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American soldiers responsible for the custody of nuclear weapons in Europe need to know by heart details of security protocols that are invariably robust and complex. Faced with this situation, some of these military have been using memory apps. And these have ended up leaking confidential information, including information about the location of the US nuclear arsenal on the European continent.

O report published by Bellingcat reports that flashcards studied by US soldiers on apps leaked details such as the position of security cameras and the frequency of patrols around the nuclear arsenal vaults. In addition, among other leaked information, there are secret words and terms of coercion that indicate when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge must have.

Memorization apps, also known as flashcard apps, are basically like a digital version of traditional flashcards used to test memory. Apps like Chegg, Quizlet and Cram, found for both Android and for iOS, work under the same idea as flashcards, with a question on one side and the answer to the question on the opposite side. Some flashcards discovered during the course of the investigation were publicly visible online as early as 2013.

How these cards were discovered

Military jargon is full of terms and abbreviations, and this is true for nuclear weapons storage as well. However, online articles, government bidding documents, and even Wikipedia entries detail some of the key terms. For example, on nuclear weapons bases, protective aircraft shelters (PAS) are equipped with Weapons Storage and Security Systems (WS3) consisting of electronic controls, sensors, and a floor-mounted safe.

O Bellingcat (a British investigative journalism site specializing in fact-checking and open-source intelligence) simply ran a Google search using terms publicly known to be associated with nuclear weapons. Searches for terms like “PAS,” “WS3,” and “vault,” along with the names of air bases in Europe, quickly returned free flashcard platforms like the ones listed above.

According to the site, verifying the information found in the flashcards was relatively straightforward, which in itself raises another security concern. Some flashcard sets made on Cram and Quizlet were traceable because the usernames included the full names of the individuals who created them. Others used the same profile picture shown on their LinkedIn accounts. All of the sets highlighted in the leaks have apparently since been taken down.

Questions about US nuclear weapons in Europe

Experts said the app leaks represent serious breaches of security protocols and raise new questions about the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in NATO countries. Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project, says it's time to end outdated secrecy.

Kristensen explains that there are so many “fingerprints” revealing where nuclear weapons are located that it serves no military or security purpose to try to keep them secret. “Security is achieved through effective security, not secrecy. It is true that there may be specific operational and security details that need to be kept secret, but the presence of nuclear weapons does not. The real purpose of secrecy is to avoid contentious public debate in countries where nuclear weapons are not popular.”

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