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Comment by thewildginger | Hacker News Reader

I have never seen so much paranoia and conspiratorial thinking from Hacker news than with this story unfolding. Many comments saying "it can't be this easy and dumb, can it?" Ask any government worker who works in classified spaces, and the answer is overwhelmingly yes.

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People who haven’t worked in areas with classified/sensitive information don’t seem to appreciate that once you have the appropriate clearances, you’re considered trustworthy.

You are treated as one of the gang, and people will often willingly share information with you that may even fall outside of what you need to know.

If someone is motivated to then collect/disseminate that information, it is exceedingly simple. It is always going to be difficult to stop these sorts of leaks.

I mean, I watched a reality TV/gameshow host run the executive branch for 4 years, culminating in a press conference at The Four Seasons Landscaping. I don't know who expects competence from the federal government anymore, but it isn't me.

I'm in the same boat as you, but for very different reasons.

I have close to zero trust in the abilities or goodwill of Federal entities.

The thing about something like this is that there are always individuals who will seek gain from classified access for themselves. The US has a singular focus on financial gain, but mental evaluation needs to be a more clear part to this.

The problem is "clout" seekers are all over the military. Have a conversation with a person in a highly selective field in the military and you'll find a crazy high amount of capable narcissists and God complex egos to go around.

This is why I'm saying to a degree this isn't a surprise to people in the IC.

I’ve been there and I agree.

I bet any documents relating to planning for the Nordstream pipeline explosion were a lot more carefully controlled. These war planning documents were clearly distributed to a much wider audience, so leaks become much more likely.

It does also point towards a certain degree of disillusionment within military circles, the rank and file ar probably not thrilled about the idea of being sent overseas for another Iraq/Afghanistan style disaster, only in eastern Europe this time.

Please don't talk about hypothetical conspiracies as though they are fact on here. The rest of the Internet has enough of that.

We don't have any evidence around your claims other than speculation and that's not the point of this forum (in fact, the Discord where these docs were leaked seems like the exact kind of place for that comment).

I mentioned conspiratorial thinking, and they doubled down! It's scary. Thank you for being a voice of rationality. You put it better than me.

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