Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen says CIA likely views crypto as ‘adversarial non-state actor’

Author and investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen tackled the questions of whether Bitcoin is part of a countercultural dissident movement and whether cryptocurrency was infiltrated by the CIA during a recent episode of the Bankless podcast hosted by Ryan Adams and David Hoffman.

While Jacobsen is known for reporting on topics such as national security, intelligence, military technology and government secrets, her views on crypto are much less well known.

“Military technology is the foundation” of crypto, she began the podcast by declaring.

“The NSA is probably most important to your community,” Jacobsen added, citing specific tools the NSA uses to monitor communications such as Open-Source Intelligence, compiled by large computer systems as a way to extract mass intelligence, techniques revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden to have been applied to the American people.

Jacobsen also drew an interesting parallel between various utopian environments, or rather groups that promise a version of utopia, which can pose a threat to national security.

“Any organization that claims utopian ideals is of incredible interest to both the military and the intelligence community,” Jacobsen said, noting that Bitcoin — with its emphasis on a leaderless, trustless, permissionless utopian economic ideal — would be of interest to the CIA.

“No utopia ever ends the way it was intended,” Jacobsen stressed, giving the example of Che Guevara, who she says the CIA killed as a way to disinfect America with a violently anti-American utopian worldview.

“North Korea has a huge presence in hacking,” Jacobsen added, referring to the Lazarus Group, a North Korea-linked hacking entity that the FBI accuses of being responsible for billions in stolen crypto funds. “The wealth with which the Lazarus Group directly funds North Korea’s nuclear program, a program that has been ongoing since 2004 [and predates crypto]so the eyes continue to be on it.”

Weather certain groups or individuals in crypto have been compromised or turned into CIA assets, Jacobsen speculated that crypto is far more likely to be embedded in Silicon Valley, which has a long history of working with intelligence agencies.

“I see the cryptocurrency community from the point of view of Silicon Valley,” she said, noting an interesting example of how the two have become increasingly intertwined, not through compromised individual spies working from crypto, but rather from an economic perspective.

Jacobsen specifically mentioned the American venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, which she called “the venture fund of the CIA […] or, as they call it in the CIA, “adventure capital.” The fund, originally called Peleus, was founded by Norm Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin, and Gilman Louie, whose mission was to invest in and identify companies critical to technologies that serve America’s national security interests. As of 2016, In-Q-Tel listed 325 investments, but more than 100 were kept secret, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Noting how intelligence agencies are by their very nature small, decentralized entities that can be deployed in small groups, Jacobsen said, “they can build small units of scientists that can create projects that penetrate and change the world.”

By design, intelligence agencies have to stay ahead of other technologies and technology organizations, Jacobsen said, adding that she believes that by virtue of crypto’s newness and popularity, it is very likely to be looked at by intelligence agencies from CIA to CIA. NSA to DARPA and even the FBI and local law enforcement.

“I would say with almost certainty that cryptocurrency is viewed by the intelligence community as a non-state actor, which is a bit dangerous, even counterintuitive, for those of you in that community,” she concluded.