Image credit: STR / AFP / Getty
March 27, 2020
Cryptocurrency Laundering Is a National Security Risk
On March 2, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two Chinese nationals for allegedly laundering cryptocurrency on behalf of North Korea. The laundering scheme ferreted away part of almost $250 million worth of virtual currencies stolen from a cryptocurrency exchange in 2018 by the North Korean-affiliated Lazarus Group. Through elaborate software programming, the two Chinese nationals, Tian Yinyin and Li Jiadong, converted much of the stolen cryptocurrency into regular currency at Chinese banks, according to a U.S. Treasury announcement sanctioning them both.
The case exemplifies how cryptocurrency obfuscation tools and techniques are likely to play a growing role in financing threats to U.S. national security. As U.S. adversaries get more acquainted with blockchain technology, their hostile cyber operations are likely to rely increasingly on cryptocurrency activity. And rogue states are likely to become more innovative in using cryptocurrencies as they try to dampen the impact of U.S. economic sanctions.
Read the full article in Lawfare.
More from CNAS
-
Sharper: The Future of Russia Relations
While the recently released U.S. National Defense Strategy names the People's Republic of China as the greatest pacing threat facing the United States, Russia poses the most i...
By Anna Pederson
-
Sharper: The State of AI
The U.S. government's recent chip export controls are the latest salvo in the U.S.–China rivalry in artificial intelligence. Semiconductors are a key input for AI systems and ...
By Anna Pederson
-
Sand in the silicon: Designing an outbound investment controls mechanism
Recent congressional efforts to establish new authorities to regulate outbound investment have revived a long-simmering debate in Washington about the economic and security ri...
By Emily Kilcrease & Sarah Bauerle Danzman
-
The Cost of Economic War
Sanctions, not bombs, have been the weapon chosen to take on the Putin regime. BBC speaks with macroeconomist Rachel Ziemba about the effectiveness of modern economic statecra...
By Rachel Ziemba