‘A little kid trying to be important’: locals react to Pentagon leak suspect

A post-9/11 switch from need-to-know' to need-to-share' explains why a low-level guardsman had access to such sensitive material

Locals living close to the sprawling military base in Cape Cod where 21-year-old Jack Teixeira worked for a US air force intelligence unit have been asking the same questions as everyone else.

Was his alleged leak of national security documents some kind of principled stand or an immature attempt to impress two dozen members of a closed chat group called Thug Shaker Central on Discord, a video game chat platform, that he lost control of?