Crisis simulation maps national security risks of digital currency – Harvard Gazette

How that could be achieved was a point of contention. Diplomacy was the first option proposed. “The president has to tell Xi Jinping that this is a core issue for the U.S.,” said former U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns, the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at HKS, in his role as secretary of state. “The Chinese have created a problem for us by taking away our leverage with sanctions.”

More proactive steps were also recommended. “We should be creating a digital currency,” argued the Brunswick Group’s Jennifer Fowler, an expert in illicit finance and economic sanction issues, in her role as director of national intelligence.

“There is a financial technology revolution taking place, and we are about to miss it,” agreed Richard Verma, vice chairman and partner at the Asia Group, a D.C.-based strategic and business advisory firm, playing the ambassador to China. “My recommendation is we not try to…