Jack Vahki, the 17-year-old charged in the leak of Pentagon intelligence documents, tells CNN that he wasn’t like a father figure
A member of the private online chatroom where a major leak of US classified documents surfaced has defended 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who was charged in connection to the leak on Friday, telling CNN that Teixeira shared the classified material to keep other members informed, “so we won’t be shocked by the news cycles.”
The chatroom member known online as Vahki, who is 17 years old, said that the Massachusetts Air National Guard member who was arrested was like a father figure to him. The pair bonded over video games, fitness and Christianity.
“It wasn’t really ‘pushing these to teenagers for clout,’” Vahki told CNN that he described the motivation for sharing the documents on the social media platform. The news cycles won’t be surprising since it was like showing these to friends. And we know what’s going on with our tax dollars.”
The scandal has shined a spotlight on the dangers of online socializing with a new generation of US military personnel being influenced by the gaming platforms that allow anonymity. Service members are warned to refrain from posting anything on the platform that they wouldn’t want seen by the general public.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/politics/discord-chatroom-intelligence-leak/index.html
The Teixeira-Vahki Connection: Why the End of Wow Mao Zone leaked classified documents are not intentionally revealed on Discord
Teixeira and Vahki’s friendship grew over the last four or five years, Vahki said, adding that the pair played video games in which they fought zombies (“Left 4 Dead 2”) and built their own virtual worlds (“Garry’s Mod”).
The two men were part of a hidden chat room that talked about guns and religion, as well as a lot of other things. Photos of the classified documents later ended up on a second Discord chatroom, known as End of Wow Mao Zone, in March, before spreading to a pro-Russia Telegram and to Twitter.
Vah Thugki admitted that some of the members of the group posted racist pictures but claimed they were just making a joke. The chatroom membership of about two-dozen people was racially diverse, he claimed. CNN could not get in touch with other members of the chatroom to verify this.
Asked if anyone in Thug Shaker Central was concerned the leaked documents could affect the war in Ukraine and the lives of soldiers there, Vahki claimed the documents were never intended to be made public.
Vahki said that he hasn’t been contacted by the FBI as part of the investigation. He said he was embarrassed after a week in which his friend was arrested.
The rise and fall of the top dog: Texeira’s infamous outburst to the FBI in April 13, 2009, during the QAnon conspiracy movement
Several traits tend to be shared by groups that encourage users to reveal intel. Many users are motivated by the allure of illicit information and a culture of competition. Lines are also blurred between gaming culture and news and between real leaks and fake ones.
Emily Dreyfuss is the co-author of the book Meme Wars: the Untold Stories of the OInline Battles Upending Democracy in America. The report “PRESIDENT TRUMP IS CALLING US TO FIGHT” is co-authored by one of those mentioned, Kaylee Williams. Both authors work on the Technology and Social Change team at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center.
According to the forensic internet sleuths at Bellingcat, someone on this private server shared the documents in another open Discord group devoted to a different YouTuber, WowMao, then in a popular Minecraft server, and from there to the open internet. At that point, Texeira’s flex had become a national embarrassment and grounds for charges of violating the US Espionage Act. The FBI took Texeira into custody on April 13. The path from clout-chasing to treason can be very short now.
The top dog is whoever has the most incriminating information regarding the topic of the day in an anonymous chat space. This group dynamic is reflected in the beginnings of the powerful QAnon conspiracy movement, which started on a chatboard when a pseudonymous poster claimed to have top secret government information. The movement continued to ensnar thousands and cause an insurrection despite the fact that none of the information ever proved to be true. The character known as Q amassed power by divulging supposed government secrets to a dedicated niche community whose members then disseminated that content to the rest of us. The dynamics governing that group had an unmistakable impact on the rest of the world.
In Texiera’s case, the top secret information he shared in a private chat group is, by all reports, real. After he first uploaded the documents to the Thug Shaker Central server, people quickly began sharing them more widely. But it’s unclear whether these users knew, or cared, if the leaked documents were real. This illustrates troubling realities around knowledge creation and the internet’s blurry relationship to fact and fiction.