Sanctions seem to work for nothing. NK got nukes anyways. The middle east is still a mess. Iran is still a problem 50 years later. Cuba still a mess. China is arguably our biggest threat but no sanctions there. Russia has diversified itself away from the Petrodollar as much as possible for these reasons. This US Dollar empire is on its last legs. The US isn't 25% of global GDP anymore. None of this is sustainable.

At any rate, I'm sure Kim's hackers are incapable of learning cryptocurrency from any one of thousands of online resources. Crisis averted. Lock him up.

This isn't vague or arbitrary. The sanctions against NK are very specific, and lengthy.

No we are not. The constitution specifically says that only congress can declare war, and congress has made no such declaration.

Edit: I feel bad about being facetious, but I feel like the point is relevant. The US, in a practical sense, does not need congress to ok war. Pointing that out as a reason to doubt the basis for strict treatment of North Korea is like pointing out the speed-limit is 55 when someone travelling 56 gets T-boned.

Do note that the US never declared war on Iraq, and that did not stopped it from fighting two wars that were very real, both of which with the support of an international coalition.

However, the United Nations did declare war on North Korea, with US support, and the US is the major participant in that war; and no peace treaty was ever signed, merely a cease fire.

The truth of the matter is that declarations of war are patently irrelevant regarding whether a nation is deemed hostile or not.

You write as if Congress has not weighed in on this matter, simply because it has not declared war on North Korea. In fact, current North Korean sanctions were codified and authorized by Congress in the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, which expanded upon the sanctions regime that had already been in place. Virgil Griffith’s alleged acts are not illegal because of a vague characterization of North Korea as being “hostile”, but because Congress explicitly made it illegal to travel to North Korea to give technical advice.

There is no ambiguity in the classification of North Korea as a hostile regime. Not only there is the fact that the Korean war never ended with a peace treaty an only had an armistice, there is also the hostile and recently degrading relationship that in 2020 escalated to the total elimination of official communication lines between north and south Korea.

I should point out that there is nothing vague about sactions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_North_Korea

If a country like the US imposes sanctions on a country which includes, quite prominently, restrictions on investment and financial activities, and afterwards you go out of your way to provide assistance on how to circumvent those restrictions on investment and financial activities... Where's the surprise that your assistance gets you in jail?

From thereon the relation between north Korea and south Korea/US degraded so badly that official communication lines between north and south Korea were officially severed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%E2%80%93South_Kore...

This doesn't make any sense, and I feel really bad for people like Griffith getting ground beneath the treads of the unthinking legal machine here.

And shame on the judges for not slapping this law down, because that's they're job to protect people from unthinking and unfair application of the law.

Making something available on the internet has non-illegal purposes. Specifically flying somewhere that is sanctioned and presenting the information specifically to them has no non-illegal purpose.

If you drop a $20 bill on the street and a member of a terrorist organization picks it up, it's not really funding terrorism just because you didn't explicitly ensure whoever found it was allowed to have it.

If you go find a terrorist organization and give them $20, you've funded terrorism.

Intent matters.

Then again if you gave aviation lectures to Al Qaeda after 911, you're definitely doing something wrong, even if it's publicly available information.

Even if your assistance adds low-value, it's still assistance.

Moreover, I don't believe it's reasonable to ignore the fact that a renowned Ethereum dev providing assistance to a hostile regime, regardless of how lame, does have a goal of conveying credibility and help push public acceptance. As a similar example, see for example how Snowden was blindsided by a guy trying to leverage Snowden's attendance as a way to buy him credibility.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epndnz/the-bizarre-case-of-s...

Which facts you include and exclude is quite relevant to your bias, politics, etc.

Reading the original comment, what can construed as "too political" for HN? There wasn't any strong support or opposition.

1. An utterly reprehensible crime against humanity.

2. An accurate fact that's oft-repeated on HN

3. A highly political fact.

4. Utterly pointless to introduce in any conversation that is not closely related to wars.

5. A necessary reminder that our shit stinks.

Despite all that, it's 'too political' to bring it up in a thread like this - because it has nothing to do with the subject, other than to give people a reason to engage in a nationalistic pissing contest.