This is an opinion editorial by Kyle Schneps, director of public policy at Foundry, a Digital Currency Group company.
The defection system inherited from the Cold War rewarded the elite who publicly opted out of authoritarian regimes in favor of Western democracies. The Bitcoin network now allows all people, regardless of station or class, to privately opt out of tyranny by investing autocrat-controlled currencies in a decentralized global system of financial independence.
Walking the labyrinthine corridors of CIA headquarters late at night during the 1960s, you would eventually notice a dim, smoky wedge of light as you pass one particular office suite on the top floor. Following the light trail and peering inside, she would see an emaciated, bespectacled man hunched over countless volumes of poetry and stacks of human intelligence case files. A single dim bulb would highlight an overflowing ashtray and an ever-wrinkled forehead. would you be looking Santiago Jesus Angletonthe grandfather of US counterintelligence operations and analysis, and also one of the most controversial figures in the gray corners of US history.
Angleton was a poetry student at Yale who was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. He learned much of his trade from British intelligence during the war, and those controversial relationships would be both a blessing and a detriment to his career forever. He would become a key figure in the transition from the OSS to its later incarnation as the Central Intelligence Agency. Most unique to Angleton was his belief that the skills needed to comprehend and decipher complex poetry were similar to those needed to understand elaborate intelligence operations, specifically those of the Soviet Union, that would occupy him day and night during his twenty years as chief. CIA Counterintelligence.
Angleton spent the most controversial years of his CIA tenure finding moles and untangling elaborate Soviet plots that often used double and triple agents to deceive and misinform. Plus, Angleton had a unique obsession with dropouts. A defector is a person, usually someone in an elite position with access to important information, who leaves their country in favor of a new country that often has an opposite or different ideology. A defector is offered physical protection and a financial reward for the information he provides. For Angleton, however, defectors posed a more troubling puzzle: how do you determine the veracity of a defector’s information, especially if that defector is part of a sophisticated intelligence organization like the KGB? Are they really defecting and revealing valuable intelligence? Or are they defecting as part of a larger intelligence operation aimed at misleading the US? Maybe a fake defector is simply defecting to discredit a legitimate defector… and the hall of mirrors would go round and round from there.
Perhaps the most controversial defector case of Angleton’s career involved Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Both Golitsyn and Nosenko were high-ranking KGB officers who were allowed to defect to the United States, but each offered conflicting intelligence that discredited the other. Eventually, Angleton sided with Golitsyn., locking Nosenko in a dark place in Maryland where he was denied access to his possessions and occasionally dosed with LSD. Four years later, Nosenko was determined to be a bona fide agent and was released from solitary confinement by him.
Because of the myriad questions that defection raised regarding the legitimacy of the intelligence offered, defectors generally became more valuable for their public propaganda than for their actual information. Many Soviet defectors to the United States often paraded in front of the press to demonstrate the winning ideology of capitalism over communism. The Soviet Union did the same to British defectors who had run their course as agents and were resettled in the Soviet Union. For example, the notorious British intelligence officer and arguably the greatest traitor of all time, kim philby, toured Moscow to demonstrate the failures of Western capitalism. Thus, defection during the Cold War ultimately garnered more value as an ideological publicity statement than a reliable source of human intelligence gathering.
The problem, however, is that the ability to defect from a regime perceived as tyrannical or authoritarian has until now been limited to elite characters with access to sensitive information. Surely there were plenty of average citizens living under the draconian oppression of the Soviet Union who wished they could defect; who wished they could get out of the control of the Soviet regime or at least safeguard their wealth. But they didn’t have access to anything of value to the opposing systems that might receive them, and thus were left without options. They had to not only remain in the Soviet Union, but also continue to participate in and perpetuate its economic and cultural restrictions.
Bitcoin solves this.
Bitcoin represents a monetary system that allows the average person, no matter where they live, to opt out of tyrannical and authoritarian regimes. Anyone with an internet connection can now suspend all but the most necessary financial involvement in the country in which he lives, turning his state-controlled currency into an incorruptible, decentralized store of value. Value that refugees can store privately or transport across borders without risk of confiscation; value that is free from degradation by a corrupt or incompetent regime; value that, although potentially volatile in the short term, has proven to be a hedge against inflationary policies in the long term.
While elite hereditary defectors fleeing authoritarian regimes would be forced to leave their family and possessions behind, anyone can now choose to step out of the monetary shackles imposed on them by authoritarian regimes while continuing to function in the society in which they live. they live. By opting out of a tyrannical system and moving to a decentralized protocol like Bitcoin, there is no longer the worry that your wealth will be confiscated by harmful laws, as has happened so many times throughout history. In an era where much of our identity and personal choices are tracked by governments and corporations, Bitcoin offers the ultimate protection for minority opinion in that it safeguards the wealth of one of the powerful and political whims of a corrupt regime. .
Since the United States previously recognized that defection is more valuable as a public opportunity to uphold Western ideals over those of tyranny, we must now recognize that the Bitcoin network is defection 2.0, as it allows all people around the world to opt for a free and decentralized monetary system that cannot be manipulated by tyrants for personal gain. The Cold War legacy system rewarded a small group of elites by allowing them to defect from tyranny. In return, the host nation was able to publicly claim a small ideological victory. It is worth sacrificing the public nature of the defection of a few for the private monetary defection of many around the world who do not wish to participate in the restrictions of authoritarian regimes. That is why so many authoritarian regimes, such as the Chinese Communist Party and previously, the Supreme Leader of IranThey have banned this technology. They don’t want the public to slip silently out of their control. America must embrace bitcoin as a symbol of the democratic and capitalist ideal, so that people can privately defect to a monetary system that safeguards their personal wealth and their independence from tyrannical systems.
There is no better way to fight corrupt autocratic regimes than to support the networks that allow the global public to opt out of all but the most necessary financial ties that bind them to such states. Of all these networks, Bitcoin is by far the best option due to its decentralized nature, instant settlement, portability, and unmatched security. The United States government would once again cement its role as a beacon of democracy around the world by offering its unwavering support for this technology, which decentralizes and levels the opportunity for defection around the world.
This is a guest post by Kyle Schneps. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or bitcoin magazine.
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