By Rutendo Matinyarare 

MANY people believe that the blockchain has no owners. 

So what such people are basically saying is they don’t realise that the blockchain is a protocol brought to life by the internet and protocols created by the US military, given life by hardware manufactured by US server manufacturers, such as IBM, chip makers like Intel, search engines and software developers like Google and network providers like Verizon.

The internet upon which the system networks is also a communicating network of chips, processors, codes, computers, data networks and IP invented by US companies and rolled out by companies mainly through US investment.

So, basically, the internet is owned by the hardware and software that operates it and those in turn are owned by funders who made it all possible.

This is like how WhatsApp, facebook and Google are owned by the server and code owners who, in turn, are owned by funders like BlackRock. It’s important to remember that everything the Americans manufacture from a chip, motherboard, server, computer, cellphone, app or platform that uses their software, have backdoors to eavesdrop and switches to turn the technologies on and off where necessary.

This is a hard lesson that should have been learnt in 1961 by the death of Dag Hammerskjold, the UN secretary-general, who died when his plane was crashed (like that of Samora Machel) on a flight from the Congo to Ndola. It is said that his official Crypto UN CX-52 encrypting machine was being intercepted by the CIA, who secretly owned shares in Crypto AG of Switzerland that manufactured the machine, and the agency had asked for a backdoor to be put in all encrypting machines acquired by various governments and organisations across the world from the 1950s all the way to 2000.

So, history tells us that where ever there has been the word ‘crypto’, the US secret services have co-operated with their manufacturers to use US technology to eavesdrop on users and we best believe that the internet, which is dominated by US technology, is no different (and much easier to intercept) from these former analog platforms of the past.

In the case of the internet, it is controlled by International Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which has seven keys in Virginia and California with which to switch off the internet.

Now, can anyone explain how someone has keys to switch off something that they don’t control? And do we truly believe that the biggest US server and crypto currency mining machine manufacturers do not have backdoors for US agencies for US technology?

I’m sure many of you have also heard that in Dubai, Russia and China they have the capability to turn off certain parts of the internet to ensure that they are not accessible to their citizens.  So, imagine what the creators of the servers and ICANN can do.

 The only time ICANN is likely to lose control of these protocols is when AI, which is currently learning to write its own codes, overrides human control and we believe that we are already in that era.  In conclusion, going back to the blockchain and crypto-currency which are run off US-made servers, networks, processors, chips and now increasingly controlled by exchanges that rely on the internet, do you still think that the blockchain has no owners?