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Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

If a state like North Korea, that brutally represses its population, is able to use a censorship resistant technology to escape US sanctions, the US should not respond by instituting highly repressive laws to contain that censorship resistant technology. This is totally counter-productive to the larger policy objective, of advancing the values of liberal democracy, like individual liberty, privacy and respect for human rights, that motivates opposition to the North Korean state.

If sanctions cannot be effectively enforced without repressing decentralized platforms, then the US should look to other tools of statecraft to combat problematic states like North Korea.

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Are you saying that the censor-resistant purity of crypto has the ability to inspire values of liberal democracy in the lackies who toil in NK's hacking farms?

That seems rather idealistic, let alone any likelihood of it leading to democratic values taking root there.

No. I have no idea if North Korean society has the necessary conditions, like globally integrated internet communities of appreciable size, where cryptocurrency can effect change.

I'm saying that censorship resistant finance reduces the impact of repressive laws around the world. It helps individuals circumvent laws like those instituted in places like Venezuela and China, that give the state enormous power over private citizens by controlling how they move money.

Stopping North Korea from using cryptocurrency would require very repressive laws to shut down entire global cryptocurrency networks, which in and of itself would make for a less free world because of the extremely heavy-handed enforcement actions that such a campaign would require. On top of this, the end result of such a campaign were it to succeed - of these censorship resistant networks not existing - would further undermine the goal of creating more free societies, for reasons mentioned above.

How does funding organized crime help worldwide freedom?

Financially disempowered people are much more susceptible to organized crime, like the kind that control human trafficking and smuggling networks.

> then the US should look to other tools of statecraft to combat problematic states like North Korea.

What do you suggest? North Korea is effectively a rogue state, only having relations with China and sort of Iran. What other statecraft tools do you think the US has its disposal?

Massively increase counter-espionage budgets, to shadow NK agents outside of the country, and counter their malign activity. It may be costly, but the cost of creating a global surveillance state, with AML checks encumbering billions of interactions each day, is bound to be greater. This is just a small fraction of the costs involved:

https://risk.lexisnexis.com/insights-resources/research/2019...

The impact on the developing world is profound:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/money-reimagined-starve-ugly-...

I'm not sure if the issue is that north korea has particularly good intelligence. It's more so that they have nuclear weapons and aren't afraid to tell us how they'd use them. Maybe leaders who are able to leave would be annoyed, but I'm pretty sure they are already being annoyed, and I'm no sure if that's enough to convince them to change their behavior.

By agents, I was also including economic agents, that raise hard currency for the government outside of the country. A discriminating approach would aid NK refugees, while blocking the actions of agents of the NKean state. That could blunt some of the humanitarian damage from blocking inflows of hard currency from the latter into the country, since the former still maintain ties to family in the country, and could be a source of aid to them.

Other ways to counter the threat posed by the North Korean state include aiding and encouraging South Korea and Japan in building up their armed forces, as a deterrent to any North Korean attack, and expanding deployments of missile defense systems while increasing funding for the development of more advanced missile defense systems.

Yet another approach could be to apply pressure on North Korea's allies, like Iran and China, to reduce military cooperation with the state, as long as it remains outside of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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