A Child’s Gibberish Tweet from US Nuclear-agency Account Sends Twitter into Frenzy – Sparks Debates on National Security.
How is it possible that a child can have access to the official Twitter account of the US Nuclear Agency, which is responsible for the safety of America’s nuclear weapons?
It is indeed possible when you are working from home, your laptop is unattended, and there is a child around. What happens then is a tweet like this:
“;l;;gmlxzssaw”.
This tweet sent shockwaves across the American intelligence agencies. Though it was deleted within minutes, it sent Twitter into a frenzy.
What Actually Happened?
The tweet was posted on Tuesday via the official US Stratcom Twitter account. It quickly went viral, and users were baffled over how to respond to it. It also received thousands of Likes within no time, while many suspected that the account might have been hacked.
But that wasn’t the case. Around 30 minutes later, another post appeared on the same Twitter account in which the department apologized for the confusion and requested people to disregard the previous tweet.
Details Sought under Freedom of Information Act
The Daily Dot journalist Mikael Thalen requested the agency to share details of the incident under the Freedom of Information Act and informed the world via Twitter about how it all happened.
Filed a FOIA request with U.S. Strategic Command to see if I could learn anything about their gibberish tweet yesterday.
Turns out their Twitter manager left his computer unattended, resulting in his “very young child” commandeering the keyboard. pic.twitter.com/KR07PCyCUM
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) March 29, 2021
The journalist received a reply from the agency, which revealed that the command’s Twitter account manager was working from home and left his laptop unattended for a while. His ‘very young child’ started playing with the keys and mistakenly posted the tweet.
As seen in the above screenshot; the agency denied the news that their account was hacked by stating that: “Absolutely nothing nefarious occurred.”
