This was written by me and published over at Bitcoin Magazine in February. I shared this as a link in early June on Steemit, but without the text. I think the points made in here are just as important to the Steem community as they were to the Bitcoin community (and definitely now to the Ethereum community). Just as important now as they were back when I wrote it originally.
I want this to stand as a template for the sort of analysis I hope to contribute to the Steem ecosystem.
NOTE: I removed a few 'editorial examples' that were added to my original, which I felt changed the dynamic of my analysis.
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.”
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Anyone with experience in extended, unconventional conflict should be able to recognize current patterns in the Bitcoin and digital currency space that resemble subversive activity.
Is a game of social engineering being leveled at the Bitcoin community? Based on open source information alone, it’s conceivable that certain individuals or teams are trying to demoralize and disrupt the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This article won’t definitively answer the question; it will present a thought experiment about how a “red” team would arrange itself going up against the Bitcoin ecosystem, with some examples that demonstrate the tactics. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Before charging ahead, it might be helpful to know whose thought experiment you are reading. I graduated from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina with a major in Unconventional Warfare and minor in Engineering. I spent some time as a Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant on a deployment to Iraq, which could be compared to high-octane detective work with the possibility of firefights. The detective work was focused on identifying personas and connecting the dots between events, actions and resources.
If I were a person who wanted to bring down Bitcoin, in other words, the following is how I’d go about it.
By sharing the simplicity of this sort of disruptive activity, I hope to help raise the level of community awareness, and slow the speed and efficiency of any potential disruption. Being aware that you’re being exploited is crucial to defending against it mentally and emotionally.
The Strategic Plan
As far back as July of last year, the question was being asked openly as to the existence of sock-puppets and bots operating in the social networks. Scholarly reviews were even written in response to bounties on the topic. Though difficult to nail down with certainty, a number of indicators did point to instances of shared syntax and similarities through pattern analysis. The use of sock-puppet accounts and bots controlled to respond via algorithm is a logical choice for an attacker needing maximum flexibility using minimal resources. There are a good number of individuals around the world capable of efficiently performing these activities on a broad scale across numerous languages and cultures.
If I were one of those individuals, I would be executing the following strategy:
Priorities of Work
Team First: Build a small team of experts in programming, writing and social engineering. Being surrounded by a solid team of capable, independent thinkers makes most jobs a breeze (or at least entertaining when things go sideways). It should be easy to find a good team in an anonymous and technical environment. If flying solo is necessary, it can be done but is far less effective without mental and emotional backup from trusted peers.
Draw the Map: Identify central communication hubs (IRC, Reddit, Twitter, etc.). These will become your stomping grounds. Get to know the atmosphere of each and incorporate into your goals and planning.
Clone Wars: Develop a pool of pseudo-identities via sock-puppet account creation tools and begin building available pools of personas with varying degrees of reputation on all of the central communication hubs. Create and eliminate as needed. Anonymity in numbers is your friend here.
Targeting: Identify centers of influence (vocal developers and thought leaders) as well as soft spots that could potentially evoke emotion (centralization/monopoly! Satoshi’s vision! Nonbelievers!). Take note for future exploitation. The more controversial the individual, the more extreme and subversive the characterizations can become. For instance, was one of the key Classic developers on psychedelics recently? It doesn’t matter if he actually was or not, because now people are asking that question. Mission accomplished.
Connect the Dots: Create a spider-web diagram along with a significant action database to identify and analyze relationship patterns. Blockstream, for example, is a binding factor as it funds so many developers. Take down Blockstream and you take down over half the Core development team. Palantir is one of the mapping tools you can use. This will provide an internal visual reference for those long nights of plotting your next move, and help communicate long-term vision and strategy with your team.
Turn on the Engine: Utilize a network of pseudo-identities to engage in subversive behavior in communication hubs. (See #4.) This is one big “movement to contact” drill, meaning to search for the fights. Find topics that draw out people’s emotions and play to them consistently enough to create controversy. Sometimes passion is required, other times mockery and a cruel dismissive attitude works best. Dynamic environments require dynamic responses.
Observe, React and Respond: Analyze impact and adjust tactics or targets. If the response to certain tactics appears to be disrupting momentum toward your strategic objective, adjust your fire onto things that will. Like a judo expert, sometimes using your opponent's momentum for your own benefit is the wisest path. Other times, a direct jab to the throat solves the problem.
Tactics to Be Employed by the Pseudo-Identities
Intensify Discussion: Any news that could be perceived as negative must be amplified to extremes and made into hyperbolic worst-case scenarios. The public departure of Mike Hearn from the Bitcoin space created an environment ripe for exploitation. The media got ahold of that and ran on it for days. This would have been a huge victory for subversives because it further eroded the perceived global integrity of Bitcoin both as a software and a solution. Fear is not difficult to manufacture.
Depress Positive Momentum: Any story with positive attention should be downplayed while messengers of positive news should be accused of “being shills,” “scam artists,” or worse. Blockstream’s acquisition of capital and talent would, in many circles, be viewed as a net positive. Employing the simple tool of implied guilt, however, the perceived value of the asset book becomes a joke, or is used as evidence of foul play. Reality matters less than perception. Another victory.
Character Assassination: Identify flaws and foibles in thought leaders especially; question the integrity and good intentions of anyone who appears to possess either. Any number of names can be pointed to here. With the right amount of assets, you can accomplish quite a bit. Even if you don’t have the facts, choose potentially divisive targets and deploy your sock-puppets to make up rumors. Perception is what matters.
Instigate Fights: Mock and ridicule both sides of any disagreement that forms to accelerate existing antagonism and grow the division between disparate sides. This past month, a spam attack targeting members of the Reddit Bitcoin communities added more fuel to the fire. The message was sent from a variety of accounts, most with no posts or comments. The message was tailored to look like a personal message, championing the Ethereum platform. Naturally, this created a conflict due to the perceived competitive nature of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Maintain Access to Pseudo-neutrality: Maintain a number of pseudo-identities with mild, thoughtful reputations to build support or ridicule when advantageous; ridicule and write off any who openly challenge your intentions; when pressed, claim objectivity. Or if reputation is not needed, go into full-blown troll mode and resort to ad hominems. This creates a scene and adds to the sense of collective group insanity, which demoralizes further.
Deny and Shift Blame: Any attempts by others to accuse of exploitation must be met by either silence or derision (situationally dependent). This is a simple tactic because it never gives any satisfaction of gains made in honest, impassioned debate. If the only result of the majority of your online debates is that you dread the replies to your posts, valuable discussion slows to a crawl.
I would guess with a fair amount of certainty that there are well-developed teams in the world operating similarly to what I outline above. The goal is to slow, stall and/or destroy the viability of specific digital currencies or all of them in general. The possible motives and players who hold them are an entirely different topic.
Note: I did not write this as a manual for engaging in this behavior, but rather to demonstrate that such behavior is definitely possible with limited resources. Based on my analysis and intuition, there are most certainly actors engaging in these sorts of games.
Awareness is truly the only effective defense of these techniques. The Bitcoin ecosystem has a tremendously resilient network with a great deal of infrastructure invested behind it. But even elephants are not immune from being eaten by ants from time to time.
Excellent write up, Blake. Thanks for sharing it with us. I hope for a day when people will understand non-violent communication and realize effective mechanisms for controlling their own negatively-charged, emotional responses. So many of these examples are powerful and effective because we give them power. It doesn't have to be this way. I'm thankful for people like yourself who have been trained in these ways but choose to use those skills to promote freedom instead of further slavery. Cheers to you, sir.
Thank you @lukestokes. That's actually one of the core reasons I chose the path I did because it gave me perspective and a voice on the subject.
I would upvote this twice if I could because of the feels :)
I would upvote that one a few more times if i could. :D
Hmmm, a work of Machiavellian art...
Watch out, cryptos, @blakemiles84's gonna take you down!
And exactly how would this bring down bitcoin?
The term "bring it down" was an editorial choice, not made by me necessarily.
This is how I would 'attack' bitcoin as an ecosystem. Death or harm by 1000 paper cuts.
Thanks for the clarification.
I remember reading this a ways back, and didn't know that was your work! This really got me thinking back then, and I could clearly see the path that Bitcoin would need to walk in order to truly succeed as it grows over time. Now I'm wondering how you would go about bringing steem down, you evil mastermind XD
Well thanks for giving me something to write about :D Glad you liked it and glad you got something out of it.
A curse and blessing from my background is the 'knowledge of good and evil' I guess. Paranoia for me comes from knowing what lies within the realm of the possible... and its a scary realm sometimes.
Frickin hella scary, my man. You're article gave me chills months back and I could see how it was possible that some people and organizations were already doing exactly what you were describing. Run with the Steem article on this a bit, because I'm always down for a good horror story! XD
Well, hybrid wars are popular now. It's kind of social "electronic warfare", noise at all frequencies. Social networks (TV too) taught me to manage my noise threshold on appropriate level. I googed keywords from your post, found another perfect example from absolutely different field: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31962644
BTW present ETC adepts follow your plan too to attack ETH
Well thanks a bunch, you bastard. Now you just scared me a bit more by the scale and scope of this stuff.
...applies more tin foil to growing hat...
That's sharp. If I steal that, remember... I already tipped you for it :)
I thought the exact same thing as I watched that unfold. ETC took me completely by surprise at first. Didn't see it coming, but when I considered the root cause (the DAO hack) and the undoubtedly malicious behavior, it made sense from that angle. My opinion of ETC from the start was that it was a giant trap. ETH and BTC are now differentiated. This is a good thing for both platforms.
I would not be surprised at all to find out that a core team was behind Gox, DAO, Bitfinex... anything at a critical moment in time that adds to layers of complexity. I think the hopes are to cause a cascading 'exponentially complex and catastrophic' event for the whole of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, OR simply create time and space to build up competition so the whole sand castle isn't washed away in one fell swoop.
If you at any time ask yourself " Is it appropriate to use a semi-colon here?" then you don't know how to use them, and should probably stay away all together.
You used it 4 times and maaaaybe used it properly once.
Great analysis, but most of that and more is already happening everywhere. Be it BCT, Reddit, the big conspiracy forums, its full on war out there.
You forgot the impact of hanging on the sell side on the exchanges, which we currently encounter worse than ever, for many alts. It destroys a lot of confidence in any promising development.
It's hard to be sympathetic to Bitcoin, since they are the ruthless masters at applying such disinformation techniques when any worthy competitor evolves. As you point out, the Ethereum fork was a huge victory for Bitcoin saboteurs using this Playbook.
BitcoinTalk is structured to discredit any Alt. The Bitcoin Forum is civilized and moderated, but the Alt Forum rolls out the red carpet for every scammer and allows a handful of nut cases to take over.
Western governments haven't even started subverting Bitcoin. They have bigger fish to fry with small business and the Middle Class in the crosshairs.
Its half a strategy to attack bitcoin, and half a thorough analysis of the bitcoin community. I mean, who needs this guy? Plenty of subversives doing all of this, and they've been there since the beginning. I just called them haters. For example, much much earlier in the libertarian debate on bitcoin, there was this Mises quote being used to argue that bitcoin wasn't a real currency because it wasn't tangible and had no intrinsic value. This argument has fallen away largely, since the proof is in the pudding now.
So what is bitcoin except a network designed to be exceptionally resilient to exactly these methods? One thing I'll note, when the bitcoin market in the US (after years of scandal and problems) began stagnating it was the Chinese who revived it. You know, these same tactics were used against the Black Panthers, and if you asked anyone a few years ago, they'd say it worked... yet here we are with Black Lives Matter's essentially black nationalist marxism coming back in full force. Can you really kill ideas?
Upvoted. Great post. This is a very good technical thought experiment. Kind of along the lines from Miyamoto Musashi himself;