Mined Too Far

Minecraft has been popular since its release in November of 2011 and still maintains over 140 million active monthly users in 2023 according to Matthew Woodward of Searchlogistics. Adam Couch is someone whos familiar with the game and has been playing for a long time. “I used to play Minecraft when I was younger and got back into it during 2020 quarantine times since there wasn’t much other stuff to do. I still will hear about Minecraft every once in and while because of videos on Tiktok.”

 Recently there has been a big controversy surrounding the popular game. Minecraft isn’t in controversy because of a change to the game the devs have made, some decision a popular player of the game has made, or any of the other basic events that would stir up a controversy, the reason the game is being talked about even more than usual is because of a Minecraft Discord that has leaked U.S documents.

There have been over 100 secretive U.S. military documents leaked inside of a Discord that was meant for fans of Minecraft to meet and play the game together. Discord has security measures such as 2-factor authentication and the ability to choose who can message you. Marc Benz is a user of Discord and believes that blame shouldn’t fall on Discord. “I use Discord to talk to my friends when we play games together because it’s free and easy to use. I feel like the protective measures Discord takes is usually enough but it’s really up to the admins of the servers to maintain what’s allowed and not allowed in servers.” 

Some of the most daunting secrets that have been uncovered have been the mention that the U.S. has found a way to infiltrate Russia with official spies. Another section of the documents has revealed the alleged plans of Russia inside of Ukraine and how their military will carry on the war that was started in February of 2022 due to Russia invading Ukrainian territory.  

The legitimacy of these documents is still up in the air for debate but with the reaction that the U.S. Pentagon has given it seems that these documents might be official. If this is true then that makes this whole situation a huge embarrassment for the U.S. Pentagon and military services. Gabriel Okelloh believes that the ongoing events are pretty crazy. “I think that if the whole situation is true then there’s more to be worried about for the U.S. population. There’s probably more going on that the public doesn’t see and may never see.” 

It does make you think about how if over 100 secret documents could be leaked seemingly overnight on a discord server that is open to the public just imagine what could be happening behind the scenes in more private and secretive groups that might be trying to expose more U.S. documents. Will the entire situation boil down eventually or will this be an ongoing problem that can recur in the future? 

The man who owned the discord server titled “Thug Shaker Central” named Jack Teixeira was arrested at his home in Massachusetts on April 13th, 2023. Jack is a 21-year-old member of the U.S Air National Guard and is the one who is believed to be behind the documents leaks. Was this the man actually behind the leaked documents is or this all a cover-up for something greater? Only time will tell.