US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

> Might makes right.

Yes. This is true. We live in a US hegemony, enhanced globally by the fall of the USSR. This situation may change in the future, it may not. When we initially sanctioned Cuba we were primarily able to do so because Cuba geographically exists within the US sphere of influence. Now the entire globe exists within the US sphere of influence.

I don't think my earlier reply to you qualifies as "rhetoric". I was replying to the implication that the US just unilaterally decided to sanction Cuba for no good reason. The US had a good reason, it is pretty obvious what that reason was, and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Cuba's actions resulted in sanctions (and could have resulted in much worse). It is also, frankly irrelevant, that it was precipitated by the US doing something stupid.

Personally, I think we should have dropped the embargo on Cuba a long time ago, probably in the 90s. But that's not the case right now. It certainly wasn't a mystery to anyone why it started though.

Sanctions on Russia and sanctions on North Korea are both not only "might makes right", but fully justified within multiple different deontological frameworks. It is absolutely true that there is realpolitik afoot here, but that does not also preclude the possibility that the outcome is justified and fair.

Honestly, I'd love to hear/read some thoughts as to why dropping sanctions on North Korea would be beneficial to /anyone/ in a real way.

Virgil is at it again.

I met him at a summer school a couple of years ago, a remarkable character. He developed WikiScanner, which exposed the "beautification" of U.S. politician's Wikipedia pages, conducted from the White House and other government building's IP addresses, which was creative and in the public interest.

I'm surprised that giving a talk about blockchain and crypto-currencies would be considered that sensitive, as the whole Web is full of (open source) software and instructions how to use Ethereum, the ETH currency and related stuff.

> Griffith: I need to send 1 [REDACTED UNIT OF CRYPTOCURRENCY] between North and South Korea. Other Guy: "Isn't that in violations of sanctions?" Griffith: It is.

Strange: The Virgil Griffith that I met was very smart, not sure if he would have had such an exchange in an unencrypted medium. He came across as an ultra-tech savvy prankster that had also hacked his high school's payment system (he did not say that because he was prevented under court order, so he just quipped "google me").

Here's an EdTech talks he gave 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymGl84RORLQ

Edit: I was wondering about that strange redaction of "[UNIT OF CRYPTOCURRENCY]". Clearly, as he is working on Ethereum, that one has the ETH currency, so likely it was that. Could the unredacted just say "1 ETH" (not a secret)? Then the transfer would have just been symbolic, not actually evading sanctions at scale. On the other hand if he was (allegedly) talking about 1 million ETH or BTC then it would smell more like a serious crime, assuming for a moment that exchange really happened. [BTW, 1 ETH = ~$3,000 versus 1 BTC = $40,000 at the moment, so the unit makes an order of magnitude difference.]

We can only speculate why Russia was willing to fight over Ukraine and Georgia but not the baltics. One obvious difference is time. Russia had 18 more years to get in a better position to stop Ukraine joining.

The Baltic path to joining was also much faster, announced in 1999 and complete in 2004. The Ukrainian membership was announced in 2008 and had a many decade lead time because Ukraine was expected to tackle many internal issues of corruption and human rights first.

A separate factor is size, population, and location. Ukraine is larger and may have a more strategic position to take out planes and nukes heading to central Europe.

>Honestly, I'd love to hear/read some thoughts as to why dropping sanctions on North Korea would be beneficial to /anyone/ in a real way.

The most obvious benefit would be to the 25 million North Korean people. Lifting of sanctions would allow economic activity alleviating poverty and malnutrition.

I have a few thoughts:

If you don't know how they can mislead you, it only means you are more vulnerable. We don't know what we don't know. Whole worlds of issues and problems can be easily omitted, for example. Trusting any source as described is a fundamental mistake.

But this is really unnerving:

> Very rarely, that process gets it wrong

Why do you say that? That is not my understanding of the process. Look at all the exonerations from death row, cases that receive the most attention and process. Look at all the abuses of minorities and political outcasts.

> you should be careful of believing 100% anything that involves a DoJ accusation but no indictment

Do you mean, 'indictment but no conviction'? Indictments are easy - the old saying is that a decent prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

> Convictions are how we write history. We have now answered the following question: did this guy conspire to violate sanctions? The answer was yes.

That's not how knowledge works; we don't get relief from certainty. What we know is that they were convicted. Many accept, whether true or not, that that process is better than any available alternative; I don't know many people who have as much confidence in its accuracy as you do.