US Nuclear Command's cryptic tweet was posted by 'very young child'; here's how

A cryptic tweet by the official account of the US Strategic Command sent internet sleuths into a frenzy over it being a nuclear launch code among other speculations. The March 29 tweet by US Strategic Command also made some believe that it was a signal to political conspiracists. The US Strategic Command that runs the nation’s powerful nuclear weapons force, eventually clarified that the enigmatic posting on Twitter was the doing of a precocious kid. 

The garbled post that appeared on Sunday on the agency’s official Twitter account went viral almost immediately with thousands of likes and comments. Several Twitter users also joked that a cat walked across the keyboard. Further, as per reports the unintelligible tweet also circulated among the QAnon crowd and others believed that it was a secret message. Eventually, the cryptic was deleted shortly after with US Strategic Command issuing another response to the tweet and clarified, “Apologizes [sic] for any confusion. Please disregard this post.”

The reason behind the tweet

Owning up to the gibberish tweet and explaining the reason behind it, US Straytcom said that the work was not that of a hacker but of a small saboteur.  In response to a  Freedom of Information Act request from the Daily Dot, the US agency said that the account’s manager had left the account momentarily open and unattended. That’s when, according to the statement, the manager’s “very young child” took advantage and started playing with the keys. US Stratcom also dismissed the speculations of hacking and other concerns.

The Command’s Twitter manager, while in telework status, momentarily left the Command’s Twitter account open and unattended,” the statement to the outlet said. “His very young child took advantage of the situation and started playing with the keys and unfortunately, and unknowingly, posted the tweet.”

It added, “Absolutely nothing nefarious occurred, i.e., no hacking of our Twitter account. The post was discovered and notice to delete it occurred telephonically.”

Image credits: Twitter