The gamers behind a leak of state secrets
发布时间 2023-04-13 22:01:23 来源
I mean, in my career, when people leak classified information, usually if they give it to a reporter, it's because they want to expose what they think is wrong doing by the government, or they have an axe to grind. I've never encountered an instance when someone was releasing classified information because he wanted to impress a bunch of teenagers.
我的意思是，在我的职业生涯中，当人们泄漏机密信息时，通常如果他们将其提供给记者，那是因为他们想揭露他们认为政府的错误行为，或者因为他们有私人恩怨。我从未遇到过有人泄露机密信息是因为他想给一群青少年留下深刻印象的情况。
This is my colleague, Shane Harris. He covers national security and intelligence for the post. Last week, it was revealed that a trove of classified US military documents had been mysteriously posted online. The Snowden leaks were one of the things that we're all familiar with from having seen documents of this sensitivity out in the wild. I think this leak is actually more significant in some respects. What we're seeing here in these discord leaks, it's just like a tour of the world. And it's real time. I mean, some of these are referring to events that have just happened. And with such specificity and such detail, it's one of the most extraordinary disclosures of classified information I've ever seen.
这是我的同事Shane Harris。他为这份报纸报道国家安全和情报。上周，一批机密的美国军事文件被神秘地发布在网上。我们都熟悉斯诺登泄漏的事情，因为我们已经看到过这些敏感文件在公开场合出现。我认为这次泄漏在某些方面实际上更为重要。在这些discord泄漏中，我们可以看到全世界的旅游景点。而且是实时的。我的意思是，其中一些是指刚刚发生的事件。这些信息非常具体和详细，是我所见过的最神奇的机密信息披露之一。
On Thursday afternoon, we learned that authorities had arrested Jack Tashira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Online, he goes by Jack The Dripper. He's known among his group of friends as OG. But all week, reporters like Shane have been trying to figure out why would someone do this? In a major break to the story, Shane sat down with a friend of the leaker, one of the young men who was a member of the online community where this all started. This was a very unusual experience. Not only is this person someone who appears to be at the center of this manhunt, he's a teenager. Go ahead and tell it in your works.
周四下午，我们得知当局逮捕了马萨诸塞空军国民警卫队的21岁成员杰克·塔什拉。在网上，他使用的名字是杰克·滴答者。在他的一群朋友中间，他被称为OG。但整个星期，像谢恩这样的记者一直试图弄清楚为什么会有人这样做？在这个故事取得重大突破时，谢恩与泄密者的一个朋友坐下来交谈，这个朋友是所谓线上社区的年轻人之一，一切都是从那里开始的。这是一个非常不同寻常的经历。这个人不仅似乎是这场搜捕的核心人物，而且还是一个青少年。请您用您自己的话解释一下。
Right. Because this is your chance to tell your story to people. I'll try to reduce my um, because I say I'm a lot when I'm thinking about something. That's OK. Importantly, because he's underaged, the first thing that we did was we obtained the consent from his mother, who was his legal guardian, to speak to him. He didn't want to be named or identified. I wouldn't call you by your name, and obviously don't use your name. Just sort of have to edit that. It was both felt very normal and that I've conducted countless interviews before in my career and unique in that I've never sat down to interview a teenager who has insight into highly classified government documents that the FBI is currently looking for. From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Libby Casey, your guest host.
好的，因为这是你向人们讲述你的故事的机会。我会尽力减少我“啊”的频率，因为当我思考某些事情时，我会频繁使用这个词。这没关系。重要的是，因为他未成年，我们做的第一件事就是从他的监护人——他的母亲那里得到同意与他交谈。他不想被称呼或被识别。我不会用你的名字称呼你，显然也不会透露你的身份。只需稍作编辑即可。这让我感觉既非常正常，因为我在职业生涯中进行过无数次采访，但同时也非常独特，因为我从未坐下来采访过一个有洞察力的十几岁少年，他对FBI目前正在寻找的高度机密的政府文件有了了解。来自《华盛顿邮报》新闻室的报道，这里是《邮报报道》。我是你的嘉宾主持人莉比·凯西。
It's Thursday, April 13th. Today, we hear from a teenage friend of the man behind a massive leak of state secrets and get into why and how these confidential documents ended up in the hands of a bunch of young gamers. The story really for us begins after the initial leak of these documents. And now to the mystery involving top secret military documents. This morning, there are growing concerns over the security of the United States Defense Secrets after classified. One cat, the Belly Code Organization, had traced some of these documents to telegram and to Twitter where they seemed to be floating around. Like all journalists were looking at the documents that we can find and were asking questions.
今天是4月13日星期四。我们今天听到了一位年轻朋友的故事，他认识那个泄露大量国家机密的人，并探讨了为什么和如何这些机密文件落到了一群年轻游戏玩家手中。我们的故事真正开始于这些机密文件最初泄漏之后。现在，有日益加剧的担忧，关于美国国防机密安全的问题。其中，猫背组织追踪到了一些文件，它们正在电报和Twitter上飘荡。就像所有的记者一样，我们在寻找我们可以找到的文件，并且在询问问题。
We started trying to piece together how do we learn more about not only them, but where they came from. I think we quickly realized that officials had basically no idea that we could tell them they didn't seem to know where this stuff was coming from. They seemed actually quite in the dark about how much information there actually was that was floating around. We then managed to through some of these channels where things were appearing, locate and make contact with an individual who was a member of a Discord server. And in this server was a small community of friends who have been friends for many years. Playing games, watching movies, discussing cars and their pets and such. You can think of it as a virtual community where people get together to hang out. And this person was in a group with another person, an older man in his early 20s, who he only refers to as OG, who was the leader of this Discord group. And in this channel, there was classified documents being posted by a user who I refer to as OG from this point.
我们开始尝试拼凑出如何了解更多关于它们及它们来自哪里的信息。我认为我们很快意识到，官方基本上不知道我们可以告诉他们，他们似乎不知道这些信息来自哪里。他们似乎对于实际上有多少信息在流传中是一无所知的。然后我们通过一些出现的渠道，找到并联系一位Discord服务器成员的个人。在这个服务器上有一个小型的社区，由已经成为朋友多年的朋友组成。玩游戏、看电影、讨论汽车和宠物等等。你可以把它看作是一个虚拟社区，人们可以聚在一起玩乐。这个人和另一个人一起组成了一个小组，那个人是个二十出头的年长者，他只被称为OG，是这个Discord小组的领袖。在这个频道里，一位用户发布了机密文件，从现在开始我称他为OG。
When do you first remember him posting classified information in the Thugshaker central server? I want to say about eight months ago. And it was originally... And this kid basically told us that over the course of a number of months beginning last year, OG, who he said worked at a military base, began sharing highly classified information with about two dozen people in this Discord server. I mean, putting it bluntly, there's talks of foreign intelligence agencies who's supplying what and what wars, who's funding certain things, nuclear weaponry. There's talks of predictions on strikes, ICBM stuff. And I mean, that's hardly touching the iceberg.
你最早记得他何时在Thugshaker 中央服务器上发布分类信息？我想说大约是八个月前。最初...这个孩子告诉我们，从去年开始，OG（他说在一个军事基地工作）在这个Discord服务器上与大约两打人分享高度机密的信息。坦白地说，谈论外国情报机构的供应和谁提供资金、核武器，以及预测攻击、洲际弹道导弹等等。而这还仅仅触及了冰山一角。
Did he get the magnitude of what was unfolding in his life? It's... Did he get the magnitude of it? I mean, is a question that I think I've been asking since I met him. He understands how highly classified the information is. No question. He understands that what OG did was potentially illegal. He was a very smart man. He was aware 100%. A man this smart would not be unaware that this was illegal. And sharing it with people who weren't authorized to see it. What I couldn't sometimes quite understand is if he understood, you know, that this wasn't a movie. That this was real. And that, you know, he himself, you know, was potentially in some level of jeopardy. You know, you can kind of hear in his voice sometimes when he's talking.
他是否意识到自己所经历的事情的重要性呢？这是我遇见他以来一直在问自己的问题。他明白这些信息的机密程度非常高，这一点毫无疑问。他知道OG的行为可能是非法的，他是一个非常聪明的人，100%地清楚。这样聪明的人不会不知道这是非法的，更不会把这些信息分享给未经授权的人。我有时无法完全理解他是否意识到，你知道，这不是一部电影，而是真实存在的。他自己也可能处于某种程度的危险之中。你可以从他说话时的语气中有所察觉。
And he's very... He's very presentational. And he sounds frankly a lot older than he is sometimes. But then there are times where I think you can tell this is a teenage kid. I mean, sometimes the way he mistates a word or the way sometimes the idea is seen a little bit grandiose. So you feel like this is kind of like a burden of knowledge that you have to carry? Correct. I feel I know stuff that nobody should know. But if our government knows, then people must know.
他非常喜欢表现。有时，他的声音听起来比实际年龄老很多。但是有时候你可以感觉到他还是一个青少年。比如有时候他会错用某个词语，或者有超过实际情况的想法。所以你觉得这是一个你不得不承担的知识负担吗？ 对的。我感觉我知道的东西不应该让任何人知道。但是如果我们的政府知道了，那么人民也应该知道。
You know, we were very, I think, diligent about really impressing upon him, you know, the seriousness of the subject matter, our commitment to protecting his identity and making sure that he understood that when he sat down for an interview, which he wanted to do, and he understood like, this is for real. This isn't a video game. And you're not in a discord server, you know, the millions of people are going to hear what you have to say. What's actually in these documents?
你知道，我们非常努力地告诉他，让他明白这个话题的严重性，我们保护他身份的承诺，确保他知道当他坐下来接受采访时，这是真实的。这不是一个视频游戏。你也不在一个Discord服务器里，你知道，数百万人听到你想说的话。这些文件里实际上有什么？
And it sounds like Shane, you have now gotten access to a whole new cache of documents that you're pouring through. How important is this stuff? In terms of what is there, there are several categories you've already found. Some of it is information that appears to be briefing documents prepared for senior military and government officials about the war in Ukraine.
听起来像是，Shane，你现在已经获得了一批新的文件，你正在仔细阅读。这些东西有多重要？就内容而言，你已经发现了几个类别。其中一些是关于乌克兰战争的军方高级官员和政府官员准备的情报文件。
So positions of forces on the battlefield, how the conflict is going, what the forecast for the war is, the level of munitions down to the level of individual, you know, troop units and battalions. There's information that appears to come from a source of daily intelligence updates that are circulated kind of like, you know, a world bulletin, if you want to think of it that way, to policymakers and officials with the appropriate clearances.
在战场上的力量位置，冲突的进展情况，战争的预测，甚至到个人、军队单位和营的弹药水平都有信息。这些信息似乎来自每日情报更新的来源，这种情报会像全球公报一样被传播给有适当许可的决策者和官员。
So there'll be reports that will say things about, you know, for instance, you know, North Korean nuclear missile tests and it will like tell you we're getting this from satellite imagery or there's a document that will say, you know, the Russian Ministry of Defense is having meetings with the Wagner-Contra mercenary group. We know this from signals intelligence reporting, which means the US is intercepting the communications of some of these parties. So it's kind of like you could imagine like how I as a journalist would tell you facts and then attribute those facts to a source. It's almost like the classified version of that.
好, 所以会有报道会提到一些事情, 比如说, 你知道的, 北韩核导弹测试, 它会告诉你我们从卫星图像得到这个信息或者有一个文件显示俄罗斯国防部正在和华格纳门罗佣兵团开会. 我们知道这个是通过信号情报报告得知的, 这意味着美国正在拦截一些当事人的通信. 所以这就像是我作为一个记者告诉你一些事实, 然后将这些事实归因于一个来源. 这几乎就像是那个机密版本的。
Shane, why did this teenager talk to you? What was his motivation to speaking to Washington Post reporters? Well, I think that one of the things he said at the beginning was that he felt the public misunderstood the nature of these documents and why they're relieved.
谢恩，这个青少年为什么跟你说话？他跟《华盛顿邮报》记者说话的动机是什么？我想他在一开始说的一件事情就是他觉得公众误解了这些文件的性质以及它们为什么被公开发布。
Well, OG, I want to get this right out of the way. He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative. I'll go as far to say he's not even on the east side of the world. Any claims that he is a Russian operative or pro-Russian is categorically false. He is not interested in helping any foreign agencies with their attack on the US or other countries.
嗯，OG，我想先说清楚。他不是俄罗斯特工，也不是乌克兰特工。我甚至可以说他甚至不在世界的东边。任何声称他是俄罗斯特工或亲俄罗斯的言论都是彻头彻尾的谎言。他对帮助任何外国机构攻击美国或其他国家完全不感兴趣。
You know, he had the idea that the government, the US government was trying to tell people these were all forgeries by Russia. If you think the documents are fake, you're lost. They're very lost and I do not believe that you have a full understanding of how this works.
你知道吗，他认为美国政府试图让人们相信这些文件都是俄罗斯伪造的。如果你认为这些文件是假的，那你就错了。你很迷茫，我不相信你完全理解这是怎么回事。
And there was, you know, one or two documents in the very beginning that were leaking out that appear to have been altered pretty obviously. One of them was a document where someone altered the casualty figures in Ukraine to make it look as though fewer Russian soldiers were dying than the documents said were dying. And people, I think, inferred, well, that's maybe a Russian trying to change the document and make it more favorable. But it appears that that document was altered after it got out of the Discord server and got onto the wider internet. So he wanted to dispel any notion that these were all fake government, all fake documents because he said, you know, they're not.
开始时只有一两份文件泄露出来，很明显被篡改了。其中一份文件把乌克兰的伤亡数字改得不太对，使人误以为死亡的俄罗斯士兵比文件上说的少。有人想，可能是俄罗斯人想修改文件，让它更有利。但是，看起来这份文件是在从Discord服务器上流出，并传到更广泛的互联网上之后被篡改的。因此，他想澄清这些文件不是全部都是虚假政府文件，因为它们不是这样的。
I mean, I know these documents, I've read these documents, I've been seeing them for months and months and months. They're real. And I know who gave them to us. And he also said he wanted to make sure that people didn't think that OG had a political stake. He kept saying he's not pro-Russian, he's not pro-Ukrainian, he's not pro-any-state. Remarkably, he also said he's not a whistleblower. There was no heavy Snowden-like conspiracy here, like some people may believe this was more or less just him wanting to keep people informed and at least you know.
我知道这些文件，我已经读过这些文件，我看了很多个月。它们是真实的。我知道谁给我们的。他也说他想确保人们不认为OG有政治上的利益。他一直说他不支持俄罗斯，他不支持乌克兰，他不支持任何国家。值得注意的是，他还说他不是一个告密者。这里没有什么像斯诺登那样的阴谋，有些人可能认为这更多的只是他想让人们知道事实并且至少你知道了。
Why did he say he was sharing them? What was the point of sharing them with you? He said it was he was sharing them with us to keep us informed and in the loop about how the world is going right now.
他为什么说他要分享它们？分享它们的意义是什么？他说他要和我们分享它们，是为了让我们了解当前世界的状况，让我们始终保持知情状态。
You said he wanted to keep you all in the loop. Why did he feel it was important for you to be in the loop and aware of these events in the world? Everyone was like a brother or sister in this server. And he found it important that everyone was acting with due diligence and keeping people's peace of mind, whether or not people found peace of mind in these documents. I want to say he almost felt like this was giving people peace of mind to be able to read these documents and to understand. My interpretation of this is that OG kind of wanted them to be you know wise to the world around them and to understand that there were bigger things that were happening that you need to be clued into. I mean you know I'm not sure he would use the phrase like wake up sheeple but I mean there's a little feel of that kind of let me enlighten you into how things really work.
你说他想让你们都了解情况。他觉得让你们知道这些世界上发生的事情很重要吗？在这个服务器中，每个人都像兄弟姐妹一样。他认为每个人都应该尽职尽责，保持大家的心里平静，不管人们是否能从这些文件中找到内心的平静。我想说，他几乎觉得让人们阅读这些文件并理解它们会让人们感到平静。我的理解是，OG想让大家明白身边的世界，了解发生的更大的事情，你需要跟上时代的脚步。我的意思不是他会用“醒醒吧，羊们”这样的话，但有一点点类似于“让我给你揭示事情真相”的感觉。
And in many of these documents we started to get a better understanding of the world and the current situation way before any news outlets or anyone else was aware of them. And how did that feel to know things before the rest of the world knew them? It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest. It felt like I was above everyone else to some degree in that I would be able to brag to some people that I knew stuff that they didn't. And of course, most people did not believe me. However, me knowing that I knew it myself was more than enough to keep my ego high.
在很多文件中，我们开始更好地了解世界和当前形势，比任何新闻媒体或其他人还早。知道比其他人更早，你感觉如何呢？感觉就像站在珠穆朗玛峰的顶峰。感觉比别人高出一些，因为我可以向某些人吹嘘我知道他们不知道的东西。当然，大多数人并不相信我。但是，我知道我自己知道，这已经足够让我的自尊心高昂了。
I mean you hear him saying this teenager I felt like I was above everyone else. I felt like I was on the top of the world hearing these secrets and knowing this information. And I think you know we can kind of put ourselves in those shoes a little bit. There's a real thrill and a rush that you get from having access to information that very few people have. So I do understand to some degree why this was so exciting.
我是说你听他说这个十几岁的孩子，我感觉自己高人一等。听到这些秘密，知道这些信息，我感觉自己站在世界之巅。我想你知道我们有些人能够想像自己处在他们的位置上。获取少数人知道的信息真的让人非常兴奋，带来一种高度紧张的感觉。所以我在某种程度上理解为什么这件事情非常令人激动。
What it seems to me though is that OG kind of wanted to live in that place maybe like he really enjoyed showing these other people that he had this information and he wanted them to have it too. It's hard to know more deeply about his motivations, but he clearly it seems to me anyway was getting some kind of a rush and a satisfaction out of showing people this information that after all he was forbidden by law from showing them. So just in the act of doing it he's not only letting them in on a secret he's committing a crime. And I don't know if that adds to the thrill but it certainly raises the stakes.
在我看来，OG似乎想要生活在那个地方，可能是因为他真的喜欢向其他人展示他拥有这些信息，并且希望他们也拥有这些信息。很难更深入地了解他的动机，但他显然似乎从中得到了某种令人兴奋和满足的感觉，因为毕竟他被法律禁止向他人展示这些信息。因此，仅仅通过这样做，他不仅把他们介绍到了一个秘密，还在犯罪。我不知道这是否增加了他的兴奋感，但它确实提高了赌注。
Wow. How did this teenager originally meet OG? How did they first connect? So they met online about four years ago. He said they actually met in another discord server that was a hub for fans of a YouTuber called Oxide. Oxide is known for posting you know basically like military fanboys stuff lots of guns, military tech hardware.
哇，这个青少年最开始是怎样认识OG的呢？他们最初是怎么建立联系的？他们约4年前在网上认识的。他说他们实际上是在另一个Discord服务器上见面的，那个服务器是为了支持一个叫Oxide的YouTuber的粉丝而设立的。Oxide以发布类似于军事迷的内容而闻名，包括大量的枪支、军事科技硬件等等。
If you look at the Oxide channel it just looks like you know lots of you know it's like reviews for weapons and it's you know pictures of tanks. and it's you know people in combat play and this kind of thing. What they say is that they found the room you know kind of too crowded and they wanted some place where they could focus more on their own gaming pursuits and they could just kind of hang out and talk more about game techniques and sort of get to know each other better.
如果你看看Oxide频道，它就像是一些关于武器评论的内容，以及坦克的照片，还有人们在作战中的画面等等。他们说他们觉得房间太拥挤了，想要一个地方可以更专注于自己的游戏追求，可以闲逛并更多地谈论游戏技巧，更好地互相了解。
You know it's also important to point out too that both of these guys including OG spend a lot of time on the internet posting racist and anti-Semitic memes and jokes that are really offensive and it's possible that they maybe wanted a place where they could do that frankly a little more in private too.
你知道，同样需要指出的是，这两个人，包括 OG ，经常在互联网上发布种族主义和反犹太的梗和笑话，这些言论实在是令人反感的，他们可能想要一个更私密的地方来表达这些话题。
So they go off and they migrate to this other server that OG is the becomes the administrator of and the server is called thug shaker central and it's important to know that name also is a racist illusion and it gives you a sense I think of the kind of tone of the room like this is a place where almost all men are hanging out and telling some really gross offensive jokes and then when the pandemic hits this becomes their sanctuary it becomes the place where they can come and talk to friends that they can't see in real life where they can continue playing games and kind of have some sense of normalcy with these companions who are interested in many of the same things they are who talk in a lot of the same ways they do and the server became this kind of refuge for them and the pandemic.
于是他们离开并迁移到OG担任管理员的另一个服务器上，该服务器被称为“Thug Shaker Central”。这个名称是一个种族主义幻想，它让你感受到房间的氛围，就像这是一个几乎所有男性都聚集在一起讲些非常恶心的冒犯性笑话的地方。当疫情爆发时，这成为了他们的庇护所，他们可以在这里与那些生活中无法见面的朋友聊天，在这里继续玩游戏，并与那些对同样的事物感兴趣，用相似的方式交流的伙伴们保持一定的正常感。而这个服务器也成为了他们在疫情期间的避难所。
I mean the teenager told us that he was struggling with bouts of depression and that his friends in the server were able to help him out that OG counseled him specifically and this is where they formed this kind of you know deep family bond.
我的意思是，那个青少年告诉我们他正在与抑郁症作斗争，而他在聊天室里的朋友们能够帮助他，而 OG 特别地给他提供了咨询，这就是他们形成这种深厚的家庭纽带的地方。
So they're on this private channel and basically at some point this member OG just starts sharing highly classified material to the other members how does this start chain. OG talked a lot about world events and was pretty explicit about having insight or knowledge about things that you know your average citizen didn't have and he kind of held himself above other people I think in that way it's fair to say and sometime last year we think around the fall OG starts dropping into the server these long text posts kind of like imagine like long messages in a chat room as if he had taken documents home and then typed them out and these documents in this whatever was typed out had annotations so that people who weren't in any intelligence agency or had knowledge of any of those buzzwords would have a better understanding of what those words meant.
所以他们在一个私人频道上，基本上在某个时候，成员OG开始向其他成员分享高度机密的资料，这个链条是如何开始的。OG谈了很多世界事件，并且非常明确地表达了他对事物的洞察力或知识，这是你普通公民所不具备的，他有点把自己看得高人一等。我们认为，大约在去年秋天左右，OG开始在服务器上发布这些长文本帖子，就像在聊天室里发送的长消息一样，好像他把文件带回家然后把它们打印出来，这些文件和其他东西有注释，使得那些没有任何情报机构或者对那些术语没有了解的人们能够更好地理解这些术语的含义。
And as he explains that these are documents that he's brought home that he is transcribing by hand into you know by keyboard and by the teenage kids account OG shares hundreds of these files that he's made himself and we and we you know we have managed to see some of these files too and then OG gets annoyed because it doesn't seem like people are responding to them they're not posting comments on them they're not talking about them.
当他解释这些是他带回家来手写转录的文件，然后用键盘，而十几岁的孩子OG分享了他自己制作的这些文件，我们也成功看到了一些，OG感到很烦恼，因为似乎人们并没有对它们作出反应，他们没有在上面发表评论，也没有谈论它们。
So he started changing the format of the post from text files to image files and this was after a few debates and announcements saying that people were not paying enough attention to his post that he was making he wasn't putting all this effort into these text files with annotations for nothing and if people did not start paying attention to them more he would just either give them up altogether or get more lazy with them and I believe this is how eventually it turned into just image files.
他开始把帖子的格式从文本文件改为图像文件，这是在几次辩论和宣告之后的事情。他说人们没有足够注意他制作的文本文件，他不会白白付出这么多努力加上注释。如果人们不开始更加关注它们，他要么会完全放弃它们，要么会变得更加懒惰，我相信这就是最终它变成了图像文件的原因。
He starts sharing photographs and these are among them are the ones that everyone has now seen on the internet. There are these pages some of them look kind of yellow they've been folded into fourths many of them are maps and diagrams of what's going on in Ukraine on the battlefield you know satellite imagery there are some that are just pages of like a bulletin like an intelligence update of what happened today in country XYZ these were the documents that he was sharing with the group and kind of putting out there for their consumption.
他开始分享照片，其中一些是那些现在在互联网上广为人知的照片。这些页面中有一些看起来有点发黄，他们被四分之一折叠起来，其中许多是乌克兰战区的地图和图表，你知道，卫星图像。还有一些只是像情报更新的公告一样的页面，介绍了今天在XYZ国发生的事件。这些文件是他与这个组分享的，并放出供他们消费。
She and I just have to stop you like they're in there they're talking about guns and games and suddenly this you know giant text pops up that's about like strategy of the war in Ukraine. Yeah and like you know what Russian military units are doing in Europe I mean it's I this it is truly it is rather baffling you know that somebody just decides that is you know here I'm going to drop some knowledge on you in the form of a class of my government intelligence document.
她和我必须中止你的谈话，好像他们正在那里讨论枪支和游戏，突然出现了一段关于乌克兰战争战略的巨大文字。是啊，你知道俄罗斯军事部队在欧洲在做什么，这真的非常令人困惑，有人决定在政府情报文件的形式下向你传授一些知识。
Did the other members of this discord family understand how crazy this was? I don't think they did. No, I mean, in the in so far as most of them didn't even respond to it or seem to interact with it. They seemed more interested in playing video games and talking about guns and like you know sharing crude jokes. And I think that this, by the members' accounts, annoyed OG because he's like saying, "Look, I'm sharing this incredibly privileged stuff with you, why aren't you paying attention, you know? I mean, show respect."
这个Discord家族的其他成员明白这有多疯狂吗？我觉得他们没有。不，我是说，大多数人甚至都没有回应或似乎与之互动。他们似乎更喜欢玩视频游戏、谈论枪支，还有分享粗俗笑话之类的东西。据成员说，OG似乎很生气，因为他认为：“我在与你分享非常特权的东西，你们为什么不关注呢？我的意思是，要尊重啊。“
People were more, in fact, you would with other channels, such as the gaming channel, the guns channel, and the server when people came to this server was almost like an escape for them. However, being pushed directly back into international news was something that most people did not want to think of when they came into our server. Just like he was sort of, you know, confronting them with news and reality, what they were marched, and they were like entertainment, trying to just escape with things.
其实，人们更喜欢与其他频道比如游戏频道、枪支频道以及服务器等交流，当他们来到这个服务器时，这几乎像是一种逃避。然而，直接被推到国际新闻中是大多数人来到我们服务器时不愿意考虑的事情。就像他有点直接将新闻和现实摆在他们面前一样，他们想要的是娱乐，试图逃避某些事情。
Correct, and these text files and the, they were long. They were very long, you know. A lot of people did not want to divert time out of their day that could be spent maybe farming on a game to reading these files. That was almost like a school assignment. You know, I doubt that any of them were just blasé about. I'm sure they recognize that this was, you know, significant information, but they didn't stop and look at it the way I think, you know, you and I would where we'd say, "Whoa, wait a second, what is this?" And I mean, to me that's kind of baffling but at the same time, if I put myself in the shoes of like, you know, a teenager who's just there to like make weird jokes and hang out with other kids and, you know, and play video games, I mean, what do I know about a CIA document that talks about, you know, Ukrainian munitions supplies? I mean, over my head.
这些文本文件很长，非常长，你知道的。很多人不想抽出本来可以用于耕作的时间来阅读这些文件。这近乎就像是一份学校作业。我想，他们当中没有一个人对此漠不关心。我相信他们意识到这是重要的信息，但他们没有像我们这样停下来仔细看，像我们会说，“噢，等等，这是什么？” 对我来说，这有点让人困惑，但与此同时，如果我把自己放在一个只是想讲些奇怪笑话、和其他孩子们玩电子游戏的十几岁少年的角度来看，我对一个谈论乌克兰弹药供应的中情局文件又能知道多少呢？超出了我的能力。
And what's interesting to me too is that while, you know, many people appear, most people appear in the chat room not to have been or the channel not to have been interested in them, by the teenagers account, there were a number of foreign nationals in that group. He estimated that of the roughly half dozen or so that were active members in this particular channel where they were sharing the classified information, half of them were outside the United States, which I think raises some serious questions about, well, they may not have been talking about the documents, but is it possible that one or two of these members was silently watching and reading the documents very closely? I mean, do you know for sure who these people are in your chat room? I think, you know, as I was listening to that part of the account, I just imagined that, you know, a counterintelligence officer or an FBI agent's head would explode hearing that saying, "Hold on a second, you shared hundreds of classified documents in a room with two dozen unauthorized people, half of whom are not even in the United States, and then your mind goes to, well, did they copy the documents? They could. Where are those documents now? Are they sitting in foreign countries? Are they in the hands of government officials? Once they're on that other person's laptop, can that laptop be hacked? I mean, there's all kinds of ways that this information was likely to leak out."
我觉得有趣的是，大多数人在聊天室里出现，并不是因为对他们感兴趣，根据青少年的说法，有一些外国人在那个小组里。他估计，在分享机密信息的这个特定频道中，大约有半打活跃成员中有一半不在美国境内，这让人想到一些严重的问题，他们可能没有谈论文件，但是这些成员中的一两个是否悄悄地观看和仔细阅读这些文件呢？你确定你聊天室里的这些人是谁吗？我觉得，当我听到这部分描述时，我能想象得到，一个反间谍官员或一名联邦调查局特工的脑袋会爆炸，他会说，等一下，你在一个没有授权的人的房间里分享了数百份机密文件，其中一半甚至不在美国，那么你的想法是，他们复制了这些文件吗？这些文件现在在哪里？它们会被外国政府官员拿到吗？一旦它们被复制到别人的笔记本电脑上，这台笔记本电脑是否会被黑客攻击？这些信息泄露出去的方式非常多。
After the break, we talk about how the leaker lost control of the classified documents and what happened next. We'll be right back.
休息结束后，我们将讨论泄密者失去对机密文件的控制以及接下来发生的事情。我们马上回来。
The way you described it from your source, OG is sharing this information in this private discord channel, but then it gets out. How does OG start to lose control of the information he's sharing?
你描述的方式，OG在私人的Discord频道中分享了这些信息，但是它被泄露了出去。OG如何开始失去他分享的信息的控制？
Sometime in late February, a member of this discord channel takes some of the documents and posts them to a different discord server, and what happens then is it appears that it tends to kind of migrates into other channels, people start grabbing on to it, sharing it in their streams with their networks, and what I think is sort of the irony here is if you consider that OG took these documents in the first place from a safe zone where not many people could get them outside you know the confines of that classified environment and then shared them in his community, well, then someone in that community takes it outside of their safe zone and goes and shares it with a different community where people don't respect the controls over this information.
在二月末的某个时候，这个discord频道的一名成员拿走了一些文件，并将它们发布到另一个discord服务器上。然后情况就是这样，它似乎开始向其他频道迁移，人们开始抓住这些文件，并在他们的流媒体和网络中分享它们。我认为这里的讽刺之处在于，如果你考虑一开始OG是从一个安全区域拿走这些文件的，而不是许多人可以在那个机密环境的限制之外得到它们，然后在他的社区中分享它们，那么，然后社区中的某个人将其带到外面，与另一个社区分享，其中的人们不尊重这些信息的控制。
And that's when it appears to start getting out and spreading, and it seems that OG figures this out, and as this teenager told us, he sends a message this kind of very frantic voice message to members of the group where he says, "Something that I prayed and prayed would not happen is about to happen, you know, you'll see what I mean very soon, and now it's in God's hands," and sort of had their very scared and nervous, like, what's he talking about it, what's gone wrong?
然后，它开始出现并传播，而OG似乎意识到了这一点，就像这位青少年告诉我们的那样，他给小组成员发送了一条非常焦虑的语音信息，说：“我一直祈祷着不要发生的事情即将发生，你们很快就会明白我的意思，现在一切都交给上帝了。”他们感到非常害怕和紧张，不知道他在说什么，出了什么问题。
And as the teenager tells it, a few minutes later, the New York Times story about these classified documents being found on a discord server breaks, and it's at that point where the members of the group our sources have told us realize oh wow like somebody talked somebody shared something from within the community and this is what and they can look at the documents and they know right away what they are because they've seen them before and it's at that point that OG starts shuttering the thug shaker central server and basically goes to ground and you know sort of says goodbye to his friends and says I know I've got to lay low for a while you should lay low to get rid of this information get rid of any traces that you have to me it seems by this account that OG knows he's in trouble.
当这位少年讲述的时候，几分钟后，关于这些机密文件被发现在discord服务器上的纽约时报的报道出现了。据我们的消息来源所说，那时候小组成员意识到，哇，有人说了什么，从社区内部分享了一些东西，他们可以查看文件，他们立即知道那些文件是什么，因为他们以前见过。OG开始关闭负责暴徒动荡的中央服务器，基本上进入了潜伏状态，向他的朋友道别，告诉他们我知道我得低调一段时间，你们也应该低调一点，摆脱这些信息，摆脱任何与我有关的痕迹，据这个版本来看，OG知道他有麻烦了。
How long were the documents on the discord server and then leaking out of the discord server that private channel before the US government learned about them and what do we know about other governments learning about it too well it appears that the documents went up in late February and early March on this other discord server the wow mal server it seems like it was weeks before anybody in the US government figured out that these documents were there it's not even clear to me whether or not the Pentagon understood that they were out before the New York Times spotted them and there were people in the open source research community I'm thinking notably of a research trip belling cat who were finding these things popping up I mean at the time I don't think we knew exactly what they were but you know there were traces of this showing up you know before the time story broke.
在 Discord 服务器上的那个私人频道里泄露了多久的文件才被美国政府发现，我们了解到其他国家也知道了什么情况。好像这些文件在这个名为 Wow Mal 的 Discord 服务器上于二月末三月初上线，似乎是几周之后才有人在美国政府中发现这些文件。我甚至不确定五角大楼是否在纽约时报发现它们之前就已经知道了。开源研究社区中有一些人，尤其是像研究组织Belling Cat的研究员，他们发现这些东西不断涌现，当时我们不确定这是什么，但是在纽约时报报道之前，这些东西已经有一些踪迹了。
But you know the position of the government has been the US government has been for you know over a week now we're just trying to sort this out we're not really sure we're looking into who may have been we don't know how bad it's going to be we don't know if it's the end we don't know how much more there's out there and they I think that's true I don't think they do I don't think that they have a firm handle or haven't had a firm handle on how big the universe of documents actually is which kind of speaks to one of the basic problems here is you know why weren't they why aren't there systems in place that could track this Shane I've learned from your reporting that this was a concern that this was an area that intelligence officials knew was a vulnerable place of the internet.
你知道政府的立场已经是美国政府已经这样持续一个多星期了吗，我们只是试图整理这件事，我们还不确定是谁可能做的，我们也不知道情况有多糟糕，我们不知道这是否是最后一件，也不知道还有多少未知的情况存在。我认为这是真的，我认为他们没有牢固的掌握或者说一直没有牢固地掌握到这些文件的宇宙是有多大的，这其实也反映出了其中一个基本问题，为什么他们没有建立起能够追踪的系统呢。Shane的报道让我学到了这一点，他提到情报官员知道互联网的这个弱点是易受攻击的地方。
Yes, I mean I have spoken to you know one US official who said that you know for a while now for a number of years intelligence agencies have been concerned that gaming platforms are essentially a kind of hunting ground for spies. The concern was not unlike what you see here - that somebody from a foreign intelligence agency befriends another person, maybe a young impressionable person who works in a government intelligence agency or a government installation and has access to classified information. They get to talking, they become friends. Oh, what do you do that's so interesting? Fort Mead, Maryland? Oh, that's where the NSA is. How neat! You must see some really cool stuff at work. What if you show me something? I mean, it could be something as simple as that.
是的，我是指我和一位美国官员交谈过，他说情报机构多年来一直担心游戏平台本质上是间谍的猎场。这种担忧与此地所见的类似——来自外国情报机构的某人会与另外一位，可能是工作在政府情报机构或政府机构并且有访问保密信息的年轻易受影响的人交朋友。他们开始闲聊，成为朋友。哦，你在福特·米德，马里兰州工作，工作内容有趣极了！那里是国家安全局的所在地，真酷！你一定在工作中看到了很酷的东西。如果你给我展示一些东西怎么样？这可能只是一件很简单的事情。
And you know, you think, well, how gullible could a person be? This is how intelligence agencies operate. They find people with information. They flatter them, they cajole them, they give them incentives. The concern among this US official I spoke to was that, you know, recruiting someone in the virtual world is not all that different from doing it in the real world. I mean, think about how this discord server felt like a real-world community to the people who were in it. So, you know, I think that you know it, you can see now that the anxieties about this kind of scenario playing out where you've got someone that doesn't appear in OG's case to have been recruited per se, but who was willing to take information from a secure environment and then share it with people who weren't authorized to see it.
你知道，你可能会想，人们有多容易上当受骗呢？这就是情报机构的运作方式。他们找到拥有信息的人，恭维他们，哄骗他们，并给他们激励。我和一位美国官员谈过后，他的担心是，通过虚拟世界招募人员和在现实世界中并没有太大区别。想想这个Discord服务器，对于在其中的人来说，它就像一个真实的社区。所以，现在你知道，关于这种情况引发的焦虑已经能够看到，OG这种情况似乎并没有被招募，但他愿意从安全环境中获取信息，并与未经授权查看的人分享。
So to me you kind of see a version of this fear playing out in this case. After everything we've heard about young men and teenagers trying to impress each other and influence each other, can you take a step back for us and weigh how consequential the leak of these classified documents is?
嗯，对我来说，在这种情况下，你可以看到这种恐惧的一种版本在发生。考虑到我们听到过关于年轻男子和青少年试图打动彼此和影响彼此的事情，能否为我们退一步，权衡这些机密文件泄露的影响有多大？
I think that the leak of these documents, its consequences are twofold. On the one hand, it is causing you know, a pretty steady stream of headaches for the Biden administration because among other things, these documents are revealing particular allies and allied governments and officials that the United States is monitoring whose communications they may be intercepting. And you know, governments, you know, they get it, countries spy on each other, but it's always embarrassing when it leaks out that the United States is monitoring an allied government, and there's some diplomatic repair that has to be done there.
我觉得这些文件的泄露带来了两个方面的后果。一方面，这给拜登政府带来了不少头疼，因为这些文件揭示了美国正在监视的特定盟友、盟国和官员们的通讯，而这些文件的泄露已经成为了一个持续的问题。虽然国家之间互相监视很正常，但当美国监视一个盟友国家的情报公开后，就会变得很尴尬，因为这时需要进行外交修复。
The consequences on the war in Ukraine I think could be pretty significant. I mean, what these documents have revealed is that the United States has a very dim assessment about the prospects for this counteroffensive for the spring that Ukraine is mounting. It seems like privately officials are looking at the war and saying we are kind of in the last phase here before we get to a kind of grinding stalemate which raises all kinds of questions of whether or not the U.S. will continue supporting Ukraine or it's going to start pressuring Ukraine to kind of come to the negotiating table with Russia which has been this incredibly fraught proposition now for more than a year that the war has been going on.
我认为乌克兰战争的后果可能非常重大。我的意思是，这些文件揭示的是，美国对乌克兰在春季所展开的反攻前景非常悲观。似乎在私下里，官员们看待这场战争，认为我们在达成僵局前的最后阶段，这引发了各种问题，包括美国是否会继续支持乌克兰，或者是否会开始向乌克兰施压，让其与俄罗斯来谈判，而这已经是一年多以来一直极为复杂的问题了。
I know from talking to someone close to President Zelensky in the past few days that he's furious about this because it feels like it's showing the world that the United States is counting Ukraine out.
我最近几天和乌克兰总统泽连斯基的亲信交谈得知，他对此非常愤怒，因为这给人一种感觉，好像美国已经把乌克兰排除在外了。
There's also the question of, you know, as these documents are floating around, would a foreign intelligence agency be able to look at this and learn something about how the United States has managed to penetrate their inner ranks or how easy it is that the United States is collecting this information on the Russian Ministry of Defense?
还有一个问题，你知道的，就是这些文件在流传的过程中，是否会使某个外国情报机构得以了解美国是如何渗透到他们的内部层级的，或者美国收集俄罗斯国防部这些信息有多容易？
People in the intelligence community whose job it is to collect information jealously guard what's called sources and methods. They don't want their targets or the adversary to know how they know what they know about them. These documents start to reveal some of that.
情报界的人士负责收集信息，他们会嫉妒地保护所谓的信息来源和方法。他们不希望目标或对手知道他们是如何了解他们的情况的。这些文件开始透露一些信息。
And so... I think there's going to be a major movement quickly inside the intelligence community to try and do a damage assessment yeah because sources and methods is people and tools so there now has to be a scramble to make sure that people are protected that their lives are not in danger and that the methods of intelligence aren't discovered yeah exactly exactly and that's going to be like a major effort underway to shore that happen to protect those people.
因此……我认为情报团体内很快会发生一个重要的运动，试图进行损害评估。因为情报源和方法涉及到人员和工具，所以现在必须赶快采取行动，确保人员受到保护，他们的生命不受威胁，情报方法不被发现。确实，这将是一项重大工作，旨在保护这些人并加强保护措施。
Well Shane thank you so much for sharing such an incredible story thanks for having me appreciate talking about it thanks Shane Harris covers national security and intelligence for the post he reported this story with Samuel Oakford audio recorded by Whitney Shefftie and John Gerberg on Thursday afternoon.
谢谢你分享这么精彩的故事，Shane。感谢你邀请我，并且欣赏能够谈论它。Shane Harris在华盛顿邮报担任国家安全和情报方面的报道工作，他与Samuel Oakford一起报道了这个故事，由Whitney Shefftie和John Gerberg在周四下午记录了音频。
In a briefing, a Pentagon spokesperson emphasized that there are strict rules for people with security clearance. We do have stringent guidelines in place for safeguarding classified and sensitive information. This was a deliberate criminal act.
在一次简报中，五角大楼的发言人强调拥有安全许可的人有严格的规定。我们确实有严格的指导方针，以保护分类和敏感信息。这是一种故意的犯罪行为。
He also got questions about how this breach could have happened. General writer you say that there are strict protocols in place and yet a 21-year-old airman was able to access some of the nation's top secrets. How did this happen and isn't this a massive security breach again?
他也被问及这个安全漏洞是如何发生的。一般的作家说，已经有严格的协议了，但一名21岁的空军士兵仍然可以访问一些国家的顶级机密。这是怎么回事？难道这不是又一次重大的安全漏洞吗？
We need to allow the investigation to run its course. We'll of course know more when that is completed so I'd refer you to DOJ on it.
我们需要让调查顺其自然。等到调查结束时，我们当然会了解更多，所以我建议您咨询司法部对此事的看法。
That's it for post reports. Thanks for listening. Today's show was produced and mixed by Ted Muldoon. It was edited by Maggie Pennman. If you value this kind of reporting, please subscribe to the Washington Post. It's a great way to support the work we do. Go to washingtonpost.com/subscribe. I'm Libby Casey. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington Post.
那就是我们的新闻报道了。谢谢您的收听。今天的节目由泰德·马尔登制作与混音，由玛吉·佩恩曼编辑。如果您认为这种报道很有价值，请订阅华盛顿邮报，这是支持我们工作的绝佳方式。请前往washingtonpost.com/subscribe。我是利比·卡西。明天我们会回来，为您带来更多华盛顿邮报的故事。