A Cheyenne, Wyoming-based Bitcoin mining operation with possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could pose a national security threat.
The New York Times reports the Bitcoin mine is located next to a Microsoft data center and within a mile of F.E. Warren Air Force Base, which houses nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. In August 2022, Microsoft warned the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that this Bitcoin facility would allow the CCP to “pursue full-spectrum intelligence collection operations.”
This connection was further established in a May 2023 complaint filed by Bison Blockchain, a company hoping to construct the largest Bitcoin mining operation in Wyoming, against their former partner, MineOne. Bison Blockchain alleges MineOne removed them as operators of two sites: the North Range and Campstool projects. Earlier this month, the company filed an Amended Complaint adding BitMain Technologies Holding Company and Bitmain Technologies Georgia Limited to their lawsuit alleging that “Bitmain was behind the Chinese conglomerate takeover at North Range and Campstool and the removal of Bison Blockchain as the sites’ operator/host.”
A spokesperson for Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Congress’ biggest Bitcoin champion, told the Cowboy State Daily, “Sen. Lummis is concerned about the potential of the CCP spying on our military bases and will look to ways oversight can be conducted to ensure nothing nefarious is happening at this facility in Cheyenne.”
Seeing a CCP-aligned Bitcoin company in the U.S. is paradoxical. China’s central bank fully banned cryptocurrency transactions in the nation in September 2021. Their justification for banning cryptocurrency—including Bitcoin—was under the guise of preventing “money laundering, illegal fund-raising, fraud, pyramid schemes, and other illegal and criminal activities.”
Bitcoin mining is not like conventional mining for rare earth minerals. It exists, rather, as a warehouse “where computer equipment is stored with central cooling or air conditioning systems.”
The process gets a bad rap by environmentalists for its supposed negative carbon footprint. But as I noted here at IWF back in February, it’s far more environmentally friendly than Big Tech production:
As of 2022, Big Tech production accounts for 2-3% of global emissions. In contrast, American crypto mining only emits, at most, 0.2- 0.3% of global emissions and, at worst, between 0.4-0.8% of domestic emissions.
CCP-tied companies aren’t only targeting Bitcoin mines. They’re actively acquiring U.S. agricultural lands near critical military installations for intelligence-gathering purposes.
To learn more about Bitcoin mining, go HERE.