Insider Finance - Business - Inside the Pentagon leak

Hello, Insiders. I sent a memo to the Insider newsroom this week about artificial intelligence and journalism. You can read it here.

The TL;DR: AI — specifically, ChatGPT — can be useful for research and brainstorming, but it’s not a journalist. It often gets facts wrong. So we will use it very carefully, and our reporters and editors will always be accountable and responsible for accuracy, fairness, originality, and quality in every story we publish.

As for today’s newsletter, our senior correspondent Mattathias Schwartz is breaking down what the Pentagon leak means for the US’s secrecy system. Let’s start there.

— Nicholas Carlson

Jack Teixeira, an airman at a National Guard Unit in Massachusetts, was indicted Friday for leaking hundreds of classified documents to a private Discord server.

At 21 years old, his alleged behavior indicates that despite his training, he was little more than a child. Teixeira seems to have spent much of his free time hanging out online, arguing with strangers, and venting reportedly racist opinions, Insider’s Mattathias Schwartz reports. Nevertheless, the United States government allegedly saw fit to grant him access to some of its most closely guarded secrets.

The math has been stacked against the secret-keepers for a generation, from Edward Snowden to Reality Winner. But what’s different about Teixeira is his apparent motive. 

Teixeira allegedly did it not for country, but for clout. The case exposes how the US classification system is failing on its own terms — namely the ability to make a select group of people trustable in the keeping of secrets.

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