National Security Archives

Sanctioned states and entities received about $104 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, roughly eight times the 2024 total, according to Chainalysis’s 2026 Crypto Crime Report. The number matters because sanctions are the main tool the United States uses to pressure hostile governments without sending troops. When the money finds another road, the tool loses force.

Here is how the tool is supposed to work. Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the president can declare a national emergency and order assets blocked. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control runs the program, publishes the list of banned people and companies, and cuts them off from the US dollar and the banks that touch it. Almost every large transaction in the world eventually passes through a dollar bank, so landing on that list has historically meant being frozen out of the global economy.

Crypto is the road around the bank. The clearest case came on August 14, 2025, when OFAC sanctioned a ruble-backed stablecoin called A7A5. It was issued by a Kyrgyzstan company called Old Vector, built for Russian users after the exchange Garantex was shut down, and backed by Russia’s state-owned Promsvyazbank, a bank already sanctioned for financing the military, and by Moldovan politician Ilan Shor, who was convicted in a billion-dollar bank fraud. At its peak it moved about a billion dollars a day. It exists to move Russian money the dollar system will not touch.

Stablecoins are also where the government has its best new lever, when the issuer cooperates. A stablecoin is a token a company promises to redeem for a dollar, and that company can freeze any wallet holding it. Tether, the largest issuer, has done exactly that after Treasury designations, freezing $344 million in its token on the Tron network in April 2026. A freeze like that happens at the code level in minutes. Freezing a bank account can take days of calls to a correspondent bank. The catch is the word cooperates. The power only reaches issuers who choose to answer to Washington.

That gap is what the GENIUS Act, signed July 18, 2025, was written to close. It is the first US law for stablecoins. It puts issuers under the Bank Secrecy Act, tells FinCEN to write anti-money-laundering rules, and sets conditions on foreign issuers that want to reach American users. The plainspeak problem is that its main lever is access to the US market, and a ruble stablecoin made in Kyrgyzstan for Russians does not want that access. The law can discipline the issuers who want in. It cannot reach the ones built to stay out.

So who gains and who pays. The winners are the governments the sanctions were meant to isolate, Russia and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and North Korea, which now have a working way to move money, plus the offshore operators who build the tokens for them. North Korea alone stole more than $2 billion in crypto in 2025, including $1.5 billion from the Bybit hack, per Chainalysis. The losers are harder to see. Sanctions are the pressure option a government uses short of military force, and when that option leaks, what remains is costlier and riskier. Compliant US stablecoin companies pay too, carrying the cost of the new rules while their offshore competitors carry none.

The blockchains are public, so Treasury can watch this money move in a way it never could through shell-company bank wires. Watching it and stopping it are different problems. Whether the GENIUS Act’s foreign-issuer rules can make a sanction stick when the money travels as tokens is the test the next few years will run.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much crypto reached sanctioned states in 2025?

About $104 billion, roughly eight times the 2024 total, according to Chainalysis’s 2026 Crypto Crime Report.

What is the A7A5 stablecoin?

A ruble-backed stablecoin issued by Kyrgyzstan-based Old Vector and sanctioned by OFAC on August 14, 2025. It was backed by Russia’s state-owned Promsvyazbank and Moldovan politician Ilan Shor, and at its peak moved about $1 billion a day.

What does the GENIUS Act do?

Signed July 18, 2025, it is the first US law for payment stablecoins. It places issuers under the Bank Secrecy Act, directs FinCEN to write anti-money-laundering rules, and sets conditions on foreign issuers seeking access to American users.

Lamar Rice

Editor, Laterstack

After years of political threats, court battles, and behind-the-scenes negotiations, TikTok has finally agreed to something the US government has been pushing for all along. The platform will give up substantial control of its American business to a group of US based investors.

According to an internal memo from ByteDance CEO Shou Chew, TikTok will operate under a newly formed entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The arrangement gives American investors forty five percent ownership of TikTok’s US operations. ByteDance will retain just under twenty percent.

The investor group includes Oracle, private equity firm Silverlake, and MGX, an Abu Dhabi based investment company with a growing focus on artificial intelligence. Oracle is set to play a central role as the platform’s designated security partner once the deal closes.

The new joint venture will oversee data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurance for TikTok’s US users. Oracle will be responsible for auditing and validating compliance with national security requirements outlined by the federal government.

The deal is expected to close on January 22, 2026.

While the structure may sound new, the logic behind it is familiar. US officials have long argued that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a national security risk, particularly due to concerns about user data and algorithmic influence. The government’s position has been consistent across administrations, even as the political framing shifted.

This agreement closely mirrors language used in a previous executive order that approved the forced restructuring of TikTok’s US operations. Until now, ByteDance had avoided confirming any specific terms, stating only that it would comply with US law to keep the app available.

What makes this moment different is not just the ownership breakdown, but the precedent it sets. A foreign owned social platform with more than one hundred million American users has effectively been reshaped under political pressure, without being fully banned and without a traditional acquisition.

TikTok remains online. The algorithm remains influential. The interface stays the same. But control has quietly changed hands.

This shift raises larger questions about how power actually works in the digital economy. Governments may not always shut platforms down. Instead, they can squeeze them into new shapes, redistribute ownership, and redefine who is trusted to guard the data and the code.

For TikTok users, nothing will appear different when they open the app. But behind the screen, decisions about moderation, recommendation systems, and data handling will increasingly flow through American corporate and political frameworks.

What This Means for Everyday People

For everyday users, this deal is a reminder that the apps shaping culture, politics, and attention are not neutral tools. They are strategic assets. Control can change without consent, without votes, and without visible disruption. The content may feel the same, but the incentives behind it rarely are.

This is how modern power moves. Quietly. Structurally. And often without asking permission.

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A quiet race is unfolding across the defense world. The United States, China and Europe are all pushing toward the same goal. They want navigation that does not depend on satellites. The Pentagon now sees quantum navigation systems as the most realistic path to get there.

Traditional GPS is powerful but vulnerable. It can be jammed. It can be spoofed. It can be blinded during conflict. It can also fail in dense cities, remote regions and underground spaces. A new generation of quantum sensors could solve all of those weaknesses.

Quantum navigation systems do not rely on satellites. Instead, they measure the tiny movements of atoms inside a sealed device. Those readings create a precise picture of where the user is, even without an external signal. In simple terms, it is a navigation tool that works anywhere on Earth without talking to space.

The First Real Field Tests Are Beginning

Research groups inside the Pentagon are now testing early versions in aircraft and naval vessels. These devices are not yet small or rugged enough for widespread deployment. Most prototypes still require cooling systems or lab style power.

Still, the early data is promising. Quantum navigation systems appear to maintain accurate positioning for hours without drift. That is something current inertial systems struggle to achieve.

If these tests continue to show strong performance, the technology could be ready for limited military use before the end of the decade.

What This Means for Real Life

This is where the impact becomes very clear. If quantum navigation systems work the way researchers hope, we will feel it in everyday life.

Civilian aviation
Airplanes could navigate safely even when GPS coverage is weak or unavailable during storms or outages.

Shipping and logistics
Cargo ships could keep perfect course through remote oceans. Truck fleets could run routes in areas where GPS is unreliable.

Phones and cars
Quantum chips will eventually shrink. They could provide navigation in tunnels, dense cities or wilderness zones where GPS signals bounce or fail.

Emergency response
Firefighters and rescue teams could track their location inside burning buildings or underground structures.

National defense
Military aircraft, drones and submarines would no longer depend on satellites that adversaries can target.

In short, the world would function with a more reliable, resilient and independent navigation backbone.

Why This Race Matters

Armed forces rely heavily on GPS. So do global markets, energy systems and civilian transportation. Any country that develops working quantum navigation systems gains a strategic advantage. It becomes harder to blind their forces. It becomes harder to disrupt their economy. It becomes harder to interfere with any movement that depends on positioning technology.

That is why nations are investing heavily. This is not a science experiment. It is a strategic push that will shape global security for decades.

The Road Ahead

Quantum navigation systems are still in early development. They need to become smaller, cheaper and more resistant to real environments. They need to survive heat, cold, vibration and shocks. They need battery efficiency that moves beyond lab setups.

Experts believe the technology will get there. The only unknown is how soon.

When it does, the world will operate on a navigation layer that no one can switch off.