conspiracy theories, as well Minecraft. Teixeira first took notes on documents he saw at work, then brought them home and transcribed them. Later, as his confidence grew, he started printing secret files from a rarely-used printer on base.

Teixeira initially pleaded guilty to six counts of willful transmission and retention of national defense information. He changed his plea to guilty in March of this year, to avoid additional charges brought under the Espionage Act. (Which could have resulted in the death penalty).

In a sentencing memo to the court, prosecutors stated that "the documents and information Teixeira shared on social media are highly confidential and contain vital information about national defense." Teixeira's posting of intelligence products to the social media platform Discord in order to satisfy his ego and impress anonymous friends caused a grave threat to the national defense of the United States. The scale of his betrayal was breathtaking. The damage he did is incalculable."

Teixeira admitted on the server, among other details that raised eyebrows, that he knew his actions were illegal. Teixeira replied, "If I want go to prison for the rest my life, yes", when a server member asked him to post information on military casualties in Ukraine. He also dismissed his oath as a military one, calling it an NDA. "The oath is simply the defense of America and following orders."

The documents spread from the Discord server and were re-posted in other online places. In one case, they had been doctored to exaggerate Ukrainian casualties and minimize those of Russian forces. Teixeira, realising he was in serious trouble, asked members of the Discord server to delete all material they had saved ("[i]f someone comes looking, don’t tell them sh*t"), shut down his server, deleted his own account, then physically destroyed his iPad and PC before leaving the smashed up remnants in a dumpster in front of his house, where the authorities found them. Teixeira was arrested after Discord revealed his address in April 2023.

Teixeira has been sentenced to 15 years in prison plus three more years of probation by a federal judge in Boston. "This sentencing serves as a warning to those who are entrusted with the protection of national defense information. Betray this trust and you will be held responsible," said FBI Director Christopher Wray. "Jack Teixeira’s criminal conduct put our nation, our soldiers, and our allies in great danger."