What is Discord, the chat application where Pentagon documents were leaked?

In the recent few days, US intel leaks are raising the temperatures in diplomatic quarters in Washington as the country scurries to find out the source which triggered this turmoil. According to open source investigation site Bellingcat, the documents first leaked on the online media platform Discord where the pictures of the classified information was posted for everyone to see.

The leaks on Discord application came a month before it was first reported on 5 April. As per a report, some of these documents surfaced on Discord as early as January. If this is true, these documents have been breached for months now and are only now that it is creating ripples in Pentagon.

Bellingcat carried out an investigation to spot the source of the US intel leaks and found the roots of it in the now-defunct Discord server. The portal in an article under the title “improbable journey” said that three users confirmed the leak of these documents.

What is Discord?

Discord is a social media site for video game enthusiasts who can get connected with each other over the chat application. The app was co-founded in 2015 by a computer programmer Jason Citron.

However, just like everything, things changed for Discord during the COVID-19 pandemic. The application saw its popularity grow beyond its niche of people who played video games.

“Where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a worldwide art community." That is how the San Francisco-based site describes itself. The Discord server can be joined by anyone. People after joining the server can connect with each other.

How US intel leaks landed on Discord chat server?

As per AP news agency, a poster popped up in one of the server chats where people were engaged in a conversation around the Russia-Ukraine war. The report disclosed that an online person which goes by the name Lucca shared the documents. Later, these documents caught people's attention until it snowballed and got wider interest. However, all these details cannot be verified.

The leaks from Discord were also picked by image-based bulletin board website, 4chan. And once the cat was out of the bag, the documents also appeared on various other platforms like Twitter and Telegram.

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How did Discord comment?

“As this remains an active investigation, we cannot provide further comment at this time,” Discord said in a statement. Discord has stoked controversy previously as well.

A teenager, before killing 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, United States in a gun shooting, posted racist memes on the app.

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