Here's something that should be on your radar. Yesterday afternoon, the White House issued an Executive Order against MineOne Cloud Computing Investment I L.P., a Chinese owned mining operation in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and has ordered them to vacate the area within 120 days. The reason is because their mining operation is owned by Chinese nationals and is within one mile of a US Military nuclear ballistics facility. The Department of Defense has determined that having a company owned by Chinese nationals that is directly connected to a grid system within close proximity of a military base is a threat to national security.

The order was made particularly because the acquisition of the mining site by MineOne was not filed with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). To be honest, this seems like a logical move from the White House and the Department of Defense considering the circumstances. If there are processes in place to vet foreign buyers of US land near strategic military assets that were bypassed, it makes sense that the government would set off alarm bells and step in to ensure the security of those strategic assets. It's better to be safe than sorry. Especially when ballistic weapons are involved.

What worries me about this particular Executive Order is some of the language that was used to describe the mining equipment and electrical infrastructure owned by MineOne. Here are the two sections that I'd like to draw your attention to:

Now, I am not privy to the details of the particular equipment that MineOne was using on their site and cannot say with any degree of certainty whether or not their operation was the product of a CCP front or simply being run by foreigners who were unaware of the legal processes in place for foreign buyers of land near strategic assets. So with that in mind, it is definitely possible that MineOne brought in some technologies capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities that are completely unrelated to the run-of-the-mill mining farm infrastructure that has been deployed around the country.

However, if this is not the case and the White House has determined that Chinese sourced electrical transformers, data centers and bitcoin mining hardware is considered "foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities" we may have a bit of a problem.

For those who are unaware, the bitcoin mining hardware fleet that is currently live in the United States across a number of different locations and operated by a number of different businesses and individuals is sourced predominately from Chinese manufacturers. A classification of any bitcoin mining hardware as something that "presents national security concerns" would be something that I would classify as an existential threat to the bitcoin mining industry in the US.

Furthermore, a material percentage of the electrical transformer and data center infrastructure that is powering much of the bitcoin mining industry (and many other industries for that matter) is manufactured in China. This is a simple economic reality. A product of decades of globalization driven by the push to dollarize the world by flooding countries with cheap labor with dollars in exchange for their low cost manufacturing capabilities and a need to lock in the lowest cap-ex possible from mining operations. I don't believe that it is because American miners are interacting with Chinese counterparts who are looking to embed kill switch technology throughout the US. Though, that would be an incredible plot to a spy thriller.

This is something that you freaks should be paying attention to. Hopefully this language was specific to the operation MineOne was operating and not indicative of the current administration's stance on all mining and electrical infrastructure hardware sourced from China.

We'll keep you all updated as more details come to light.

Final thought...

Best to get the Summer cold out of the way before Memorial Day.