There’s much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth in the mass media about how Jack Teixeira’s criminal stupidity will:
- help Russian generals defeat Ukraine’s pending attacks by identifying attacking units and eliminating surprise
- really tick off our allies
- reveal key shortages of materiel (military-speak for ammunition, spare parts, supplies and weapons systems)
Uh, no. Let’s take these in order. (much more detail at Phillips O’Brien’s excellent substack postings.)
The upcoming offensive
Is the worst-kept secret since Trump’s sexual antics with porn stars.
Ukrainian officials, military leaders, Allied intelligence, Russian military bloggers have all talked about this. Heck, they even know the military units that will do the attacking. What we don’t know is when and where…and Teixeira’s documents don’t give a date or location..
Angry allies
What? An ally is spying on us? How…common.
Reality is everyone spies on everyone else all the time. There will be outrage and histrionics from politicians from Israel to Norway, all furious at such conduct.
All will be for public consumption, this will die down pretty quickly, and really…does anyone think allies will abandon the US or Ukraine over this?
Materiel shortages and impact thereof
This is perhaps the most ridiculous “disclosure.” There have been hundreds of public reports, news articles, blog posts and stories about this over the last few months.
Lastly, among the “revelations” in Teixeira’s documents is that our intelligence community has doubts about whether Ukraine’s upcoming offensive will achieve much.
Hardly. With some notable exceptions (e.g.the timing of Russia’s initial attack) US intel has a rather poor record of predicting what’s going to happen in Ukraine. And that is being kind.
What does this mean for you?
Top Secret…isn’t.
More than 1.3 million individuals have Top Secret clearances.
You can bet your house the Russians knew everything in Teixeira’s documents long before they hit Discord.
