US Strategic Command’s cryptic nuclear code tweet sent by ‘very young’ child

A cryptic post from an important government agency sparked fears of nuclear war, before the hilarious – yet harmless – reason it was shared was revealed.

A cryptic stream of gibberish posted to the Twitter account of a vital US government agency sparked fears of an impending nuclear weapon launch, but the hilarious reason it appeared online has now been revealed.

On Sunday, the US Strategic Command within the Department of Defence shared a strange post on its verified Twitter page that read “;l;;gmlxzssaw” – a meaningless string of characters some jokingly or otherwise mistook for a nuclear launch code.

The Strategic Command is in charge of some nuclear weapons among other things.

The tweet was quickly deleted and those who’d seen it were told to “disregard” it.

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The gibberish tweet turned out to be an accident.

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A few hours and one Freedom of Information request later, the department told the Daily Dot the reason the tweet had been sent.

The man in charge of the account was working from home when he looked away from the computer long enough for his “very young child” to take over the keyboard and send the tweet.

“His very young child took advantage of the situation and started playing with the keys and unfortunately, and unknowingly, posted the tweet,” the Command’s FOIA manager Kendall Cooper told Daily Dot’s Mikael Thalen.

“Absolutely nothing nefarious occurred,” Mr Cooper added, saying the account hadn’t been hacked and that the post was deleted after the account manager received a phone call about its existence.