Photo illustration of isolated computer keyboard letters that spell out "The Discord Leaks."

The Washington Post

Photo illustration of a circular target shape with several layers featuring assorted close crops of Jack Teixeira's face.

Photo illustration of a computer mouse with several lines and bubbles extending from its pointer finger. The bubbles contain images of the Discord logo, the 2017 Charlottesville rally, Discord chats and a Zoom screen.

Split screen photo illustration. On the left are hands typing on a computer keyboard. On the right, lines connect from the keyboard to three photos of assorted police, FBI and investigative imagery.

Photo illustration of Volodymyr Zelensky overlayed with a pixelated White House and snippets of Ukraine battle maps.

HANDOUT on 4/13/23

HANDOUT on 12/11/23

Illustration for leakmain

handout

FILE PHOTO: Undated picture shows Jack Douglas Teixeira who was arrested by the FBI, over the leaks online of classified documents

US Airman Jack Teixeira expected to plead guilty to charges of leaking military secrets, Boston, USA - 04 Mar 2024

Lebanon Israel Palestinians

UGCR

Leaked Documents Investigation

SAUDI-FBL-ROYALS

Handout

SYRIA ALICE MARTINS

FTWP

staff

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

Senator will block RFK site bill unless team honors family of logo creator

Victor Robles has been driving everyone crazy for years. Enough is enough.    

Nationals-White Sox rained out; Josiah Gray edges closer to return

Biden once nearly died of an aneurysm. Risky surgery changed his life.

Melania Trump, absent from court but a central figure in the trial

Democratic group starts attacking Trump with abortion rights testimonials 

Miss Manners: My relative’s memoir was poorly written and boring

Ask Amy: What if the mysterious mourner at my dad’s memorial is my brother? 

Carolyn Hax: Is it ‘charming’ to stage a surprise wedding at a family reunion?

Are home prices still rising? See how prices have changed in your area.

In photos: The scene in Indonesia after flash floods and cold lava killed at least 44 people

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Airlines are trying to stop Biden from enforcing ‘junk fees’ rule

Pete Buttigieg’s view from the middle seat

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

Haiti’s plight is a case study in the ‘responsibility to protect’

No, Apple, people do not want tech to crush everything in its path 

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Second Russian invasion is worse than the first, Kharkiv region evacuees say

U.S. threats led to rupture of vital military ties, Nigerien leader says

Rafah border closure strands American doctors in Gaza hospital

OpenAI wants users to act natural around ChatGPT

U.S.-China talks on AI risks set to begin in Geneva

Pentagon worried its primary satellite launcher can’t keep pace

Election 2024 latest news: Primary elections in Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia

Angela Alsobrooks and David Trone are Democratic primary candidates for the US Senate seat in Maryland

Kamran Jebreili

American spy services detected construction at a suspected Chinese military facility in the United Arab Emirates in December — one year after Washington’s oil-rich ally announced it was halting the project because of U.S. concerns, according to top-secret intelligence documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Activities at a port near Abu Dhabi are among several developments in the UAE involving the Chinese military that U.S. intelligence is monitoring out of concern that the Emiratis — a longtime U.S. security partner — are developing closer security ties to China at the expense of U.S. interests, according to the documents and related interviews with senior Biden administration officials. Sightings of Chinese military personnel around other sensitive construction sites have also disturbed U.S. officials.

Beijing’s efforts in the UAE are part of an ambitious campaign by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to build a global military network that includes at least five overseas bases and 10 logistical support sites by 2030, says one of the documents, which features a map of other planned facilities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and throughout Africa.

Chinese military officials call the initiative “Project 141,” the leaked materials say.

The Post obtained the classified documents, which have not been previously reported, from a trove of intelligence material leaked onto the Discord messaging platform. The disclosures, including details about Beijing’s aerial surveillance program and plans to develop supersonic drones, come at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and China as both countries vie for global influence and resources.

Dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked online, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders. In an exclusive investigation, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/discord-leaks/" target=_blank>The Post also reviewed scores of additional secret documents</a>, most of which have not been made public.

Who leaked the documents? <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/13/document-leak-jack-teixeira-og/" target=_blank>Jack Teixeira</a>, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/14/jack-teixeira-military-leaks-court-appearance/" target=_blank>was charged in the investigation</a> into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents/" target=_blank>The Post reported</a> that the individual who leaked the information shared documents with a small circle of online friends on the Discord chat platform.

What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine? The documents reveal <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/leaked-documents-ukraine-war/" target=_blank>profound concerns about the war’s trajectory</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/08/leak-documents-ukraine-air-defense/" target=_blank>Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive</a> against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”

What else do they show? The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/08/intelligence-leak-documents-ukraine-pentagon/" target=_blank>intelligence on both allies and adversaries</a>, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/08/leaked-documents-israel-mossad-judicial-reform/" target=_blank>Israel</a>.

What happens now? The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/07/pentagon-leak-ukraine-documents/" target=_blank>Justice Department investigation</a>, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.

The level of concern about China’s actions in the UAE varies among U.S. officials, with some viewing the development as manageable and others seeing a significant threat that warrants more forceful pressure from the United States. There is also a lack of consensus about whether the UAE has made a strategic decision to deeply align with China or maintain a balancing act that includes the United States, its longtime protector.

“There are some people in the administration who think the UAE has fundamentally decided to work with us. I do not believe that,” said a senior administration official, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.

The UAE’s leaders “think that China is hugely important right now and rising in the Middle East,” this person said.

Obtained by The Washington Post

The revelations coincide with China’s quest to expand its role as a global player — mediating a rapprochement between <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/10/china-saudi-iran-deal/" target="_blank">arch-nemeses Saudi Arabia and Iran</a> last month and putting forward a 12-point peace plan in February to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/26/zelensky-xi-jinping-ukraine-china/" target="_blank">resolve the war in Ukraine</a>. The Middle East has become a particular focal point of U.S.-China competition as Beijing strikes trade deals and forges closer political ties in a region previously dominated by the United States.

A UAE representative, alluding to the FBI’s arrest of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/13/document-leak-jack-teixeira-og/" target=_blank>a suspect in the leak case</a>, declined to answer questions about the intelligence documents, saying that “our policy is not to comment on out-of-context material purported to have been criminally obtained.”

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said U.S. concerns about China’s military facilities abroad are misplaced.

“As a principle, China conducts normal law enforcement and security cooperation with other countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefit,” Liu said.

“The U.S. runs more than 800 overseas military bases, which has caused concern by many countries around the world. It is in no position to criticize other countries,” he added.

U.S. officials insist they will not allow a Chinese base to become operational in the UAE, saying that such a facility would jeopardize sensitive U.S. military activities in the Middle East.

“UAE is a close partner, and we are regularly engaged with its senior leadership on a number of regional and global matters,” a second senior administration official said. This person said there were “no current indications” a Chinese base would be completed without a significant uptick in activity that would be noticeable.

U.S. officials are particularly focused on the Khalifa Port, about 50 miles north of the capital, where a Chinese shipping conglomerate operates. In December 2021, the UAE announced that it halted Chinese construction at that facility after U.S. officials argued that Beijing intended to use it for military purposes.

“We stopped the work on the facilities,” Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the UAE’s leadership, said at a Washington think tank event as the country faced public pressure to address a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-china-uae-military-11637274224" target=_blank>article</a> detailing China’s activities.

But a year later, the PLA facility “likely was connected to municipal power and water” and “a walled perimeter was completed for a PLA logistics storage site,” one of the leaked U.S. intelligence documents says. A second document warns that “the PLA facility” is “a major part” of Beijing’s plan to establish a military base in the UAE.

Malak Harb

The newly detected activity there has convinced some U.S. officials that the UAE is not playing it “straight” with Washington.

“I don’t think that they’ve gone to the Chinese and said, ‘It’s over, we’re not going to do this,’ ” the first administration official said.

The Biden administration also is concerned that PLA personnel have been observed at two UAE military bases in the country’s interior, where the Arab ally operates drones and ballistic missile defense systems, said officials familiar with the matter.

In addition, U.S. officials believe the PLA has been involved in the construction and expansion of an airstrip down the coast from Abu Dhabi, though some in the administration contend the existence of PLA personnel at Chinese construction sites is not alarming in and of itself, noting their presence at Chinese construction sites in other countries that do not have a military outpost.

China’s expanding foothold in the world’s ports facilitates its intelligence-gathering on U.S. military movements and activities in those areas, said Camille Lons of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Under a Chinese law passed in 2017, even commercial Chinese companies are obliged to share information with the military if called upon to do so. “It’s difficult to know if that happens, but it’s a matter of concern,” she said.

Like other experts interviewed for this story, Lons was speaking generally and had not seen the leaked documents.

Jacqueline Deal, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said China’s establishment of a base and associated facilities in the UAE would complicate the United States’ ability to operate. One of the biggest U.S. bases in the Middle East, Al Dhafra Air Base, lies about 50 miles from the Khalifa port.

“If we have forces in the region and we’re trying to move them or use them, they will have a base from which to observe and possibly interfere,” she said. “And they’ll have more influence with the local government.”

The terminal at Khalifa port is part of a network of more than 100 strategically located commercial ports and terminals that China has invested in around the world. Beyond the UAE, U.S. officials have identified Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania and Angola as among the locations where Chinese ports may serve a dual use, potentially enabling Beijing to “both interfere with U.S. military operations and support offensive operations against the United States,” according to a 2020 Pentagon report to Congress.

In some parts of the world, such as Europe, it is unlikely port facilities would ever be turned to military use because the host countries would never agree. But China’s Maritime Silk Road, as Beijing calls the network, offers other advantages.

Chinese stakes in at least a dozen European ports give Beijing a level of control over supply routes that would make it difficult for Europe to impose serious sanctions on China should they become necessary and could enable Beijing to disrupt or divert Western supply routes in the event of a confrontation, said Francesca Ghiretti of the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a German think tank.

U.S. officials believe China’s expanding economic ties have given it an opportunity to establish a military foothold in new regions — though they acknowledge that Washington’s network of global bases is far more extensive and powerful.

Currently, Djibouti is the only overseas location where China has an acknowledged base, officially opened in 2017 by the PLA Navy. There, according to the document, the PLA in February “almost certainly was nearing completion of an antenna operations building at Doraleh” for satellite spying over Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Last June, The Post reported that China was moving ahead with secret plans to build a facility for exclusive PLA use at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/06/cambodia-china-navy-base-ream/" target=_blank>a naval base in Cambodia</a> on the Gulf of Thailand. Both countries denied that was the case, with Cambodian officials saying that China was merely financing the base upgrade and helping train Cambodians in ship repair. But a Chinese official in Beijing confirmed to The Post that “a portion of the base” will be used by “the Chinese military.” One of the classified documents reinforces that, saying a portion of the facility would be designated a “division-grade” military base.

Elsewhere in the world, a Chinese working group had plans to visit both Equatorial Guinea and Gabon in February to assist with preparations to build a joint training center and to train Equatorial Guinean personnel on communications equipment, according to the leak documents.

But most of those projects have not carried the same alarm in Washington as China’s activities in the UAE because those host countries are not nearly as close with the United States. Since 2012, the UAE has been the<a href="https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex" target=_blank> third-biggest purchaser</a> of U.S. weapons in the world. Its armed forces have fought alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The country also hosts 5,000 U.S. military personnel at al-Dhafra and U.S. warships at the Jebel Ali deep-water port.

The United Arab Emirates is beginning to look ahead to a time when China may rival and even eclipse the United States as a military power, said Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Dubai-based Inegma security consultancy. “The Chinese have managed to replace you in every other thing, so why not security?” he said.

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political analyst, said the UAE began exploring other security partners after what the nation saw as America’s slow response to missile attacks against Abu Dhabi by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The UAE was part of the Saudi-backed coalition that waged a fierce air campaign against Houthi militants for years.

But two senior officials said they doubted the UAE would go too far in jeopardizing its security relationship with the United States, even if it prefers China’s agnostic stance on human rights and democracy.

Still, the UAE’s ties to China have strained plans to move forward on a planned $23 billion sale of American F-35 fighter jets, Reaper drones and other U.S. weapons while prompting conjecture within the Biden administration over whether to prioritize preserving its legacy partnerships in the Middle East or countering the rise of China.

“There are people that believe that this is a very harrowing time in the Middle East, and the most important element of our diplomacy right now has to be a degree of patience,” a senior U.S. official said. “But there are debates, absolutely.”

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize in Public Service, with the staff of The Washington Post, 2019

Michigan State University, B.A. in International Relations

John Hudson is a reporter at The Washington Post covering the State Department and national security. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has reported from dozens of countries, including Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, India and Belarus.

John Hudson

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 2014

Gerald Loeb Award 2014, NSA stories

Society of American Business Editors and Writers enterprise award 2009, for the story "Banking Regulator Played Advocate over Enforcer"

Daily Californian Alumni Association Alumna of the Year, 2017

Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, 2018

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2022 for an investigation of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol

The Prince of Tennessee

City University, London, MA in international journalism

University of California at Berkeley, BA in humanities

Ellen Nakashima is a national security reporter with The Washington Post. She was a member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, in 2022 for an investigation of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, in 2018 for coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and in 2014 and for reporting on the hidden scope of government surveillance. 



Ellen Nakashima

2013, Citation, Overseas Press Club

2003, George Polk Award 

2003, Chicago Journalists Association, Daniel Pearl Award  

1996, Overseas Press Club Madeline Dane Ross Award

1996, National Association of Black Journalists International Reporter of the Year

1996, Clarion Award

1995, National Association of Black Journalists International Reporter of the Year

Cambridge University, BA and MA in history

Liz Sly is a correspondent-at-large covering global affairs. She has spent more than 17 years covering the Middle East, including the first and second Iraq wars. Other postings include Washington, Africa, China, Afghanistan and Italy.