Bankless - 160 - Is the CIA Spying on Crypto? with Annie Jacobsen

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist and author writes about war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security. She’s written books on the secrets of Area 51, and the Pentagon’s military science R&D efforts over the decades. ------ ✨ DEBRIEF | Unpacking the episode:  https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/annie-jacobsen-debrief    ------ ✨ COLLECTIBLES | Collect this episode:  https://collectibles.bankless.com/mint  ------ Our guest Annie Jacobsen has spent her career interviewing and studying intelligence agencies. The 2023 crypto movement is sufficiently large enough that it has certainly attracted the attention of every intelligence agency out there. We want to learn about how the world’s intelligence agencies might have or are interacting with the crypto community.  Is the CIA spying on crypto? Our guest Annie gives us her thoughts. ------ 📣 MetaMask Learn | Learn Web3 with the Leading Web3 Wallet  https://bankless.cc/  ------ 🚀 JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM:  https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken  🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  👻 PHANTOM | #1 SOLANA WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist  ------ Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 8:00 Three Letter Agencies 14:40 Annie’s Work 17:33 Crypto Patterns 20:48 State vs. Non-State Actors 27:35 Satoshi  33:18 Government’s Crypto Interest? 38:05 The Different Intelligence Communities 46:56 North Korea-Linked Lazarus Group 51:46 Untapped Crypto Lands 56:20 The Internet Analogy 1:02:26 The Intelligence Community Crypto Strategy 1:04:45 CIA Hedge Fund 1:12:03 Is My Friend in the CIA? 1:19:46 Totalitarian Tools 1:23:58 Is Crypto a Win for the Intelligence Community? 1:28:15 How Should We Perceive the Intelligence Community? 1:31:16 Closing & Disclaimers   ------ Resources: Annie Jacobsen https://anniejacobsen.com/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

With almost certainty, I would say that the world of cryptocurrency is looked at by the intelligence community as a non-state actor, okay, which is a little bit dangerous or rather a little bit adversarial for those of you in that community. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Is the CIA spying on crypto? That is the question today. And our guest, Annie Jacobson, has spent her entire career interviewing and studying intelligence agency. She gives us her thoughts on that question. We cover a few things, things to look out for in this episode. Number one, why intelligence agencies seek crypto as a non-state actor? What is this term, non-state actor? Why

it a default threat? Number two, we talk about intelligence agencies, the CIA, the Pentagon, NSA. Are they in our discords? Are they in our telegrams? Do they walk among us? Is anyone spying on my co-host, David, like he thinks? And finally, we talk about a win-win scenario. Can crypto exist alongside the national security forces in our world and can both parties benefit? David, this was a really interesting episode, kind of on a side quest from typical bankless content, but really important. This national security structure, intelligence agencies are very much a force of power in our world. How do they view crypto? That was the question of today's episode. What were some thoughts as we get into this? Yeah, I really wanted to do this episode

after just learning about Annie Jacobson and who she is, because she is a unique person in that she is illuminating this part of the world, which is supposed to be secret. And I think that everyone's perception of intelligence agencies, the CIA, like DARPA, the Pentagon, it's like, you know, mysterious and secret and espionage and very Hollywood-y, right? And so how do we even think about these entities and their motivations without having the influence of Hollywood and drama determine what we think about these things? Like, are they really a threat? Is the word infiltration even correct. So Annie gives us the best firsthand account of how these agencies think and what they want out of crypto. I think by the time we have arrived in the world of 2023

crypto, crypto as a movement is on the radar of every single intelligence agency that exists, both inside the United States and out. What do they want from us? Do they want anything at all from us? And so talking about how the crypto industry, how the crypto movement is intersecting with intelligence agencies, I think it's worth exploring. And so that's why we brought any Jacobson to the podcast today. Look, guys, the real reason we did this episode is David really wants to know if he's being spied on right now. Yeah. And if they are walking among us and who they might be, how to identify them. In fact, David, I want to talk to you more about that, what your kind of conclusion is about that in the debrief. Of course, our debrief episode is the episode after the episode,

the one that you and I are about to record, David. We record these right after the show. if you are a citizen of the bankless nation, you can get that episode right now. It's available to you right now. There's a link in the show notes if you want to upgrade. And here, David's thoughts and whether he's being spied on which of you might be a CIA. Which one of my friends, I explicitly name, I declare as part of the CIA has been trying to infiltrate the bankless podcast. Spicey. Guys, we are going to get right to this episode with Annie Jacobson. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, most especially Cracken, which is our recommended, most trusted exchange for 2023. Go open an account. Check them out.

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Annie Jacobson, she's an investigative journalist and the author of many books about war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security. She's written books on Secrets of Area 51, the Pentagon's military science, R&D efforts over the decades, many other things. And of course, Bankless Nation, you know, the movement that we find ourselves in, crypto in 2023, is sufficiently large that for certain it's attracted the attention of some major intelligence agencies out. there. We want to understand a bit more about the scope of this interest and learn what the world's intelligence agencies might be interested in looking at with respect to crypto. Annie Jacobson is the perfect guest to tell us a bit more about that. Annie, welcome to Bankless. How are you doing? I'm great. Thanks for having me, guys. Okay. First question for you. What are the chances that some three-letter agency out there is going to listen to this episode, do you think? Oh, goodness. Well, you know,

everything is sort of digitally stored and captured and can be called up on command. We should definitely talk about biometric surveillance if we're going to be talking about crypto. Anything in the world of computers and technology the Defense Department is super interested in, as is the intelligence community. So they can listen to this episode, of course. Do you think they will? I mean, are there people like scouring in the intelligence agencies scouring all sorts of internet communication forms, whether it's podcasts or websites, written form or videos. on YouTube for this sort of information and like, you know, tapping into communities at this level? Or is this way too granular for an intelligence agency to keep track of? Well, for starters, you probably have

some fans in the intel community and the military community, people who are interested in learning about what you guys are subject matter experts. Wait, when you say fans, Annie, do you mean fans in a good way? I'm a little bit worried when you say we have fans in intelligence agency. I don't know what to think. You know, one of the things that, you know, I appreciate in terms of process in my own work is that a lot of people in this world have been, you know, like they have become human to me, meaning there's not a big paranoia, you know, there's not a sense anymore for the kind of reporting I've done for the number of decades that I've done it about, you know, sort of the the twirling mustache bad guy being ubiquitous. Yeah, in government agencies, yes, there are

individuals who are nefarious. I often think that lack of knowledge is the most nefarious of all things, right, or ignorance or fear. But for the most part, most of the people I interview, and I've interviewed at this point, six books, 250 sources a book, on average. Think of how many people I've spoken to have worked for the CIA, DARPA, DIA, you know, any of the military organizations, and mostly there are people, just like any other people that we come across in our different ways in which we move through this universe. So full circle, I think many people probably listen to you because they're probably closer of a mindset than you would imagine. So these are the atomic units of intelligence agency. This is the first lesson before we get in.

And I know we want to hear more about your background, but, you know, I'm kind of front-running this, but the atomic units of an intelligence agency goes back to individual people, individual civilians, people with hopes and dreams, and maybe who are interested in speculating in crypto markets or interested in the technology, interested in the freedom that it provides. It's not sort of, I guess, a shadowy group of individual members of our society that live in a completely separate universe. You're saying your experience, in all of these interviews and talking to people,

these intelligence agencies, they're a lot more similar to everyone else than we might think. Absolutely. I mean, there are people on the edges that are extraordinary, you know, that are, like I have interviewed, people who I call the Superman of Science, you know, presidential science advisors, people who invent things like the laser, right, Charles Towns. Now, Towns is going to live way over. He passed recently, but the universe that he occupies is very different than my universe because he's so damn smart. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have interests in, say, comic books, right? So these things always overlap. And the other thing that I always keep in mind, and this probably has to do with my age, the older I get, I realize, because when I started out,

I was very young and I would be interviewing, you know, 90-year-old or 80-year-old men who fought in World War II, right? And that, as time passes, I have learned this commonality, or rather kind of witnessed and observed it among people, is that everybody has a set of parents. Everybody has a set of parents. And those parents did things that said individuals want to know about. And that's why I think a lot of people become interested in history, right? And many us choose to have children, and then we want to know about modernity, we want to know about the future, we want to know about what lies ahead because of our children. For example, I'm a subject matter expert in a number of areas, one of which is not cryptocurrency, right? But I can speak about it

and look forward to talking to you guys about it because I understand the way in which military technology is the very foundation upon which everything you guys are invested in. And I want to know more about cryptocurrency because my kids think it's the greatest thing in the world. And they might be right. David, I was just thinking, I wonder how many people in the CIA own an NFT. It's probably a non-zero amount, isn't it? Well, I think that's part of the subject matter that we really want to explore, not necessarily the nuances of that particular question, but really just understanding how close are we? to some of these intelligence agencies.

Like, to what degree do they walk among us? Are they adversarial to us, or do we walk shoulder, shoulder to them? And I do enjoy the meta-ness about talking about these intelligence agencies, as we do know that some of them are probably listening to my words right now. That's a little bit funny. And also, kind of the point of the episode is that there is a world out there of intelligence agencies that is unknown and foreign and mysterious to most people out there by design. That's kind of the role that they play. They operate in the shadows. And I want to illuminate some of that world today.

But before we really go into how much of that world relates to crypto, Annie, just to help illuminate this world, can you just perhaps summate the body of your work and talk about how you go about doing the work that you do? How does one investigate the very dark and mysterious world of to global intelligence agencies that exist out there. So you could call me a national security reporter. That's one title. I'm also a storyteller, right? So I write narrative.

I write narrative nonfiction, meaning I believe that readers are most interested and most apt to learn about things if you tell them it in story form. There's plenty of people who are going to write a political. but that's not me. I'm going to go out and interview the people at the very heart of the matter and then interview their competitor and then their adversary and, you know, their colleagues and their former. So in that way, I build my narrative after choosing the narrative what I'm going to write about. Area 51, you know, Operation Paperclip, Nazis, DARPA. biometrics, right? Whatever, then I look at the different military agencies and intelligence

communities that are involved in those that are stakeholders, you could call them or players. And I begin to first and foremost go after the people and talk to them and begin to build the architecture of what the most interesting part of the story is. And then I begin sourcing what I am told by witnesses, I begin to source that information in the National Archives, in declassified documents. And then I also look at the work of journalists who came before me. And I kind of always thank them in my forwards of my book, because as a journalist, you stand on the shoulders of the journalists who came before you, who did the digging. And every single one of my books, You know, I have a 400-page book.

There will be a hundred or 150 pages worth of notes in the back of the book, for those of you that still read analog. Because that gives other people ideas. That's where I get many of the ideas and many of the leads for my work by reading other journalists' work. They may have a tiny, tiny footnote about some document in a Bundesarchive in Freiburg in Germany. I want to know about that. I will go there to that archive, hire a translator, find that document, look at it, and that could set me off down a rabbit hole. So, Annie, I wanted to open up the conversation to the crypto world specifically. I've called the crypto movement. Movement is a word that's frequently used, the crypto movement.

I've also described it as a countercultural dissident movement. It's very anti-state. It's very anti-powers-that-be. And so, Annie, using your expertise, like shedding light on the parts of the world that we are unfamiliar with, the intelligence agencies and other three-letter agencies of that sort. From that perspective, what does the crypto movement look like? As in, does it relate to other movements throughout history? Does it rhyme with a lot of the other movements, perhaps like the actual counterculture movement in the 60s and 70s? From the perspective of intelligence agencies, what does crypto look like? What patterns does it fit? Yeah. First and foremost, I imagine, and again, I'm speculating here because I am not a member of the

intelligence community, right? But I have interviewed enough people to kind of be able to imagine how they think. And with almost certainty, I would say that the world of cryptocurrency is looked at by the intelligence community as a non-state actor, okay, which is a little bit dangerous or rather a little bit adversarial for those of you in that community, right? Does that make sense? Because a non-state actor is a threat. Okay? And again, I'm speaking in analogy or metaphor here, but it is applicable because particularly where we are in 2023, what has been happening, you know, since the kind of last half, last decade of the war on terror is this incredible federal government movement toward biometric identification of everyone at all times. And we can get into. And we can get

into that in detail. It's very dystopian. There are allegedly some upsides of that. We can talk about that having to do with rule of law, but that is the way in which the world is going. And I was writing about this long before COVID happened, and there's huge ramifications in COVID in terms of, you know, body tracking, biometric body tracking. But because cryptocurrency is fundamentally pseudonymous, right? Like some people would call it anonymous, but I would say it's really more pseudonym because everything is tied to something. So there's a pseudonym for it. But that, if you look at now, you asked me to apply intelligence community terms to this, that's very much like a non-state actor who is hiding their cover, right? So, you know, billions of dollars,

trillions of dollars have been spent against counter, those are called counterinsurgency movements, right? Now, when they're foreign adversaries. So, I'm by no means saying that, you know, that it's adversarial per se, but that is the first way in which I would examine the world. Annie, can I make sure that we understand these terms? So am I right that an intelligence agency might group the world into kind of two camps? There are state actors and there are non-state actors. And you said that they probably see crypto as a non-state actor. I'm assuming a state actor means something that can be governed by or controlled by some sort of nation state out there.

And the advantages for a nation and a state actor are, well, we sort of know how to deal with state actors, don't we? There's this international rule of law, international kind of community. You can send diplomats to the other state actor and talk to them. There's a physical location. There's a physical location. they can kind of exercise control over some jurisdiction. It's kind of a known quantity. Like there is a recipe book.

Not to say that all of these other state actors will be friendly. Some will be friendly. Some will be not friendly. But they are easier to kind of quantify and deal with. There's a playbook. And then on the other side, there are these non-state actors, maybe these various movements of sorts, that don't necessarily have a flag,

aren't recognized by the United Nations, don't have a strict geography. And more and more, perhaps, like, these non-state actors and communities are organizing themselves on the internet. I don't know to what extent that is the case. Some of these non-state actors might be viewed as hostile, the U.S.,

or enemies of an intelligence agency. Some may not be. Maybe some are kind of in the unknown. But am I right in saying that non-state actors sort of make nation-state intelligence agencies uncomfortable because you can't really send a diplomat to these groups like who represents the voice of crypto? And it does seem like the U.S., anyway, the last 20 years or so,

sort of like the war on terror, that has largely been a war with non-state actors, has it not? I guess maybe give us some more detail about these boundaries of state actors and non-state actors so we can understand these categories a bit more broadly. Well, keep in mind also that, and again, this is like 101 here. But I think you did a terrific job in summation, yes. But like the military is looking at international threats.

The military cannot perform in the United States. People forget that. There's a posse comitatis. You cannot, you know, you can send in the National Guard and certain. But in general, the Pentagon is looking overseas. And then the same with the intelligence community, okay? The CIA cannot operate in the United States. The FBI is a law enforcement agency.

We are not talking about that, okay? FBI deals with crimes. after the fact. So when we're talking about preemptive considerations of situations, right? Hmm. What weapons should we build, you know, for the future war here? CIA saying, hmm, which area of the globe should we be concerned about for a potential X, Y, or Z? Anand, they are always watching states. And you're right, it should be called nation states, right? Iran, China, you know, North Korea. Those are all nation states. Technically, they wear a uniform. But a non-state actor is a terrorist organization. Okay. So like there's Iran and then

there's Hezbollah, which are their non-state actors that are funded by Iran, but they're the guys running around without uniforms. Number one, you know, identifier of a non-state actor of an organization that's hostile is they don't have a uniform on. Al-Qaeda doesn't wear a uniform. Isis doesn't wear a uniform. Okay. So the defense department is really at odds because who are they going to shoot at? Now, again, keep that as a metaphor. But I'm talking about baseline query. If I was in the intelligence community, how I would approach the crypto community would be mindful of that. These individuals could have a lot of power because I, the intelligence, don't know who they are if I were the intelligence community.

Now, with that said, I do also know a number of serious players in your world who I have a very strong suspicion slash almost certainty consult with the intelligence community. So there is a quid pro quo there because the crypto community, as far as I can tell, and certainly the individuals I know that I have communicated with in other areas, have no intention of being a hostile player.

So they want to, my understanding is the leaders of the crypto community want to be able to maintain pseudonymity, right, but not anonymity. They are saying, wait, I am identifiable. I can tell you what it is you would like to know. I am not a hostile player. I, we, right? However, we are making our own new rules. and that's where it becomes a bit of a d'a-taunt.

And that's where I find cryptocurrency, this world, extraordinarily interesting, because more will be revealed. Interesting. Ryan, you talked about how non-state actors don't have a flag, which, true, we don't have a nation-state flag. But we do have symbols, non-state actors do have symbols, banners that they organize under. And perhaps the first kind of examples of non-state actors that come to mind

at least for me, we're all ones that are religious, right? Like religious movements inside of and across nation states. Like the Taliban was the first one that came to mind, which took over the state of Afghanistan, but it was a non-state actor operating in that world. Yeah, I mean, I suppose like the Catholic Church would be an example of this, right, of a non-state actor in some ways. And it's not lost on me how many. They would not be. Absolutely. Okay. I can certainly identify the Catholic Church. It's the guy in the rope. Right? And I know where they're capital is, is the Vatican. And I can go to their library. And if they won't let me in, I'm going to, right? You see, that is a definitive. The Vatican plays by the same rules.

They even have their own state. But I throw back a question at you, which is probably uncomfortable, right? Tell me about your organization's founder. Satoshi, I was actually going to ask you about this individual. Well, I'm asking you because he's your, you know, take me to your reader, right? I mean, I think that that is part of the secret ingredients of crypto, as no one really knows. I mean, there's lots of speculation on who that individual might be. There's even some sort of what I might call in kind of the conspiracy theory camp. There's speculation that this individual might be representative of a three-letter agency as well. I don't happen to believe that that's true. I believe that this was one or a small group of individuals working together to achieve some

common purpose, but this individual chose to remain pseudonymous. And that is part of the strength and power of this entire, I guess, movement, as David called it earlier, is that it is leaderless and it is opt-in. And also, I think, something that is distinct, maybe from the other non-state actors that intelligence agencies are looking at, it is completely non-violent. It is an opt-in movement where you decide to run a particular node or purchase a particular coin and hold that coin. There is no physical manifestation of it. And certainly there is no coercion or a notion of violence. So in some ways, it is similar to a non-state actor, as you've described it, Annie, in that it's pseuderononymous.

And again, I'm only, remember, you know, caveat here is I'm just telling you how if I were in the intelligence. community, I would approach it. I'm not telling you my approach to it. No, certainly understand that. But this is part of it is we want to get in the head of the intelligence agency because we honestly, we have no idea how they look at that. But, you know, does that description? Well, I'm not put in right now because they either absolutely know who your leader is or they don't. And if they don't, then the organization is considered a non-state actor to them. And if they do, then they have a lot more power than you think. And that creates a vulnerability within the organization that should be considered. Well, what are the chances that

the intelligence agencies of the world don't know who Satoshi is? You know, this is all conjecture. I'd be very interested in your thoughts, Annie. I'd also be interested in your thoughts, David. Like, what do you guys think about this? Well, it's an either or as far as I'm concerned, because there's no way of knowing. You know, they either do or they don't. But if they do, as I said, those two lines of thought than the way in which the intelligence community perceives the organization is entirely different. It couldn't be more different. And as far as the peaceful movement, I would also say that the intelligence community would say this. Any organization that alleges utopian ideals, right, is of incredible interest to both the military and the intelligence community, because nothing

ever winds up the way it was intended. And you can look at Che Guevara. You know, I write about Che Guevara in another of my book, Surprise, Kill, Vanish, because the CIA trained the operators who killed Che Guevara. And that is an absolute fact, and I interviewed him for my book. And so when people's perception, and this has to do with naivete versus understanding the facts about something, which is important because kids of my children's generation, you know, will wear this Che Guevara T-shirt, And, you know, Che has an idea about having been, the perception of him is one thing, but if you really look at Chey's own writings, and mind you, I've been a guest of Che Guevara's son in Cuba. So if you look at Che Guevara's own writings, you will see how incredibly militant he was,

and how many people Chee assassinated, like gun to the head, who no longer adhered to his, utopian, his originally utopian ideas. And so the intelligence community are big understanders of history, even though they also have a lot of amnesia around history. But they would think of that in approaching the world of cryptocurrency based on what you just suggested about well-intention. Yeah, and it's definitely worth noting that even though Satoshi Nakamoto kicked off this industry, they would absolutely not consider themselves a leader, which is why they disappeared into the shadows in the first place. And that's created this culture inside of crypto of there is no leader. If there was a leader of crypto, it would be a failure of the mission of crypto.

So the mission of crypto is to really be a non-state actor. As soon as we become a state actor, that is failure mode for some of the motivational movement behind this whole scene. And Annie, I'm definitely guilty of doing this. many of us in crypto are, of touting a idealized future vision of the world based off of crypto values. And it's a movement that no one can stop. And all we have to do is build this system. But there is no leader. There are people of influence, but there is no leader.

But there's definitely a brighter future ahead. And I'm starting, I'm going to go ahead and guess a lot of these same patterns are discovered throughout other movements and history. So, Annie, my next question for you is, what about this crypto movement? Now this leaderless, semi-organizationalist movement, what about crypto might be of interest to these intelligence agencies that are out there? What do we have that they want? Or what do they want to do about us? Well, technology is changing so rapidly. It's astonishing. And in the Pentagon's brain, I write about the birth of the computer, right? So again, no one man can really take ownership of inventing the computer. But John von Neumann, who was sort of the original

Pentagon's brain right after World War II, developed kind of the first computer. He called it the maniac. It's an acronym for something. And when that computer was built with, you know, almost 2,000 vacuum tubes in the basement of Fold Hall at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, John von Neumann would stand there and be able to, because he was a polymath and he could calculate very fast, he could beat the computer at a calculation, at a very complicated calculation. And he and his students were building the computer to learn faster. And after, you know, several months, the computer beat John von Neumann for the first time. And he then predicted that one day we would have artificial intelligence.

And his words are far more interesting than my paraphrasing of him, but I do write about it in the Pentagon's brain. So then you fast forward to where we are now, right? And you can also look at, there's another guy I write about in that same book called J.C. Licklider, who is kind of the, they call him the godfather of the internet. He was kind of the Johnny Apple seat of the internet, right? So the reason why crypto would be extraordinarily interesting and is, is because of the appeal. that it has and the power that it has and the interest that it has and the fascination that it has,

coupled with this idea that where the computer, forget Moore's Law. I mean, computer technology is moving so much faster than Moore's Law, that it is impossible to predict how crypto will unfold in the next six months, one year moving forward. So that's, the interest. You know, the intelligence community has a duty to look at movements could potentially be extremely powerful to the financial, the previous idea of state stability in terms of finance. So one of the main differentiators that I see between crypto and other countercultural dissident movements in the past, certain countercultural dissident movements are more about tearing things down. With crypto, ideally, hopefully, we also come with solutions. So not only do we want to

disrupt old structures of power, we actually have the plans to replace them with brand new structures of power. And so perhaps it's like, it's less about the details of crypto. It's more about the fact that there is energy here. Also, that energy happens to express itself in the forms of capital and also massive amounts of people who are aligned with these values. And so all of a sudden, all the intelligence agencies all over the world, their radars just start pinging and they don't know what, but they know something's out there and they want a piece of it. Is that kind of how they're thinking? Well, absolutely. And the intelligence community, you know, has a responsibility, at least in the construct of that world, to have more power than not, right? And that gets us

into the concept of rule of law, which is fundamental and foundational to what's happening in the United States. And rule of law is just simply based on law enforcement courts and corrections, right? And so along comes this new player, the world of cryptocurrency, and it does threaten to upset rule of law. And so with certainty, the FBI is like that. The FBI is. looking at your world as well. At this point, I almost feel like I want a quick tutorial on some of the intelligence agencies that we're even talking about. And I mean, please, you know, do the 101 course here, Annie, because I think we have lots

of people listening that have heard of different agencies but are more familiar with kind of the Hollywood version of these things and really don't understand what they do. There was something that you mentioned earlier, which is like sort of, I think two camps. You mentioned that the FBI is the one that deals with domestic issues. And really it's like the CIA and maybe the NSA, you know, these sorts of agencies are mostly about foreign threats. Can you take us through some of these agencies sort of what they are and what their jurisdiction is? And then maybe once we kind of understand that base level, we can apply them to like what their interest level might be in crypto a bit more crisply. So like the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, Homeland Security, what are these?

And how about the FBI? Like, what are all of these acronyms doing for us? So there are 17 known intelligence organizations, right? So the CIA is the most well-known, Central Intelligence, and then there's NSA. And then every military organization has an intelligence department, right? So DIA is the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA is the Pentagon's CIA, right? It was created essentially around and during the Vietnam War, only when the military was like, wait a minute, the CIA has too, and this is the short break.

The CIA has too much power. We want a DIA, right? So they have their own struggles within them. But each intelligence agency is basically reporting intelligence to that organizational structure, right, with the CIA kind of the overarching. NSA is very important to your world, I would think, for the reason of what's called SIG-T, right? So there's different intelligence, are you familiar at all with the intelligence, like any of the terms about what O-S-S-T is, for example, or S-G-N-T? Not at all. Okay.

So, I mean, we don't want to bore anyone, but intelligence collection, okay, that's an int, I-N-T, right? So O-Sent is called open-source intelligence. So anything I read in the New York Times or wherever is OScent, open source intelligence. And when we started this conversation, you said, wait a minute, is anyone watching, right? In the old days, the CIA had a division of OSENT clippers. People would clip articles out of the New York Times and file them away. Now that is just being compiled, you know, by computer systems because of the massive amount of data storage that exists. and what we just spoke of a moment ago with Moore's Law

and how much data you can store, which is its own other problem when we could talk about that. I mean, you know, there's so much sensor technology that is pulling data everywhere, every, you know, that there's one of the generals said to me that, you know, we're drowning in sensors and swimming in data.

There's just too much. How do you process it? Well, now we have these advances in AI, algorithms that are able to, you know, look at massive amounts of data, comb through data haystacks looking for the needle. Okay, but going back to your intelligence community question, all of the intelligence communities are essentially looking at national security,

meaning keeping the nation, right? You think of America safe from foreign adversaries coming in. Law enforcement deals with internal threats. That's the FBI's job. So when you hear all of these, you know, arguments, about NSA listening to me. That's because the NSA is not supposed to be listening to Americans. NSA is supposed to be listening to Al-Qaeda, to ISIS, to, you know, Russia, to, that is what the intelligence community is supposed to be doing, is defending the United States against future military

attack. FBI is solving crimes. Is there a group within the state, we'll take the United States as an example, is there an intelligence agency that effectively spies on American citizens or gathers intelligence maybe on American citizens? That's illegal. That's illegal. Okay. She's something that's illegal. So they can't do that. They shouldn't be doing that. Well, that's why Snowden is not in Russia now.

Right. Well, so what if there are, I guess, citizens of the United States that want to overthrow the government, let's say, or what if there are terrorist cells? Domestic terrorists, yes. Yeah, domestic terrorists or terrorist cells that are in the United States. What organization handles that? Is all the FBI or is there a Homeland Security kind of division? Yes, it is. It's FBI.

And FBI works in concert with Homeland Security. Keep in mind, Homeland Security didn't, the Department of Homeland Security didn't exist until 2004 or five, right? It was a creation of the War on Terror because when the War on Terror happened, when 9-11 happened, the FBI was caught flat-footed. They didn't know those terrorists were going to do what they did, maybe. Some people would argue different. And the CIA, who was tracking some of the terrorists, was like, wait a minute, we're not in charge of what's happening in the United States. That's FBI's job. And the Department of Homeland Security, the birth of that organization, was the result of that complete failure.

So now that we understand them a little bit more, I want to kind of go back to this question that David asked earlier. of, okay, what might these agencies be looking for in crypto? Why might they be gathering intelligence inside of the crypto industry? And one concept I sort of want to float by you is this idea of national defense, right? And so let's talk about those agencies like the CIA and DIA, and those types of groups that are trying to protect the United States from foreign adversaries. There have been, in the last couple of years, a series of high-profile hacks in crypto and particularly decentralized finance. I don't know if you've seen. any of these Annie, but here's an example of a clip. I'll just read it from CNBC. This is January

of 2023, and this is a recap. North Korea linked hackers behind a hundred million dollar crypto heist, the FBI said. There are a series of smart contracts in crypto that house a lot of tokens and a lot of crypto assets and value. Allegedly, some of these bridges have been hacked by foreign adversaries, one of which is called the Lazarus Group. This is a group allegedly operated by North Korea and is just kind of looking for vulnerabilities in smart contracts

in crypto custodial and then draining that money and I think it's been expressed though we've never had a guess about this on bankless that when this started happening the national security apparatus of the United States started to perk up its ears

because I believe they had been working very hard to kind of cut off rogue nations you know US adversaries from means of funding their militaries, of course. And so certainly North Korea has been cut off in all these various ways and sanctions and such.

And now here is this way for North Korea to make money, right, in this kind of dark market, and to do so fairly easily. I think, like, some estimates are that the Lazarus Group was able to acquire, like, billions of dollars in crypto assets in the last couple of years. So what do you make of this? Is this now a reason for the next year?

national defense group of the United States, like these intelligence agencies protecting us against foreign adversaries to enter the ring? And what might their interest be in crypto as a result of this type of activity? Well, they've been in the ring for a very long time, because if you look at, so all of the money, the Lazarus Group, you know, North Korea has an enormous presence in hacking, right? And it is financing. Look, think of the simplest term of all, follow the money. Okay. And that is the beginning and the end of it right there. So if you can't follow the money, that's a problem.

During the war on terror, again, there was a problem of the way in which a lot of the Middle Eastern countries were exchanging money was a, you know, called Holwalla. I'm not saying the word right. But that was that same kind of lending system that was essentially bankless. and the FBI and the CIA and the entire intelligence community, they work together to put an end to that because that was the only way to stop financing terror, right? Now, with North Korea, the money that the Lazarus Group at all is creating,

the wealth that they are creating, is directly financing North Korea's nuclear program. It's ballistic missile program. And that's been going on since 2004. So eyes were on that then and continued to be on that. And for the intelligence community to be able to disrupt that means disrupting the ability to finance those programs, right? Most of North Korea's, from what I understand, from the people I've interviewed, much of North Korea's technology. technology is stolen and bought, right? But you have to pay for stolen goods. They pay for it

in, if they're paying for it in a bankless manner, that is now a national security concern. And the intelligence community is all over that because they want to stop that from happening. Uniswap is the largest on-chain marketplace for self-custody digital assets. Uniswap is, of course, a decentralized exchange, but you know this because you've been listening to bankless. But did you know that the Uniswop web app has a shiny new Fiat on ramp? Now you could go directly from Fiat in your bank to tokens in Defi inside of Uniswap. Not only that, but Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism, Layer 2s are supported right out of the gate. But that's just Defi.

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That's E-A-R-N-I-F-I. And make sure you never lose another air drop. Returning back to the metaphor of the crypto movement as a non-state actor, again, we're building all of these new structures in the crypto world, these new power structures, these D5 protocols, these systems that are organizing humans around them. And I like that you use the term bankless to describe the way that the Middle Eastern states are using to transact with each other and that perhaps offended the intelligence agencies out there because they can't see into that world, nor do they have very much control over that. And so looking at crypto, I a non-state actor with a bunch of bankless money systems, really emphasizing the name of this podcast, of course, it just really begs the question. It's like, well, there is this headless movement with no leaders that is about producing new systems of power, new structures, and all of a sudden in the last two years, all of these structures started being used for purposes that are against the goals of the United States intelligence agencies, let alone all the other intelligence agencies

out there. And so since this is a leaderless movement, it really seems like the crypto world is this monopoly board that no one has claimed yet. And now all of the intelligence agencies are like, oh, we got to claim the land. And so that's kind of the mental model I've started to develop while listening to you, Annie. It's like there's this untapped real estate and all the intelligence agencies need to figure out how to plant their flag and control this headless movement in sway in directions that align with their interests. Would this be an apt description of what we've covered so far? Absolutely. And also, you know, the powers that be, let's call them, right? The government, per se, is very threatened by the power of the people, you know.

Sure, it's like if you've got like an anarch, you know, domestic terrorists, it's like rule of law should go in and quash that movement. But you can also have very well-intentioned movements like the crypto community is right. right now, right, that can literally topple a trillion-dollar defense world. And I'm going to give you a direct example, which is, again, why it's threatening to the powers that be. During the Vietnam War, the military industrial complex was enjoying, you know, its reign, okay? It had been going on for a decade. And the peace movement, begins to become more powerful than the war movement. And as I chronicle in the Pentagon's brain,

hands down, it was the peace movement that stopped the Vietnam War. The government couldn't control it. And the government wanted to be in charge. The government wanted to finish up that war in the manner that it wanted to finish up that war. And it could not do that because the people were more powerful than the military industrial complex in that very tiny moment of time. And I think that's just as important an analogy for all of us, or a historical moment for all of us to understand. You know, then we can talk about all kinds of ways in which the CIA and et cetera then went,

wait a minute, we can't let this happen again. And then develops no. new means to control people. So, you know, I'm all for, you know, I just think creative ideas and creative thinking is the very hallmark of democracy and optimism like you were talking about, Ryan, right? There's a not necessarily utopianism, which I think is a fantasy, but optimism and sort of the betterment of things, a better system. That's what I hear you guys talking about when you're talking about this world you're so enthusiastic about. And I think that's brilliant. And all I'm saying is you get pushback from the powers that be because there is historically that sense of once people have power, they don't want to give it up. Well, you know, that's almost encouraging to hear you say that is just as powerful as these agencies are and that national defense apparatus is there is a hidden power that the people actually have to push these institutions toward their will.

And thank God for that. Thank God that we are able to stop when we rise up and change hearts and minds wars that are unjustified and that the people don't want to wage. And maybe that is also the way the crypto movement gains power. As David and I often say, this is really a battle for hearts and minds. You can see how some of these intelligence agencies may want to stop it. But if we have the hearts and minds on our side, if there are people in the United States that are receiving economic benefits, benefit and able to use these systems to improve their lives. And if this becomes as powerful and we think one day this will as the internet of a force for progress and change, then the intelligence agencies and defense apparatus, the U.S., really won't be able to hold it back, or at least that's the hope. And there is some analog here to us between the early internet in crypto. And so the internet is a communication technology, of course, It uses encryption as well. Crypto is a value transfer technology.

So it's rather than translating messages and transmitting communication, it translates value over IP internet protocol. So it's kind of an analogy here. And from our understanding of the early kind of like 1990s, there's this thing called the Crypto Wars, where there is certainly this battle between the people, let's call it, of the United States

and the national defense apparatus of the U.S. for encryption technologies. These encryption technologies were on sort of the missions list of banned things, things that shouldn't be in the hands of private citizens. So we couldn't use basic cryptography

to encrypt our internet communications. And of course, the internet became so valuable and so useful and propagated so far widely that this is no longer a defensible position for the national defense apparatus to kind of take. And I guess my hope is

that we evolve in a similar direction with crypto. I can see how encrypted technology in the internet could be a very disruptive force for these intelligence agencies. Have you read or have you gone into detail much about that of how intelligence agencies witnessed the birth of the internet? And what's very interesting, I know you've written a book on DARPA, which is like DARPA was actually the original research institute behind the internet and sort of gave civilian access to this technology. What's kind of the analogy here and how does this fit with our story? Well, the intelligence community and the military community didn't witness the birth of the internet. They created, they gave birth to the internet. And it began with a guy called

JCR Licklider. And this is during the Kennedy administration. President Kennedy was worried during the Cuban missile crisis that almost led to thermonuclear war with the Russians when he realized that for him to call Krushchev on the phone, you know, it was a rotary phone. You picked it up and you went like this. You dialed. Okay, now, you guys are too young. You dial, the phone has to go back. Think of the seconds that you are wasting.

It takes 1,600 seconds for a nuclear weapon to get from a launch pad in the Soviet Union to Washington. And you do not want to be wasting seconds trying to tell Khrushchev not to push the button for the rotary phone to dial, and that is the literal truth, declassified documents that I report on in the Pentagon's brain. Why JFK said, we need something faster. Can we somehow, I'm paraphrasing him, you know, this newfangled thing, the computer thing, we've got them, they're the size of a house, they're over there in the Pentagon, let's get JCR Licklider on the system and see if he can't figure out how to make computers talk. That is the birth of the Internet. And that's what what DARPA began as a program, J.C.R. Licklider's idea was that he was going to create an intergalactic computer network. That's what he called it. And there was a couple notes. And this is moving forward to 1969. There were literally a couple nodes on the internet. Then it became Milnet, military, right? So for decades, the only access was internal. And then, of course, you know, the power of the people. It's sort of like this is,

You know, you can talk to the early, the Vint Cerfs of the world, who will explain to you how Internet protocol was built to be able to, you know, not be siloed at the Pentagon. And that has to do with this very interesting, again, narrative fact that these scientists that get co-opted into the government to work on military technology issues, and they get co-opted into the government usually because the government has the biggest pocketbook and an organization like DARPA is interested in their ideas, even if it's not going to produce money right away.

And these scientists are often inherently, you know, very plebeian, very of the people. And so they tend to build things into their systems that are very democratic fundamentally. And I want to ask about, because one of the purposes about bringing you on to the show today is to educate the bankless listenership about how they might with or without their own knowledge be interfacing with some of these intelligence agencies. But I'll have to admit, I'm interested in this at a personal level because one of the topics, how this idea for the subject matter came at hand is that there is this social group of crypto people in New York city that all hang out and that is a place of perhaps infiltration. So I'm wondering about

like as it comes to how intelligence agencies may attempt to capture and coerce and steer, either aligned or misaligned with crypto's own goals, what are the strategies for how intelligence agencies might find themselves in positions of power in the crypto world? Well, when you say find themselves in a position of power, you mean hanging out with the guys who are leading the industry? How will intelligence agencies attempt to steer the ship of crypto in ways that align with their own goals. If there are strategies for getting that done, like, how do they start?

Like, how do they engage with this industry? I mean, like, how did they do it during the 1970s against the peace movement, for example? Well, that I would see as a direct conflict, right? So the peacinks were absolutely in, you know, up against the defense department, you know, holding sit-ins at the Pentagon. I mean, there was no question that they were at series. I see the community. of cryptocurrency

from the point of view of Silicon Valley. That's just me. It might have to do with my age and it's with the knowledge that Silicon Valley is entwined with the intelligence world and always has been. So I have a strong sense

that there is a partnership and I would tell your listeners if they have any doubt, they can Google in Q-Tel, I-N-Q-T-E-L, which is the hedge fund of the CIA. And you will see... Wait, hold on a second. The CIA has a hedge fund? So if you Google this, you will see a lot of people in your world involved in that world.

So it's not so like there are... are CIA agents who are in our discords or in our telegram chat rooms or who are trying to infiltrate their ways, perhaps more through just not back channel alleys, but just more directly. Let me give you another metaphor, right? Like this is almost poetic, right? So like during the war on terror, one of the ways in which terrorists were communicating was by playing video games and having, you know, communications. I'm not a big video gamer, but I knew this. And so a couple of the sources that I was working with were these gamers.

Right? So, Ryan looks horrified. Ryan's on the CIA. He's got a hedge fund. He's stuck on that way now. Sorry, we moved on too quickly from that of like, the CIA has a hedge fund, Annie?

Look it up. Of course they do. So what is this? I tried to Google it very quickly, but I'm afraid I may have missed some of the digits here. So what is it? IN. It's called in QTel, right?

QTel. It's been around for a while. I mean, I spoke to one of the original founders, a guy called Jacques Valet, who, interestingly, is the world's most interesting euphologist. You know, Jacques Valet is an astrophysicist who's had a top secret security clearance since 1960 when he was working. He also mapped Mars, you know, and I wrote about Jacques in one of my books called Phenomena, which is the CIA's interest in psychic functioning, right? So does the CIA, you know, really believe in psychic functioning? Read my book. Is the CIA very interested in people who believe in psychic functioning in UFOs?

Absolutely. There's an incredible, to me, incredibly interesting statement, which is by a psychologist named Dr. Thomas. And it goes like this. If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. And to me, the whole bankless world of cryptocurrency could absolutely be summed up in that manner. If a group of people decide that this is how they want to bank, well, there are very serious consequences for the pre-existing banks. I'm on the Incutel website right now.

And this looks like it's, yes, indeed a fund, almost like a venture capital type fund. Here's an excerpt. I shouldn't call it a head. It's really more of a, it's more VC. Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. As they call it in the CIA adventure. Right. And so in QTel was founded in 1999 as the global technology evolution is underway.

The internet is widely available. And the CIA and government agencies, once innovation leaders, recognized they were missing out. Apparently, they don't want to miss out on this technology. So this appears to be less about returns on investment capital. Maybe that's important to someone in government. And maybe more a way to kind of forge alliances and partnerships and bridges and relationships and perhaps recruiting to some of the most

innovative technology in the world coming out of the Silicon Valley. So that's what you're saying. You see crypto as having a role in something like this, being like an investment of some sort of incutel type of CIA VC group. Well, more than anything, what I see it as is a technological forerunner, right? So in other words, DARPA and the CIA are more similar to me than different. The Pentagon is very different. The Pentagon is a big giant bureaucracy, and it functions as such. The CIA is very decentralized, ironically, right? As is DARPA.

DARPA has 100-some-odd program managers who go out into the world and build little units of scientists and create projects that change the world. DARPA has what's called a chicken and egg philosophy, right? if you have a weapon system that you need, if a need arises for a new weapon system and you don't already have it, you haven't done your job. That's the chicken and eggs near. So they have to be 25 years out. The agency has, and when I say the agency, I mean the CIA, it has to be ahead of other intelligence organizations, of other technology organizations. It has to be. Otherwise, it's not doing its job.

And with that said, I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just simply saying that is its job. And given how safe and secure, we all are here in the United States and enjoying rule of law, you know, and if you have any doubt, just turn on the TV and look at Turkey, right? And they're building codes just by way of example, right? I mean, I'm very proud to be an American. Do not call me a nationalist. I'm just a proud citizen. And that is because we have a government that, in essence, is meant to, you know, provide for the people.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Are these agencies, you know, the more I study them, the more interesting I find the history of the intelligence communities. And I hope that they continue to go on a trajectory where I do see them going, which is, you know, fixing problems and then innovating toward the future. Because if you look back at the way the national security apparatus all began in 1947 after World War II, no one had any idea that technology would take over the way it has. And so, you know, the duties of the powers that be are insurmountable at this point. And then my last thought on this is like, you look at the North Korea, rush any of these China, these.

totalitarian governments that have no responsibility to the people whatsoever and treat them like dirt, you know, they have so much accumulated power at the top that they are even more threatening than they ever were with technology in their hands because they don't have to have as many tanks and airplanes. And that leads me back to crypto. Right. And I want to ask you that, Like, what are the ways that we should know about as it relates to intelligence agencies entering our communities? But I do know that the way that you've done your research and written your books, it's as time has passed and as information eventually becomes declassified and more information makes its way up to the surface. I don't think you have the actual explicit answers as to like, here is exactly what the CIA is doing inside of whatever Dow or Defi app that exists in crypto. that's a secret. But if you could put on your speculative hat and just for me and all of the other

people who are operating in these various communities and circles, what should we, is there anything that we should look out for? Like, how can we identify these people? What are they trying to do? It's like, is there, if you put on your speculative hat, like, what comes to mind? Annie, David wants to know who the CIA plants are, okay? I want to know which one of my friends is in the CIA. Or podcast partners. I mean, how much do you really know about the person you podcast with?

I mean, I guess I'm not, the one thing I'm missing is the sinister aspect of it, right? So fill me in a little bit more. Like, what is the threat? So there is this general vibe at times in different crypto circles. And depending on how far down the crypto, like, community rabbit hole you go,

you'll find yourself into a Discord or Telegram group and there's messages flying everywhere because it's an open group. Sometimes individuals will split off and start to engage more directly in private DMs. And there is this overarching meta, like meme perhaps about people will take a screenshot and it will be of this one account on Telegram, totally and on account. And they are trying to get this person to like do tornado cashing. Oh, you can, tornado cash is a smart contract address that has been deemed illegal by United States citizens by the... It's on the O-Fax-sanction list because it provides privacy. Of-Fax sanctions list, right?

And so, like, one of the jokes was that, like, this one person was like, oh, yeah, you can still totally use tornado cash and then trying to go this person into doing tornado cash in order to do something illegal so that maybe they could get themselves in trouble and bring them to jail. Was the joke? And so the idea was, like, this person's a Fed. And so, like, the joke, the meta is, like, it's mostly a meme, but people are so. sometimes think is true is that there are everyone, you don't really know who's out there and someone

might be among us who is a part of this intelligence agency and we don't know who. And I don't know if that's just like raw paranoia speculation or if that's real. Well, okay, so I'll give you another analogy, right? So, or a story from the past. In the 50s, I believe it was, maybe it was the 60s, a magazine, a literary magazine called the Paris Review came to be, a very famous Paris Review. I don't know if either of you've heard of it, right? It's kind of like old school now. One of the partners was a true journalist, you know, novelist. The other was a CIA person. And the truth about this only came to light maybe around the year 2000, okay? But for decades, this functioned in this manner.

Another example is one of the surrealist painters was also a known agency person, and he had a gallery in Paris. And the idea at the time was to try and interest. The reason Paris was such an important location was to try and entice Russian spies, to liaison with them, okay? Because that was a world in which they might populate.

And that would be, and again, I'm speculating here, but if there's an intelligence community or a federal agent inside of a crypto community, they're not after like David's, you know, personal information or Ryan's bookshelf, they are looking for someone from the Lazarus, group, right? And it would certainly be the authorization that they would have to be there in the first place. It would have to be a national security operation. And it would be very sensitive.

And it would be in concert with the FBI because the FBI has to be the lead because, you know, the CIA cannot perform in the United States. You have to have a lead FBI agent. And so that's what they would be looking for. Okay. I think I've got a better refinement of my question. And after thinking about it a little bit. It's like, crypto is a movement. We are here, bankless is here for specific crypto values that we see ourselves as stewards for, and we are trying to get more people to align with this movement to bring what we see as this technology with a ton of potential and a ton of good for the world. We're trying to get that technology manifested. Now, going back to my monopoly board metaphor, it's like, oh, this brand new crypto land just got birthed out of the

internet. And now all of the intelligence agencies are trying to claim as much of that as possible. I feel threatened because I want crypto to be expressed in its purest form. And I have no interest in helping steward this very optimistic future technology into the world if it just means that the CIA or Levasaurus group or insert your intelligence agency here sees it as real estate to be captured for their own bidding. So I feel threatened from that perspective. Am I justified in my feelings there? Or do you have any thoughts on that?

No, because I think those are like deeply personal thoughts, it sounds like, things that you think about, which are fine. But, I mean, having written six books on the intelligence community and the military world, I have an awareness of where and why the federal government has a presence in a certain place. And again, we're just speculating here. but because of the newness and the radical acceleration of people's interests in cryptocurrency, I would be almost certain that there is a presence. And perhaps the way to look at it is that it's observational, right? Which is in a way what you would want your government to be doing. It's not spying per se, right?

And that's why it's probably maybe not even the intelligence community, right? there may just be individuals examining things for oversight issues. So David talked about as kind of like more personal type of infiltration. But I'm wondering if any of these intelligence agencies use a tool to influence large groups of people. So of course, you know, we talked about like Russian bot farms, for instance. And certainly in crypto, this is prolific across all social media. You say something about a specific crypto topic on basically anything. and this swarm of what looks like non-human-type bots,

but you can't really tell because they're all pseudonymous, if they're human or if they're not human, or if they're sock puppets or they're real people, kind of will swarm various topics and almost try to influence group opinion towards one direction or another. Is this a tool that our intelligence agencies have at their disposal? And would they ever use that domestically

to kind of shape the ideas of specific communities in one direction or another? Well, what I know for certain is that totalitarian governments use tools of what are called mass manipulation regularly because they can and because they achieve certain things. So, you know, for decades, the State Department, this is when the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union, was very concerned about, you know, rumors that, and again, this is the old school analogy of it that makes sense, right? there was a rumor by the Soviet Union is a very famous case purporting that AIDS was, you know, I mean, so preposterous, I'm forgetting that AIDS was a defense department germ meant to get rid of the gay population, okay? And the Soviet Union, the Office of Disinformation, worked over time to spread this disinformation into the media. then it was all analog media, newspapers, and television, to create paranoia among people against their government.

Now, it's tricky because the government has also done some pretty nefarious things, you know, the United States government, many of which I've written about in my various books. But that happened to not be one of them, as far as I understand. And so this is a very old tactic, and it's just gotten, you know, You can't even use the word weapon. It hasn't been weaponized.

It's been thermonuclear weaponized in the age of information that we are in, of electronic information. And so you ask me if America does it, right? I can't answer that question directly because it's terrible. You know, it's illegal. But what I can tell you is that the government is always or often uses it as an excuse for bad behavior saying it's our defense to their offense. So they did it, so we're doing it. And that's where I would suggest, you know, I wrote a book called Surprise Kill Vanish about the CIA's paramilitary organization. And I have people write to me, you know, all the time or on Twitter, they say like, oh my God, after I read that book,

now when I read the news, I see things differently. Because again, you just have a piece of information, you have a little bit of knowledge, again, based on just historical examples of, oh, this is what might be going on. And why I believe that's useful to an individual is because then you can say on balance, you know, this could be going on, right, as opposed to becoming either paranoid, which one doesn't want to be, or naive. Neither of those, you know, mindsets is going to serve you moving forward, either as an individual person or as a citizen of the United States. We've talked a lot in this episode about the possible threat crypto might have to some of these intelligence agencies into a national defense. But something in what you were saying a little

while ago, Annie, sparked another question in my mind or another thought, which is, what if there a whole bunch of wins for the U.S. national defense in this technology? And here's sort of what I mean is you were talking about totalitarian regimes and how they can weaponize and use different technologies to kind of control their people. One thing that's interesting about crypto is it is truly a technology for individual citizens, individual internet citizens to essentially be their own bank or take digital property under their custody. And with some private keys or a seed word in their head transport money across borders. And while this is threatening in a way to national defense of like what happens if this gets into a nefarious non-state actors' hands and they're able to

better organize, I would think it would be even more threatening if you were a totalitarian regime. So maybe a Russia, for instance, quite possibly. And I'm wondering if the U.S. National Defense group might see the wins of this as kind of a a technology to bring about democratic values. In some of the same ways that the internet is, a free and open internet in the borders of a totalitarian country, you'd think would give more power to the people, their ability to communicate,

the ability to sort of rise up and talk freely. Encryption, in case your government's spying on you in such a totalitarian country, you have protection against that. Crypto and bankless technologies provide the same thing, except for money, for economics. And I'm wondering your thoughts on that idea, if there is possibly a win here for free, open, democratic countries to propagate, to actually want to export this technology to the world. Because if totalitarian regimes, non-democratic regimes, get this technology, their citizens do, they can leverage it to possibly overthrow their overlords.

Is this a thought process that makes sense, given any of the history that you've seen? Well, I would say that the quote-unquote overlords have long thought through this problem in advance, right? It's why you see a shutdown on Twitter. It's why you can't have, you know, why the Chinese government doesn't allow X, Y, and Z in terms of the internet. So the governments, whether they're a theocracy or any kind of totalitarian government, is absolutely making sure that citizens don't have any of this kind of access, power, authority. As far as win-win, I'm an inherent optimist, so I always love the term win and I love the term optimism. But I do also consider that on balance the idea of dual use, right? Because everything that gets created by science and technology ultimately can be used for good or for bad. You know, it's the inherent, I look at nuclear energy. So I think that everything that we've been talking about is all great, food for thought and sort of personal armor to be able to move forward in the world in which all three

of us live where we do have freedoms to be part of these new technologies, you know, in a really exciting way. So, Annie, thanks so much for spending our time. I feel like we've gotten inside of the, maybe the Pentagon's brain, at least the intelligence agency's brain. And that's something that we often in crypto really don't think about. And I'm wondering if, as we close I can ask sort of a, you know, final question to you. So given everything we've talked about, how do you think the crypto community should perceive the intelligence agencies around the world? Should we trust this instinct of hostility? Should we view them as fellow civilians? Should we be concerned about them? Should we be friendly with them? What final advice would you

give us as we think about these things? I always think it's awareness, right? You know, it goes back to that Eisenhower principle because one of the things that I am very concerned about is far more, of far more concern to me than the intelligence community doing something nefarious is the military industrial complex under which we all live. You know, an extraordinary amount of money is spend building new weapon systems of the future. That is what they are called. and they get used, and then new ones get built. And that is pre-planned and pre-programmed. And I only see more money being spent on defense, and I only see more wars being fought.

And I only see public, talk about mass manipulation. My clothing thought for people to think about would be this, is that when I was reporting on drone warfare during the war on terror, People were horrified, you know. There were protests inside the Capitol. How on earth can we assassinate people from the airs, what people were shouting in the streets of America? And now, drone warfare has completely shifted around

to be seen as the hallmark of, you know, taking out those bad Russians. Well, you're still killing people with unmanned aerial vehicles. And now they're turning into drone, forms. This is exactly what the military industrial complex hopes for, your support. Okay. And that's very different than the intelligence community. Call me naive here, but I would like to believe, and this probably has to do with my nostalgia for all the guys I interviewed for Area 51, who were the original overhead espionage pilots, who spied on the Soviet Union from the U-2 aircraft. And their idea was

wait a minute, if we can stay ahead of the game in terms of intelligence, we can prevent actual shooting wars. I understand how naive that is and how almost falsely optimistic. But that's how I look at the intelligence community versus the military industrial complex. And I encourage people read my books and you may actually agree with me. Annie, thank you so much. Awareness is the message at the end. And I think you've help make us more aware in this episode. We certainly appreciate you. Thanks for having me, guys. Keep up the great work. Action items for you today, Bankless Nation. You can learn more about some of the books that Annie mentioned at her website. That's where I would direct you. That's

Annie Jacobson.com. Some of those books that we mentioned on the episode, Surprise Kill Vanish, the Pentagon's Brain, Area 51, and others. There's a link in the show notes to access that. As always, got to end with our risks and disclaimers. None of this has been financial advice. We have who might be spying on you, if anyone. That's a message to you too, David. Crypto is risky. You could definitely lose what you put in. We're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.