Playing Military Sim War Thunder May Get You Classed As a National Security Risk (pcmag.com) 27
Playing the military simulation War Thunder is now reportedly considered an official risk on background checks. PCMag reports: As GamesRadar reports, a user going by the name Add Fiat 6616 Pls posted on the War Thunder subreddit earlier this week explaining how a friend of his had applied for a job at aerospace and defense conglomerate Raytheon Technologies. As part of the security clearance process, a private investigator is used to contact the candidates "witnesses," which is shorthand for their friends. Add Fiat 6616 Pls was one of those friends and therefore received a call to answer a range of questions in an attempt to discover if the candidate's lifestyle raised any red flags. One of those question was: "Does he play War Thunder?"
The question makes sense as part of a security check and national security assessment after you realize how much classified information has leaked via the game over the past few years. War Thunder is a free-to-play vehicular combat online multiplayer game developed by Russian game developer Gaijin Entertainment (which relocated to Budapest in 2015). Since 2021, there have been six incidents of restricted or classified documents being leaked during discussions about the accuracy of the vehicles used in the game.
The question makes sense as part of a security check and national security assessment after you realize how much classified information has leaked via the game over the past few years. War Thunder is a free-to-play vehicular combat online multiplayer game developed by Russian game developer Gaijin Entertainment (which relocated to Budapest in 2015). Since 2021, there have been six incidents of restricted or classified documents being leaked during discussions about the accuracy of the vehicles used in the game.
Do you play toilet mobile games? (Score:2, Offtopic)
War Thunder has always looked to me like yet another toilet mobile game. There are plenty of toilet mobile games to play on the toilet. PC and console games offer vastly superior experiences. I guess asking about War Thunder would at least tell Raytheon that the person already lacks discerning taste in games and therefore might also lack discerning taste in other areas, including when to refrain from sharing classified intel with potential enemies.
A better question might just be to come out and ask if th
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War Thunder has a mobile version? I always played on PC. They have a functional Linux version.
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you may be confusing war thunder with world of tanks... the first you have planes, tanks, helicopters, coastal boats, high sea ships ... world of tanks is just tanks, they also have world of warships, well, with ships... and yet another for planes (that was a failure)... and they have a mobile version of world of tanks for mobiles, little simplified from the normal one, that you can also say is lot simplified compared with war thunder
also war thunder you have 3 modes: arcade, a quicker and simplified game p
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and by the way, i play in the linux version, now with vulkan, it was a major upgrade from the old obsolete opengl version
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War Thunder has always looked to me like yet another toilet mobile game.
well, then you have never had an actual clue about what wt is, but thanks for sharing this irrelevant insight.
And It May Not (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on who you ask.
Slashdot article may get classified as spam (Score:5, Funny)
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Doubtful (Score:1)
That's not really difficult (Score:1)
With Friends Like These (Score:2)
The irony, is [CLASSIFIED] here... (Score:1, Flamebait)
"...vehicular combat online multiplayer game developed by Russian game developer...there have been six incidents of restricted or classified documents being leaked during discussions about the accuracy of the vehicles used in the game. "
It's rather ironic that the US Government is concerned about classified leaks happening when discussing the accuracy of a vehicular combat online wargame developed by THE Cold War enemy.
Your punishing concerns about a game tends to speak for itself, along with the matching Streisand Effect you're incredibly creating in a desperate attempt to sustain "secrets"
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"It's rather ironic that the US Government is concerned about classified leaks happening"
As part of the security clearance process, a private investigator is used
I find it ironic that they are still using private contractors to vet candidates for security clearances when they have probably lost more sensitive information through said contractors than they ever will through some stupid vidya game.
Russian game developer Gaijin Entertainment (Score:2)
Especially ironic, since the Russo-Japanese loss basically led to the downfall of the Czar. And much like defeat in Ukraine will result in Putin's ouster, if not assassination.
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More likely about Russian developer ... (Score:2)
To be honest, IF I were to work for Raytheon I would not want to work on anything at home. Do it all at the office.
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There have been several known incidents of people posting classified manuals etc in order to try and win arguments on the forums for the game.
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I remember those cases, too. People will do everything to win online arguments....
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There have been several known incidents of people posting classified manuals etc in order to try and win arguments on the forums for the game.
That can happen on any forum. All sort of criminal activity takes place on any game forum not heavily moderated.
Hyperbole (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not telling anyone what I know about how background investigations for DoD clearances work, and neither should anyone else, but all of TFA was based on someone being asked a simple question and others reading into it a little hard.
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Reminds me of when some leaked documents mentioned that certain Casio wristwatches were associated with terrorism, because they were popular timers for detonators. On the one hand, you would hope that nobody in authority would be dumb enough to harass you just because you were wearing a Casio watch, but on the other if you have brown skin and have ever been through airport security then you probably have your doubts.
Re:Hyperbole (Score:5, Interesting)
Given War Thunder of late has had a very bad "leak" problem where several classified manuals have been posted in the past couple of weeks, I'm guessing it's starting to be a concern.
It seems some of their forum posters get into some very heated arguments then post those documents to prove their point, so I can see where the clearance people might want to look into seeing if you might get into a heated argument and do the same thing.
In fact, it's gotten to the point where there's a meme going out that if you want access to classified information, deliberately say something wrong on the War Thunder forums to get someone riled up enough to post the documents you want in order to prove how wrong you are.
This ^ (Score:2)
I can't find supporting information with a google search, because all the stories I'm seeing are several days old. But from a imgur post yesterday, they're up to 5 or is it 6 incidents of someone posting classified documents to the War Thunder forums to prove their argument.
Absolutely mindbogglingly ridiculous. I miss the days when we got stories about Eve Online raids causing brownouts and destroying
Plenty of evidence (Score:2)
Because what? Such fanatics are likely to leak military secrets: There's plenty of evidence of that, or maybe it's evidence their selection process is optimized for wanna-be thugs who use their job to win an argument.
War plunder can fuck off (Score:2)