A U.S. sailor was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 18 years in a military prison Thursday after being found guilty of espionage while working for the Navy in Japan.

Bryce Pedicini, a former chief petty officer fire controlman, was convicted of attempted espionage, failure to obey a general order and attempted violation of a general order through a court-martial procedure. He was assigned to the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins in Japan when he was taken into pretrial confinement last year.

According to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Pedicini delivered classified and national defense information for a foreign government official from November 2022 to May 2023. He engaged with the foreign official “under the guise of writing research papers,” it said. The Navy described that as a tactic U.S. adversaries increasingly use to obtain both classified and unclassified document.

  • henfredemars
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    6 months ago

    I wish this was just a joke but people are vulnerable to psychology.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah and it’s “people” like everyone, not “some people”.

      The first step is making them emotional, and that can happen to anyone. Even if it’s just someone being wrong about something they shouldn’t know the right answer to in the first place.

      If devs had asked that guy what it was actually supposed to be, he’d probably have known that he can’t actually prove it.

      But they just guessed and then was dismissive when he tried to correct them, so he just completely and unsolicitedly committed espionage for no personal gain except to win an argument on discord.

      People (all of us) do dumb shit when we get emotional. But yeah, that one was notable.