The National Guard does top-secret things—and far too many other things

When the leaker of reams of top-secret intelligence briefings was exposed as 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira on April 13, national security experts reacted with shock. Even a former homeland security advisor to the Massachusetts governor professed herself baffled by the scope of Teixeira’s leak. How did a junior enlisted service member have access to these files—and an ostensibly part-time service member at that? But beyond the immediate damage of the leaked documents, Teixeira’s arrest reveals an even greater national security vulnerability: the state of the United States’ overlooked and overworked military reserves.

Read at Foreign Policy

Author

Gil
Barndollar

Non-Resident Fellow

Defense Priorities