Doesn’t this sound a little … familiar? The flood of intelligence, diplomatic, and military secrets did not come from a foreign spy or an ideological foe of the United States, the Washington Post reported overnight. It came from a Discord chat host that had developed a cult of personality online, and fed it the world’s secrets to bolster his standing.

And his acolytes worry that “OG” will get shipped to Gitmo or worse now that his secrets have been exposed:

The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.

United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people.

The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers.

This went on for months without anyone thinking to alert the FBI about all of this classified material spooling out into the open. In a testimonial to OG’s hold over the group, the group didn’t leak any of the material into other arenas for months, either. One of the members called it a “Mount Everest” feeling, being read into the secret world of intelligence and national security.

That came with a price, however. OG demanded full engagement on the material as well as secrecy (ironically), apparently scolding members that didn’t study the material. He posted numerous videos of himself at gun ranges and handling weapons, apparently hoping to impress his acolytes with his bravado and skills. And it worked; one member thought of OG as “father figure,” especially since he understood better than most how legitimate the material was.

These same characteristics are found in other quasi-gnostic groups, with leaders claiming authority based on unique access to a Truth. You can get a sense of that from this member of the group, a minor who talks about how “charismatic” OG was and how “he always seemed to have the answers to everything”:

In that cultish sense, this seems familiar, right down to the persecution complex demonstrated by both the member and in OG’s valediction to the group. Gitmo? Come on, man. However, the online-gaming-platform aspect isn’t unique either. Just a few months ago, the Post reported on another leak of classified material in a “War Thunder” chat group, which itself was not the first time for such a means of transmission (via reader Brian P):

Video games have long led to fights: controllers thrown, unsubstantiated accusations of cheating, insults hurled at mothers and even dogs. But no one has ever leaked classified documents related to national security in a public forum to win an argument — until last year, twice. And then again this year.

Beginning in 2021, players of “War Thunder,” a popular, free-to-play vehicular combat video game, have thrice posted classified documents related to three tanks of British, French and Chinese origin in an online forum dedicated to the game. The posting of the documents was reported first by UK Defence Journal, which wrote that one poster, who uploaded the manual to a British Challenger 2 tank, said he was motivated by a desire to get a “War Thunder” developer to make the tank more accurate in the game. Another poster, who claimed to be part of a French tank unit, uploaded a Leclerc S2 manual while engaged in an online debate about its turret rotation speed. The motivations of the user who posted allegedly classified information about China’s DTC10-125 tank and a piece of materiel were not clear.

Those leaks were much less damaging. The tank data being shared was still classified but not of much importance, and the tanks themselves had been sold to other countries and the information shared widely with their militaries. It’s still a crime to share it, however, and the pattern emerging should give rise to worries over how many people with access to such material spend their time online in isolated groups such as these.

How can we improve security in today’s chat-room world? Foreign intelligence already use these chat rooms for recruitment, according to the Post’s report today. Those who hold security clearances are required to report contacts with foreign nationals, or at least they were when I had a clearance, but it was a lot more rare and unusual to have such contacts — even in 1997, when my last clearance ended. Gaming rooms and Discord servers bring users into contact with people all over the world — it’s a selling point — which makes reporting requirements a lot more complicated. And even if you’re inclined to report all of these foreign contacts, you’d have to first know that they’re actually foreign. (FWIW, I never had a foreign contact to report in my clearance years.)

And that doesn’t even cover this case. OG wasn’t making contact with foreign operatives, or at least that doesn’t seem to be his motivation. He just wanted to impress strangers and recruit them into his cult of personality and used US secrets as the quasi-gnostic Truth to achieve that goal. How do we guard against that?

We’d better figure it out, quickly.

As for OG, the Post either didn’t get his name or is withholding it while the FBI hunts him down. The acolytes wonder what will happen next, but they want to make one thing clear before OG gets caught. If he poses as a “whistleblower,” don’t buy it:

For all OG’s disdain for the federal government, the member said there was no indication that he was acting in what he thought was the public interest by exposing official secrets. The classified documents were intended only to benefit his online family, the member said.

“I would definitely not call him a whistleblower. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest,” he said, resisting comparisons to Edward Snowden, who shared classified documents about government surveillance with journalists.

Not much chance of believing that.

Update: Power Line’s Scott Johnson thinks the Post may have scooped the FBI:

I take it that the Post has precisely those two sources for the story along with material provided by the young source. Unlike the Post’s promotion of the Russia hoax, the sources for the current story do not appear to be deep state functionaries. It’s a long story and I may have missed something, yet I find no hint in the the Post story how the reporters tumbled to OG’s friend or the second source.

Neither the FBI nor the Pentagon has yet identified the leaker. One infers from the story that the Post has beat them to it. The FBI is busy worrying about the Catholic Church and the Pentagon about spreading the woke doctrine.

I didn’t notice that implication when I first read the Post’s article, but it does seem that none of their sourcing came from the investigation. Does that mean that the Post got ahead of the investigators? We’ll see soon enough, one supposes. They report that OG opened up a new Discord server, but one has to wonder whether that’s on the level or if OG has already been detained and is now working to rescue himself by implicating others. It seems like a strange thing to do if you’re supposedly on the run, but cult leaders don’t often act rationally either.