Amid resurfaced speculation that the enigmatic Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto may have either been working for the CIA in the U.S. or was kidnapped by the agency, another old story is receiving fresh attention. Ripple CTO David Schwartz was reminded that he once worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence arm of the United States Department of Defense.
Three years ago, Schwartz was debunking the theory that Satoshi had worked for the NSA or CIA when creating Bitcoin, offering his perspective as a former agency contractor. At the time, the Ripple CTO left little doubt that he considered the idea of a government-planted Bitcoin at least plausible, suggesting it would make sense for the U.S. to deploy such a system before a hostile actor did.
The reminder came after a fresh wave of attention to his past, when Schwartz clarified that he had no exposure to high-level information during his NSA years. According to him, most of his role involved making sure software complied with agency requirements he was not even allowed to fully read.
"Pretty boring"
In his words, one of the only requirements he saw was making sure systems could shut down classified data processing if control was lost — a directive that sounded paradoxical even to him.
Schwartz also told an anecdote about seeing his own work appear unexpectedly on the Discovery Channel, which was how he learned one of his projects was in actual use. He later explained that the same code had been applied for NATO purposes before being adapted for the NSA, though the final uses were "pretty boring."
Asked recently about his nondisclosure obligations, Schwartz admitted he has no idea when or if his NSA NDA even expires, joking that he never really knew anything secret in the first place.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team