By: Sunnie Gao
Video games have long led to fights, controllers being thrown, unbacked accusations of cheating, and insults. But never has there been a case of leaking classified documents related to national security in a public forum to win an argument. Until twice last year and three times this year.
Players of “War Thunder,” a popular free-to-play vehicular combat video game, have posted three classified documents on a public forum relating to the tanks of the British, Chinese, and French since the beginning of 2021.
All three posts were removed by Gaijin Entertainment, the forum’s host.
The posting of the classified documents was first reported by the UK defense journal, which said the poster who uploaded the manual of the British Challenger 2 tank was motivated to make the game’s tank more “realistic.”
Another poster who said he was part of a French tank unit uploaded a Leclerc S2 manual while engaged in an online debate about its turret rotation speed. And the motivations of the person who posted classified information about China’s DTC10-125 tank and a piece of material were not clear.
Tank experts said that the information leaked was not likely to be of great importance to hostile nations.
“It was from a user manual, so it’s classified, but it’s distributed fairly widely to anyone who uses the tank, supports it, or maintains it,” said Sonny Butterworth, a senior analyst for land platforms at Janes, a defense intelligence company.
Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst at the Teal Group, said that the only data that could be of potential interest would be the alleged dispersion data from the Chinese tank. The information is released by governments for companies at international arms shows as a way to entice potential buyers.
Butterworth and Zaloga agreed that a blueprint or documents detailing specific armor materials or configurations would be of most value to hostile notions.
“If publications keep getting leaked, something that looks innocuous could be quite important to someone who knows what to look for,” Butterworth said.
“We explain to the users again and again that it’s pointless to give us any documents that we cannot and won’t use, but we probably can do more to explain this,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is no way to completely prevent people from publishing something on the internet. We delete the posts and permanently ban those who break the rules, so our users know that they risk everything essentially for nothing.”
Barbara L. McQuade, a former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and University of Michigan Law School professor, said, “If you have [classified information] and communicate it, you are in violation of the letter of the law.”. Still, to be prosecuted, “there is a requirement that you have an intent to harm the United States or provide an advantage to a foreign country,” she said about 18 U.S. Code § 794.
Yudintsev said neither he nor his team anticipated this situation. They are continually surprised by users who leak allegedly classified documents on their forums.
“We’re happy that even military professionals like what we do,” Yudintsev said. “But breaking the law in order to win an argument online is too much. I’d like to ask all of them: please, never do that!”