CIA Perspectives on Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

CIA thinking about Bitcoin?

Well, just, just like law enforcement, I guess, you know, we are, uh, uh,

excited,

uh, as well because, um, as you know, you know, Bit- people may have thought

Bitcoin was anonymous, but it, I, I'd say it's, it's pseudonymous, right?

Uh, it's not truly anonymous. Um, and, you know, there,

um, there's a lot of work that we do with law enforcement,

obviously, to try to

track, um, you know, illicit crypto payments by bad actors.

I mean, look, uh,

bad, bad actors, whether they're drug cartels

or terrorist groups

or, um, uh, you know, outlaw regimes use cryptocurrency, but

they use, you know, they use, uh, other tools as well, right?

Um-

They use dollars and cars and

Yeah, right. Right. Um, they, they, they used, um,

toner cartridges for their printers, right?

It doesn't mean, you know, we'd say we should ban all of those,

right?

Uh, no, I mean, look, Bitcoin is here to stay. Cryptocurrency

is here to stay.

Um, uh, as you, as you know, more and more institutions are

adopting it. Um, and I think that's a great trend, um, and

one that, you know, this administration has obviously been

leaning forward into.

Um, it's another area of technological

competition where we need to make sure

the United States is well-positioned-

Mm

... um, against China and other, and other adversaries.

Um, you know, we need to make sure that we are a leader, uh, in

these fields, uh, internationally and not a laggard.

Um,

and there, as you know, you know, tremendous potential for, uh, law

enforcement and intelligence community to be able to, you know, use

cryptocurrency, um, to help track what our adversaries

are doing

to, and, uh, and disrupt it.

One of the things I always, uh, am shocked by is people talk about it as a

tool for

the bad people.

Right.

Uh, but also it could be a tool for the good

people as well, right?

And so, uh, whether it's Bitcoin or stable coins or anything else-

Mm-hmm

... uh, you know, CIA has a lot of payments probably

that are going all over the

world, um-

Yeah

... as do many large organizations.

And so, um, is that how you guys kind of use as a

framework for all of technology

is, like, it can be a tool or it can be a weapon against us,

and we wanna be good

at using it, but also understand how our enemies

are using it against us?

Yes. Yeah, I mean, uh, I mentioned, right, we use, we use technology as a tool,

right? Uh, and Bit- and Bit- Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

are another tool in

the toolbox.

Mm-hmm.

Um, it's also a target, right? So it's something we can use to...

We can, we can disrupt our adversaries use-

Mm

... use of it, and we can use, um, these technologies

to collect more intelligence, to gather more information about them.

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, I, I think, you know, in that respect, Bitcoin

is actually very similar to

other sort of advanced technologies, um, and one that we have to,

um, that we have to prioritize. And again, it comes back to there's a little bit of

a generational shift and a cultural shift going on

that Director Ratcliffe and I

are, are leading the way on at CIA right now

of,

um, you know, not everyone in the government is, um, uh,

has

these attitudes around new technologies.

Mm-hmm.

Right? People are sort of trapped in older

mindsets sometimes, and we have to break

through that and realize, you know, this isn't just, you know,

take this idea that

cryptocurrency is for, uh, people with something to hide.

That's not, it's just, it's just not right.

You sound like the in-house Bitcoiner.

Yeah.

Um, let's, let's talk about the, uh, the cartel