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A note on leaked documents
🕑 Added 2023-04-25 07:09:13 +0000 UTCI've seen a number of questions come in asking for coverage of the reported US document leaks insofar as they relate to Ukraine. Actually that kind of undersells it, it's clearly the most requested topic in comments, emails and messages.
On one hand, I can see the value of covering what they appear to say - mostly because many sources out there appear to have figured out that you can claim whatever you want, attribute that claim to 'the leaked documents' and since most people will never see those documents, they might be taken seriously (even if there's no correlation between the leaked content and what they're claiming). I talked a bit about that phenomenon in my hybrid war video.
On the other, I am not going to publish, or re-distribute published materials that purport to be (whether real or not) classified docs. I hope you can understand why that might be a complete non-starter for me.
So any coverage I did would have to break many of my normal rules. I couldn't include a source list or refer to specific figures in the same way for example, which is dangerously close to the kind of 'source: just trust me' stuff that I'm normally quite critical of.
So I want to know if people would be interested in me talking about how the leaks change (if at all) our view of the war despite the limitations, or if people would prefer I stick to my current approach where I can speak plainly based on only public sources.
Comments
sixstringedthing
Coming back to note how spectacularly wrong I was on my "young'un would never have had access" take regarding the leak. We always must live and learn eh? :) I fucking hope that the Air National Guard learns a lesson too. Like, wow guys. Wow.
Rune
A form of a "short" video could be made about the dangers about using materials, such as the leaked documents. Therefor instead of talking about the leaked documents, it will be a more abstract discussion of how to handle sources like leaks. It could actual be made as a part of the larger tropic of just sources in general. How to evaluate and work with different sources, understanding them, and be aware of who made them, and for what purpose. I feel like there could be a lot of good subjects therein, which applies directly to all the tropics you're covering, and also is something we viewers can take note of and apply in many other situations.
