US President Joe Biden has ordered better protection of US intelligence secrets after a young National Guard officer, Jack Teixeira, was charged with leaking classified documents.

“While we are still determining the validity of those documents, I have directed our military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information, and our national security team is closely coordinating with our partners and allies,” the US president said.

This is the most serious leak of information from the US Department of Defense since 2013, when a scandal broke out around the release of data from the US National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden.