Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[FunkMonk]

Back in 2008-2011, I had a Top Secret clearance in my early-mid 20s while I was assigned to US Transportation Command at Scott AFB.

No, I did not post classified documents on Languish.

[grumbler]

Hey Tonto, why is it always the Air Force? 

Lower standards. 

[HVC]

Nerds can't be trusted, and nerds go the airforce 

[Tonitrus]

I don't work in that cloak and dagger world no more.

Now I work in academia. 

[Admiral Yi]

I had a plain vanilla Secret clearance when I interned at the Bureau of Export Administration.

[Legbiter]

Back in 2008-2011, I had a Top Secret clearance in my early-mid 20s while I was assigned to US Transportation Command at Scott AFB.

No, I did not post classified documents on Languish.

[FunkMonk]

We truly live in the stupidest timeline.

[Legbiter]

The second battle of Midway will be lost in 2028 because some zoomer intern in the Bureau of Export Administration reveals the location of the US Pacific fleet on the World of Warships forums.   

[Josquius]

Back in 2008-2011, I had a Top Secret clearance in my early-mid 20s while I was assigned to US Transportation Command at Scott AFB.

No, I did not post classified documents on Languish.

I hope he's smart enough to be really kicking himself.
There's 2 courses of action he could have taken that made sense

1: do your freaking job and not betray the country
2: sell the documents for millions setting yourself for life in an exotic locale.

He chose... None of these.

[Hamilcar]

Top Secret documents were intended to be the gravest most serious secrets of State, and the handing out of access to those was supposed to be incredibly limited.

Is the root cause of having so many documents labeled "top secret" due to a CYA attitude? "Make it TS just in case"?

[Sheilbh]

Just to point out - yesterday Poland requested that they could send jet planes they'd bought from Germany (from DDR stocks) to Ukraine.

And. This time, from what I've seen, within a day - Germany said yes. We didn't have the usual rigamarole of debates about whether they're "offensive" or "defensive" jets, whether it constitutes an escalation or is it Germany going alone.

So as I've pointed out that Germany had always been doing the right thing - but normally after dithering for so long they got all the annoyance of their European partners and then none of the credit. It is worth pointing out that it feels like that lesson has maybe been learned a bit which is very good to see.

(Also semi-relatedly Baerbock on a trip to China to clear up Macron's mess - which again, is good.)

[OttoVonBismarck]

Top Secret documents were intended to be the gravest most serious secrets of State, and the handing out of access to those was supposed to be incredibly limited.

Is the root cause of having so many documents labeled "top secret" due to a CYA attitude? "Make it TS just in case"?

I think part of it is, the TS clearance process is more rigorous, so in a sense the idea that we're getting more people into TS clearances is seen as expanding the web of trust. It's an easy option right, CYA is a part of it, but it's like "okay this is Top Secret now, so now we can lean heavily on the rigorous clearance process to feel safe." The problem is a) the clearance process is handled largely by outside contractors now and their quality is sketchy at best, b) no matter the layers of trust, the bigger pool of people who have access to secrets the higher the chance of a leak.

With modern IT systems and modern encryption, it should frankly be easy to setup a system where you can't see a document unless you absolutely need to--and you decrypt it by scanning your badge or something. There should be almost no paper copies of TS documents at all at this point, the amount of paper we still use in the Federal government is shockingly dumb even beyond security reasons. It is still not 100% clear to me if this kid had actual proper access to these documents, or obtained them because his TS clearance gave him access to a facility where he could get those documents (even if he wasn't supposed to do so.) Both avenues are possible and both are problems--the latter one, where people with TS clearance are able to get into specific documents that aren't part of their duties, could be significantly mitigated with better IT systems. If he had proper access to them it's going to require a deeper look, but in general more people have access to things than they should.

[Hamilcar]

Data governance is HARD. I guess Palantir is continuously selling solutions to the US government.

[Iormlund]

Do we need to update to a forum software with Likes so that our TS-cleared members feel compelled to leak shit?

[Syt]