Cryptocurrencies and Unconventional Warfare
Note: I wrote this many months ago as one of my first posts written related to cryptocurrencies back in late 2015. I posted it on Steemit back in Early June as my first post. While I'm not entirely sure what the 'mores' are about reposting this, but I think the new members here at Steem would find value in this analysis.
Blood chits are small sheets of cloth-paper, similar to dollars with serial numbered corners and writing covering the sheet in many of the major languages of the world. In those numerous language, the message is roughly: 'The individual standing in front of you screwed up badly and would totally be your best friend if you help. Redeem this chit and Uncle Sam will be your best friend too!' These sorts of devices and instruments are not new. Simply owning specific 'coins of the realm' could bring trust or prestige upon the holder in certain situations. These sorts of instruments could be immensely valuable if used wisely in the countless, quiet conflicts that are being waged across the globe.
Unconventional and asymetric wars are the conflicts that you don't typically hear about because they're being waged by professionals and state actors who have a vested interest in keeping said conflict out of the headlines. But just like any other war, there is a required expenditure of treasure (and still blood). In my search for ways I could use my somewhat unique experience to contribute to the blockchain discussion, I recognized that there isn't much open discussion about the ways in which cryptocurrencies could be used in the countless asymetrical, unconventional, and generally screwed-up conflicts that are scattered around the globe.
No sensitive or classified tradecraft will be shared and I'm certain anyone with the mind and motivation could come to similar conclusions. My knowledge is based primarily on training, some real-world experience, and a somewhat criminal mind (I consider this a curse, but I digress). So here's a quick and dirty list of operational uses in the multi-dimensional chess board of asymentric warfare:
Surreptitious Payment of Contacts
This is a big, easy one. Provided your people have the means to convert cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies, being able to pay them large quantities of VALUE (not necessarily money) without having to carry around large wads of local currencies or dollars is a major blessing. Regardless, they can always save it or send to relatives who can exchange into fiat. This variable gives a great degree of operational flexibility.
Encrypted Information within Block Chain Contracts
'Answer these questions and acquire a picture of this individual, upload it, and receive your payment.' Simple, easy, and potentially a 'fire-and-forget' relationship if need be. Encrypted contracts could be sent without ever even needing to meet in person with a contact, thus lowering the threat levels for both parties. Highly valuable for operational security.
Improved Flexibility of Operational Funds
Nothing is more disheartening than a denied funding request for that shiny new up-armored Land Rover with a machine gun mount attached to the roof. The world of unconventional warfare is just that: unconventional. There is a thin line of white and black surrounding a twisted field of grey. Sometimes black markets can get you what you need operationally much faster than that accountant that is always asking about your reconciled operational funds.
Covert Resource Caches
Power hungry tend to be willing to acquire weapons and recruit people to use them. This creates an obvious conflict of interest with any otherwise law abiding neighbors and often leads to bloodshed. This is exacerbated when available resources are in such short supply that just owning them makes you and your family targets for kidnapping or murder. Cryptocurrencies create a way for private citizens to hide sums of value that would otherwise attract unwanted attention. Say for instance, a Scrooge McDuck sized vault of gold coins for swimming in. Huey, Duey, and Looey would have been sitting in orange jumpsuits on camera pleading with Scrooge to send the ransom money. This is not a problem for block chain because billions of dollars, bitcoins, goats, or AK-47 rounds can be entrusted to be stored in someones head. This is a major operational advantage to carrying suitcases of cash around.
Generation of Real Incentive and Opportunity
One of the worst mistakes that can be made in unconventional warfare is to ignore the human element. Truly, most people only want their families to be safe and to have access to opportunities and happiness. Most Westerners haven't dealt with a complete distrust of central authority, to include banks. Distrust in these institutions is common (and arguably wise and good), but absolute distrust is something entirely different and often stems from a justifiably mortal fear of that authority. From the perspective of someone who is trying to create peace through prosperity, cryptocurrencies can provide truly tangible access to the outside world while bypassing the local insanity of back-stabbing and political intrigue. This places a very valuable tool in the unconventional warrior's tool box. Just as the blood chit works because the US Government will go to great lengths to get her people back, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin can work if both the recipient AND the transmitter trust the integrity of the claims of value made.
There are two sides of the 'coin', I believe.
Obviously, Bitcoin plays a major part in terrorist organisations ability to move funds around on a global scale. Something which may be of a concern.
Of course, I am a massive proponent of crypto, but I am not a fan of the likes of ISIS etc etc, being able to fund their terrorist related activities all the while going unnoticed.
I wonder if the 'good' that crypto can bring to the world (in terms of war, if war can bring good - I suppose we can only point to the US led campaign against Hitler for proof of that) can outweigh the bad?
For example, it would not take much for a terrorist organisation to 'crowdfund' their terrorist campaigns and activities using crypto, flying completely under the radar of traditional banking systems.
An 'interesting' situation is emerging in these regards. Thanks for an interesting post.
#followthemoney
This is a really good post. I hadn't thought of some of the points you make.
I think the point you make about distrust of banks and institutions is a good one.
The future of cryptocurrencies is probably going to come from non-western nations where economic collapse, corruption and poverty has lead to large numbers of people being unbanked.
These vast numbers of people see the true value of things like bitcoin and the way they can transfer funds easily and securely without a middleman and with low fees.
They are also the kind of people who are more likely to deal with conflict and violence on a daily basis.
They are likely to flock to cryptos because they have no other choice.
The recent meltdown in Venezuela is a good illustration of this.
Oddly enough, if terrorists start using cryptocurrencies more, it might actually be easier to track them, though freezing funds would be a challenge. Although Bitcoin is anonymous in the sense that you don't have to give your private information to anyone just to be able to use it, all transactions are publicly recorded on the block chain and leave a trail. People who know what to look for are thus able to track cryptos as they move from address to address. They can then connect those addresses to their owners by looking at other online behavior. I don't know how it all works, exactly, but I have read more than one article explaining how using cryptocurrencies actually leaves more of a digital trail than people realize.
With the proper amount of data mining, and some breadcrumbs of hints, you can start to build a gigantic puzzle and put some pieces together.
Certainly possible, but time consuming and the reward would have to be worth the time investment for anyone trying to do the research.
There are lots of tools to make this process more time consuming and challenging. Check out bitcoin tumblers, shapeshift.io, or just simply Monero.
This is a very well written and informative article.
You have my vote sir. We need more solid writing and ideas men like you on here!
When all the wealth is given back to the people to disperse how they see fit in a real Free Market, you end up in a world of Freedom. I love Steemit, I love what it stands for. Mark my words IT WILL BE HUGE!!!!
Very interesting analysis.
I am definitely a big fan of yours, and I am glad you reposted this. I saw a post a little while ago from @cryptos about this very subject. There is a window within which a post expires, it cannot any further be edited, and it cannot be brought back to the surface. But if it is a good post, why not repost it.
I consider the entire cryptocurrency world to be a kind of asymmetric act of warfare. It is not really going out on a limb to say this, the famous Satoshi even spells it out to some extent in his White Paper that destroying the power of corrupt people, especially in banks and politics, is the objective. We now here sit looking at a legacy of this. Yes, people make money on this, but we cryptofiends are a small part of the population. We are starting to make inroads on making it commonly understood what we are doing, and I am sure there is many untold stories of how cryptos have enabled people aiming to destroy the Status Quo, but it has a long way to run yet.
It should not be neglected to point out that it wasn't that long ago that cryptography was classified as munitions and this put a big brake on the advancement of internet security. Even computing power had been classified at one point, famously used as a marketing schtick by Apple Computer when they, in partnership with Motorola built a CPU that exceeded the definition of 'super computer' (thusly a munition) at the definition at the time, which was 1 gigaflop (1 billion floating point calculations per second).
To answer the big bold question at the bottom of your post, absolutely, cryptocurrencies are instruments of warfare, but they were adopted early by anarchists, and not the old school 'propaganda by deed' style socialists, but by the modern anarchocapitalists. I count myself in this group and I am also very much in support of the use of cryptocurrencies to prosecute warfare against, especially, the centralised banking system, the main enemy of cryptocurrency.
It should not be a surprise then, recent news, that a consortium of banks has developed a cryptocurrency based system that allows them to do payments without having to put them through correspondent banks in the USA, mainly because these bastards charge so much for this privilege, and have no verifiable stake in the process, they just take a cut, like gangsters, or tax collectors.
We are winning this war, already, because on our side is the brains and genius that devised this tactic in the first place. They, the establishment, by definition cannot get the labor of the people who are already deeply embedded within the cryptocurrency world, and it has now grown so big that it would take an unaffordable inducement to make any of them cross over.
Besides this, the whole battlefield layout changes becouse of cryptocurrency. Talking about the difference between big and small forces, engaged in warfare, cryptocurrency allows a headless system of organisation, a chain of command that is completely decentralised and unpredictable. Insurgencies in the past always still had heads. Now, the heads are intangible principles.