Following Wyoming Example, Feds Limit Foreign Crypto Mines Near Military Bases | Hacker News Reader

Following Wyoming Example, Feds Limit Foreign Crypto Mines Near Military Bases

cowboystatedaily.com

22 pointsLinuxBender15 comments

This appears to be the press release the article is based around: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2708

Which appears to have absolutely nothing to do with crypto mines, and everything to do with controlling what foreign people own real-estate near military installations. The only link to crypto currency is the same rule was once used to remove a Chinese company that bought land close to an air force base, and happened to be using that land (at least ostensibly) for crypto mining.

This appears to be the executive order that removed that Chinese company: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...

To the extent that the order relates to crypto currency, it appears to be that the company was bringing in non-standard electronic equipment built in China (unsurprising for a crypto mining company), and the US wasn't confident in their abilities to set up a program to monitor it and ensure that the equipment only did what it said and wasn't actually (also) surveillance equipment.

Strange paragraphs like

> Cryptocurrency is a computer intensive process, running trillions of formulas every second, and generally requiring the use of supercomputers. Having one next to a military base that's owned by an adversary is problematic.

appear to be entirely an invention of this article. This is, of course, not the issue with having farms of adversary controlled electronics next to an air force base.

That's right... CFIUS has long been monitoring and regulating foreign countries purchasing land in the United States. This article is attempting to turn the status quo into news.

I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably right; but in the greatest Internet tradition, one other thing is that forts use a lot of energy and the dod is very conscious of power availability and also how the locals perceive military (over)consumption of (their) power.

It may well be considered a security flaw for any country to allow foreign nationals to purchase any real estate.

Incidentally, the practice also drives up prices for citizens, leading to housing crises.

But a policy that allows anyone with a foreign allegiance to set up shop next to a military base is courting disaster.

What resources are there for evaluating "national security" threats of which domestic individuals own what property? On intuition, domestic actors are of far greater threat to national security than foreign actors are.

Is there any other excuse that clearly is employed to restrict due process to the extent that "national security" (whatever that means) does?

Not that I give a damn about crypto; for the most part it's a cancer on the country. But I find it curious how blithely people accept this reasoning despite it, well, not being coherent reasoning at all.

> The U.S. Department of Treasury is amending its definitions of a military installation, adding to the list of military installations covered by the Committee on Foreign Investment int he United States (CFIUS)

> The new list adds almost 60 military installations across 30 states to the existing list of 10 military installations that CFIUS has jurisdiction over. That enables the federal agency to have more scrutiny over real estate deals that happen in proximity to the bases.

The Wikipedia page for CFIUS clarifies that it was originally created by an executive order as per the Defense Production Act, but its authority has since been expanded by legislation.

I don't think this explains much about peoples' blithe acceptance, just the formal and legal mechanism on which it rests. Any action you can conceive of can be formally declared with the declaration of law; this does not imply people have, should, or will accept it.

That's actually fair. I'm not anything close to a constitutional expert, but I I'm willing to assume that there is either court precedent backing this up, or there has never been a meaningful challenge to it and so it stand as law until otherwise struck down. I'd love to know from somebody more educated on this topic than I am.

I'm with you re: crypto being a cancer, but "for national security reasons" has been the go-to since at least 9/11 for "this gives the plebs a little bit toooo much control"

Something isn’t resonating when you express an opinion about due process while being baffled by the concept of national security. Clearly you understand the value of due process, but appear to miss the importance or necessity of protecting that process. I’m not sure how that happens.

Yes; I have no clue what "protecting that process" even means. Protect it from whom, in what scenario? Clearly the domestic nature of this process is real and already eroding domestic values and protections, whereas the threat to national security is at best hypothetical, at worst intentionally obscured for fear of evaluation. How can we even evaluate if the foreign actor is a greater threat to our lives than the domestic actor?

This is not restricted to state-vs-state squabbling, either. The "no-fly" list and use of "terrorist" are equally concerning in how easily they're accepted despite enabling arbitrary, antisocial, and clearly unjust behavior of the state that undermine the theoretical values that the propaganda of the state itself advances.

If you really believe that national security threats are “at best hypothetical” then we don’t share enough common ground to constructively discuss the subject.

Well, yes. Hence why I made the post—to attempt (in good faith) to overcome americans' inherent unwillingness to discuss topics of substance.

Here's how I interpret "national security": the goal of protecting against literally any kind of threat to the material comforts of average americans. Otherwise we would have sacrificed a lot of global trade in the last two decades to protect us against retribution a la 9/11. As it stands that threat has only increased.

What sort of threat do you think is worth eroding values to protect against?

> As it stands that threat has only increased

The imaginary threats have increased?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com