Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and death spy stories and
the amazing devices and operations that made them possible. Now, let's get started
online gaming and espionage. US is Air National Guardsman Jack to Share. This
is a story from spy Scape found friends. Unlike many gen Z gamers during
COVID nineteen, he had a girlfriend known as Crow, a young woman he
never met. Person to Share also traded memes and war videos with virtual friends
on the Discord platform, and, if prosecutors are right, leaked hundreds of
US secrets to impress an unlikely group of military strategists. Chronically online team means
living at home with mom. The Massachusetts Airmen was not the first game or
accused of selling secrets online, not for money or ideology, but to sell
disputes scored bragging rights. To Share guilty in six counts involving Wilford retention and
transmission of national defense information. But he's not the only gamer again. Since
twenty twenty one, military intel has been posted three times in the war Thunder
Gamers forum. Technical specs of British and French tanks and intel about Chinese DTC
ten twenty five tank amo all apparently are genuine. The Discord leaks may be
in a class of their own. However, some describe them as one of
the biggest government leaks in the US history, more than three hundred pages of
highly classified intel from Pentagon assessments of the Russia Ukraine War two, Iran's nuclear
program. But with only four reported leaks and billions of gamers, can this
situation be really so bad? Well, according to the CIA officer, they
don't consider gamers to be eclipsing spies. There is some merit though to addressing
and considering this issue. An academic from Foreign Policy article in gaming said his
central arguments that the traditional acronym intelligence officers used to recruit recruit spies, which
is known as mice money, ideology, compromise, and ego. It's a
fifth addition to the described the durable, deep social ties experience by people heavily
involved in an online community. It's not really about video games, says Jonathan
Esconis. It's about the way the Internet is rewiring human sociality in ways of
current contraspionage practices do not know how to deal with. And this all started
something to say by the whistleblower Edward snowed In an intriguing stead of cyberspies who
play online games for a living. After World War Two, the US,
Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand struck a five eyes deal to share
signals intelligence SIGGEN, second sig I, n T sigent is, the satellites
and computer SIGAN and computer networks become more common. They're listening post transformers to
digital collection centers that hovered up foreign military intel and diplomatic secrets. By two
thousand, the NSA and Britain's g HQ were also spying on tens of millions
of online gamers games as when NSA analysts wrote enthusiastically or opportunity. During the
so called War on Terror, sand experts zoned in on millions of World of
Warcraft players, sucking up country and time zoned data, local IPI addresses,
and realm server addressers as well. According to classified documents by whistle lower Edward
Snowden, the online world wasn't the den of iniquity spies imagine, however,
terrorists. It seems we're more focused on the real world, and the snowed
In leaks led to media questions about privacy. This skepticism is well found,
establishing direct connections between acts of virtual vandalism and actual terrorism. While it isn't
clear, what isn't clear as post snowding is whether Five Eyes spies are still
targeting gamers. Perhaps the skies is under cover orcs. We're looking in the
shadows of chat forums, But are they really gamer is really a security threat?
Well, it depends. Gaming online is complex, So it depends online
gaming is surgeon worldwide. With world revenue were expected to reach twenty eight billion.
ZO means intelligence agency won't just want to recruit gamers and located intelligence leaks,
they also want to focus on preventing those leaks in the first place.
The biggest takeaway is that government needs to revisit its clearance process and stopped handling
out top secret access like it is candy