Former Secretary of Defense frames Clarity Act as national security imperative for crypto

A former Pentagon chief wants Congress to think about crypto regulation the way it thinks about fighter jets and foreign adversaries. Mark Esper, who served as Secretary of Defense under the Trump administration, published an op-ed in the Financial Times on August 7 arguing that the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act isn’t just a financial markets bill. It’s a national security one. The argument is straightforward: countries like North Korea and China are increasingly exploiting digital assets for illicit purposes, and the US regulatory framework hasn’t kept pace. Esper’s proposed solution is passing the CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633), which would extend the Bank Secrecy Act’s anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer requirements to digital-commodity brokers while giving the Treasury Department enhanced authority to go after state-sponsored bad actors. What the CLARITY Act actually does The bill tackles one of crypto’s oldest regulatory headaches: who’s in charge. The CLARITY Act draws cleaner lines by sorting digital assets into three buckets. Securities stay under the SEC. Digital commodities fall to the CFTC. Stablecoins get handled separately under the GENIUS Act, which already pass...