About the Ukraine Intel Leaks

Forget the leaker culture-war. The intelligence itself is worrisome.

This photo illustration created on April 13, 2023, shows the suspect, national guardsman Jack Teixeira, reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. - FBI agents on Thursday arrested a young national guardsman suspected of being behind a major leak of sensitive US government secrets -- including about the Ukraine war. US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the arrest made "in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information." (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

Thanks to everyone who came over to Notes to join me yesterday. I’m going to be posting there more frequently and will try to make it something like my real Twitter feed, with both politics and news and also . . . other content.

If you didn’t make it over yesterday, come hang with me today.

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1. About the Ukraine Leaks

Don’t let your brain turn the Ukraine intel leaks into a front of the culture war. Now that we have the alleged leaker and he turns out to be a right-wing incel, the usual suspects want to make this another kabuki fight. Don’t let them.

The justice system will deal with Jack Teixeira.

The much more important subject is the substance of the leaked information.

The most worrisome takeaways from the documents are that portions of the defense establishment believe that:

• Ukraine’s air defenses are vulnerable enough that Russia could establish air superiority.

• There are ammunition and logistics shortfalls for the Ukrainian military that exceed what was generally understood.

• Optimistic projections for Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive are likely too hopeful.

First the caveats: These are largely pieces of SIGINT analysis. The intelligence may be misleading; or the analysis may be off. Or the situation on the ground may have changed between when the intel was collected, then analyzed, and today.

And there are pieces of analysis in the docs which would be good, if true. For instance, Russia’s Spetsnaz forces have been decimated.

But the overall concern is this: