A large amount of classified information has been exposed, and people want answers. Why is this young man getting arrested when other people leak to the press all the time? Who gives a 21-year-old top-secret clearance? Are there some other, less-obvious motives at work here?

First, let's look at the leaks.

Let's look first at the leaks themselves. In early March, classified documents started popping up on a public Discord channel. They had originally been posted in a private, invitation-only chat group on Discord with a few dozen members in December 2022 or January 2023. At some point, one of the private group members started posting the classified documents to a public group. And once on the public group, the classified documents rapidly made their way around the internet. (source)

This series of leaks provided evidence that American intelligence had been spying on allies in Israel and South Korea. (source)

We had also been collecting intelligence on United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (source)

There was a discussion of Egypt producing weapons for Russia, despite receiving over $1 billion per year from the Americans. (source) Egyptian and American officials both denied this vehemently.