Hello world.
Would you risk treason to win an argument on the internet?
I'm guessing not.
But there's one community where people often will.
Just last week, classified military documents detailing the specifications of Chinese anti
tank ammunition were leaked on War Thunder's forums by a player just who wanted to win
an argument.
Now, for the uninitiated, War Thunder is an "MMO military game dedicated to aviation,
armoured vehicles, and naval craft" - I used to play it a few years ago, and way back when
tutorial videos were my thing, I made a video on how to make a diy head tracker for the
game using a playstation eye camera and a floppy disk - linked below if you're interested.
I wouldn't go so far as to call war thunder a simulator, but the devs do put a lot of
effort into making the game as realistic as possible, giving vehicles and weapons realistic
stats - to make them at least resemble the real thing, whilst at the same time abstracting
away enough complexity so you don't need to use half they keys on your keyboard to use
the vehicles.
Because of the level of detail in the game, War Thunder tends to attract a lot of people
who are shall we say really quite passionate about military hardware - in War Thunder's
forums you'll find discussion on every minute detail surrounding military vehicles you could
possibly imagine, with people complaining about the smallest of technical inaccuracies
within the game, and fair enough if that's what you're into.
But, this is where the problems crop up.
As I'm sure everyone who's spent more than 5 minutes on twitter knows, internet arguments
tend to get quite heated, and in the War Thunder community this can on occasion lead to players
leaking classified military documents just to prove they're right about some small technical
detail.
The first example of this was in 2019 when a player who also just so happened to be a
former British Army tank commander, leaked classified specifications of the UK's challenger
2 tank (which is still in service by the way) just to prove that the devs didn't “didn’t
model it correctly” in-game.
I'm not showing the leaked document, and to be honest I didn't even bother searching for
it - because even possessing it in the UK is very illegal.
But it's said that in an attempt to sneak under the radar the player who leaked the
schematics crossed out the "Restricted" stamp on the document, and replaced it with an unclassified
sticker he found on google images - now obviously this fooled no one.
Not least the UK's ministry of defense, who reminded everyone that those possessing the
document face up to 14 years in prison under the official secrets act, but I don't think
anyone was ever charged.
Then just a few months after that incident, a French soldier risked treason by leaking
details about France's main battle tank, the "Leclerc", apparently because he wasn't happy
that the rotation speed of the turret in-game was ever so slightly inaccurate.
And now, for the third time a user has leaked classified information in an attempt just
to win an argument - this time it was the turn of Chinese solider who I imagine lost
some social credit points when he leaked details about the Chinese anti tank ammunition "DTC10-125",
the user posted an image of what looks to be the tungsten penetrator alongside a specsheet
- it's all in Chinese of course but translated copies appeared on reddit almost instantly.
And I'm not too keen on being put on a list, so if you're after the unblurred version you'll
have to do a googles, but if you're not a tank enthusiast it'll probably mean nothing
to you anyway.
So none of these leaks detail futuristic weapons like lasers so railguns, but rather small
details of already known about military hardware - so I don't imagine intelligence agencies
are salivating at these leaks.
But it is always useful to know the capabilities of your opponent's weaponry.
All this leaking puts the War Thunder's devs in a strange situation, as they've chosen
not to let leaks of classified information influence game development, because that would
encourage more leaks which would quite easily get the devs on the wrong side of governments
- a pretty bad business move, especially when it comes to China, as it really doesn't take
much to get a game banned there - I mean, just check out the wikipedia page for banned
games in China.
Animal crossing of all things was banned because a small handful of players held virtual protests
during the corona lockdown.
And Battlefield 4 was banned because the bad guy was Chinese.
So, encouraging people to leak top secret military documents I imagine would quite easily
top this list.
Not letting these leaks influence the game places the devs in an awkward position in
that they know the game mechanics are technically inaccurate, but they just can't do anything
about it.
And, I imagine the leakers are aware they absolutely have zero chance of changing the
game, and if anything that makes things worse, as they're literally risking treason only
in order to win an argument and prove a point, "welcome to the internet" I guess.
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And I'll see you in the next video, have a good one.