The man who recently leaked world-shaking classified government documents is reportedly a gun-happy bigot who was trying to impress his teenage gaming buddies in a Discord clubhouse. The Washington Post broke the news in a terrific story incorporating conversations with one of the man’s pre-adult acolytes. It seems the leaker, known by fans as “OG,” pilfered the documents from the military base where he worked. And you can bet he’s a nobody. As the Post notes: “Thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared.” But that didn’t stop him from becoming, first, king of the digital Lilliputians and, then, a threat to national security. OG “appears to have persuaded some highly impressionable teenagers that he’s a modern-day gamer meets Jason Bourne.”
And that’s how we arrived at our latest geopolitical crisis: cosplay gone wrong. A nonentity in the real world pulls a bunch of gamer kids into his fantasy life and rocks diplomatic relationships around the globe.
Read the whole thing.