Daniel Henninger has a slightly different take on the security leak than mine, expressed in his Wall Street Journal column:
The revelation that for months the videogamer community was able to see highly classified intelligence documents allegedly pilfered from the U.S. government by a 20-something Air National Guardsman has repeatedly raised the question: How could this happen?
Maybe the better question for our times is: How could it not happen?
The U.S. has become a country where fantastic events occur almost weekly. If there is a sense that some normalizing function isn’t working as it should, the answer may be found in a once-familiar word—accountability.
Begin with the sprawling U.S. national-security bureaucracy, from which 21-year old Jack Teixeira allegedly took documents relating to Ukraine’s war with Russia and sensitive U.S. intelligence-gathering on allies and enemies. He allegedly shared them on a gamer messaging platform called Discord—a grimly fitting label for our current moment.
I attributed it to a lack of responsibility. Does responsibility require accountability?
Seems to me we have to have accountability because we have a portion of the population with no sense of responsibility.
Think about this:
A Biden administration rule is set to take effect that will force good-credit home buyers to pay more for their mortgages to subsidize loans to higher-risk borrowers.
Experts believe that borrowers with a credit score of about 680 would pay around $40 more per month on a $400,000 mortgage under rules from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that go into effect May 1, costs that will help subsidize people with lower credit ratings also looking for a mortgage, according to a Washington Times report Tuesday.
“The changes do not make sense. Penalizing borrowers with larger down payments and credit scores will not go over well,” Ian Wright, a senior loan officer at Bay Equity Home Loans, told the Times. “It overcomplicates things for consumers during a process that can already feel overwhelming with the amount of paperwork, jargon, etc. Confusing the borrower is never a good thing.”
Now I’m not sure I believe this. I learned from a doctor that bad credit decisions only come from greedy banks. “Liars loans” I think he called them. But now we have government, once again, trying to influence credit in the retail mortgage market. This just can’t happen, right? Well, except in 2005-2007 and now, that is.
When bad credit risks go bad; when the costs of bad credit are born by creditworthy people, will there be accountability for government policy? I dunno. Ask Barney Frank and Maxine Waters……….
As I’ve been saying for some time now, this is primarily a systemic issue. It’s the same policies and system that allowed this guy to take classified and share it with his gaming buddies as allowed Biden, Pence, Trump, and others to take classified for whatever reasons they did, either unknowingly or purposely.
Secondly, the need for security must be balanced against the need for people to access information and do their jobs. The easier access to information today is primarily the result of post-9/11 reforms that wanted to reduce the amount of “stovepipe” information in the intelligence community. But like anything else, that comes with tradeoffs. Everything always comes with tradeoffs.
Astounding, yes indeed.
With regards to our military muscle flexing over Ukraine and Taiwan, and reports that we cannot even supply Ukraine with enough shells and missiles for the postponed “spring offensive”, there was a time when Americans could smile and know the guys at the top would have a plan and the weapons shortfall would likely be a clever ruse.
Now though, that sinking feeling in your gut is telling you they don’t.
And the Ukraine adventure will likely end in familiar withdrawal and desertion from those who had given us their trust.
Carrie Lam had best consider the recent record of the West in negotiating her country’s future.
This isn’t your grandfathers NATO.
The estimates i have read suggest well over a million people have high level security clearances. As Andy notes the inability of people and systems to communicate was thought to lead to the failures of 9/11. If you want useful information to circulate so you catch problems but you also have security with that many people you make choices that involve tradeoffs. In this particular it sounds like the kid was the grandson/nephew of a former senior officer of that unit so there are secondary issues.
It deserves investigation and if there were problems that can be fixed that should happen but on the policy level would we rather have an occasional leak or an occasional 9/11? Of course its not a true binary choice but choices you choose will tend to point you one of those two directions. In my world I certainly see its effects. AS they do more to make hospital systems more secure they take more time, are mor4 cumbersome and people start looking for ways to work around them.
Steve
Accountability has never been an American practice. In parliamentry ministers routinely resign when things go awry. That never happens here. Of course, the ministers go back to their seats in Commons, and that can’t happen in presidential systems.
As to the leaks, there is speculation that some faction in the DOD and/or intelligence services did it to prevent further escalation in Ukraine. Teixiera was the tool.