By: Chris Bosquillon

Chris Bosquillon — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 13:27:12 +0000

Greg, I read with great interest your fair and balanced assessment, much appreciated. This all happens at the intersection of cybersecurity forensics, dark web criminal activities, and digital money laundering. Which then meet WMD-related traffic. It’s fair to say there is an arms race aspect in all that, cycles of measures and counter-measures. However bad guys make mistakes too. Cryptocurrencies aren’t anonymous, at best they are pseudonymous. With DLT (Decentralised Ledger Tech, including blockchain) everything is traceable. Even if a user is an ultimate pro at cyber stealth, this user will inevitably leave a digital trail. Purely decentralised mechanisms are relatively harder to monitor, whereas a centralized 3rd party is also a single point of failure if law enforcement can get to them. Also, this digital cat-and-mouse game is pretty much connected to a physical hardware network: servers, computers, comms providers, and other infrastructures can be effectively monitored, the data logs and activities dissected, exposing the who, what, how, when, and where’s. Using a chain of VPNs is almost naive despite the hype, that’s paradoxically a quick way to attract attention. Every movement on any crypto currency ledger / blockchain is traceable. Using privacy coins isn’t a panacea. Decentralised mixers are a bit harder to investigate, but put your boot on the throat of a centralised mixer and a gazillion of fraudulent users will be nailed immediately. Paradoxically, nothing really beats a suitcase or truck of cash carried or driven by a mule and without your own fingerprints on it. Of course, rogue countries, terrorists, and other criminal networks are neither naive nor stupid. They employ “the best and the brightest” that have gone to the Dark Side. Sometimes, if you get someone back to the lawful side, it helps everyone involved against adversaries. But it’s a real war, blood is spilled and a lot of black hat nerds can end up dead, while it’s also a risky job for law enforcement and special operations. That aspect of cyber warfare may only further increase, and spill over all domains of economy and security, including space. I’m not sure how you can deter that. We live in interesting times. Here are a few links to get a more concrete sense of this arms race aspect. / / / / / / and the best for last, Implications of Cryptocurrencies for Special Operations Forces

By: Joe Buff

Joe Buff — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 21:01:47 +0000

This is a very informative discussion. For one thing, it looks like cryptocurrency gives bad actors yet another way to anonymously fund nefarious activities of all kinds, and even when their identity is known gives another way to evade U.S. financial surveillance and anti-money-laundering measures. For another, crypto market price manipulation could provide a new weapon for hybrid warfare, destabilizing targeted economies just as Greg Sharpe says, by creating or exacerbating market bubbles and panics, especially when combined with AI-driven manipulative disinformation on social media platforms. That disinfo could be well funded, in particular, via cryptocurrency payments that cannot be traced to their source.
Nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism become harder to interdict: Imagine the late A Q Khan’s nuclear underground, but in today’s world that now has crypto. Also, “nuclear psychosis” (fear of one’s own country’s nuclear triad) could be further fomented by crypto-funded spreading of lies and myths about America’s nuclear modernization, eroding political support for said essential modernization in favor of budget cuts with more misguided pleas for unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament….. Not a pretty picture.

Comments on: The Volatility of Cryptocurrency: Barrier or Enabler of Nuclear Escalation?

By: Chris Bosquillon

By: Joe Buff