Elizabeth Warren

Who Is Elizabeth Warren?

Elizabeth Warren is a United States senator from Massachusetts, former law professor, consumer-finance expert, and prominent voice in American cryptocurrency policy.

She has served in the Senate since January 2013 and is known for focusing on consumer protection, financial regulation, corporate accountability, market competition, and enforcement against fraud.

In the 119th Congress, Warren serves as the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

Her current official committee assignments also include the Senate Finance Committee, Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senate Special Committee on Aging.

The Banking Committee role is especially important to cryptocurrency because the committee works on banking law, securities markets, financial institutions, consumer finance, housing, and oversight of major financial regulators.

Warren is widely described as a cryptocurrency critic, but that description can be too simple.

She has not generally argued that every blockchain application should be prohibited.

Her public position is that cryptocurrency businesses and financial activities should follow strong rules for anti-money laundering, sanctions compliance, consumer protection, market integrity, financial stability, and conflicts of interest.

Why Is Elizabeth Warren Important to Cryptocurrency?

Elizabeth Warren is important to cryptocurrency because she can influence legislation, regulatory oversight, agency leadership, and public debate about digital assets in the United States.

As Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, she can question regulators, propose amendments, introduce legislation, request investigations, publish policy frameworks, and shape negotiations over crypto laws.

Her positions may affect centralized crypto services, stablecoin issuers, wallet providers, miners, validators, decentralized finance developers, institutional investors, and individual users.

She is especially influential when Congress considers laws concerning stablecoins, digital-asset market structure, securities regulation, sanctions, financial surveillance, and illicit finance.

A statement by one senator does not automatically become law.

However, a senior committee member can change the political cost of supporting or opposing a bill and can influence which consumer or national-security protections appear in the final text.

Elizabeth Warren’s Financial-Regulation Background

Warren’s cryptocurrency views are closely connected to her earlier work in bankruptcy law and consumer finance.

Before entering the Senate, she taught commercial law, contracts, and bankruptcy at several universities, including Harvard Law School.

Her Harvard Law School biography describes a long academic career focused on financial distress, debt, and commercial law.

She also chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel that monitored the federal response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Warren later helped establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, commonly called the CFPB.

Official CFPB historical records describe her role in building the agency and developing its initial consumer-protection mission.

This background helps explain why she often evaluates cryptocurrency through the risks created by complicated financial products, hidden conflicts, misleading disclosures, weak intermediaries, and unequal access to legal remedies.

What Is Elizabeth Warren’s General View of Crypto?

Warren generally treats cryptocurrency as a financial sector that can support innovation but can also expose users and the wider economy to serious risks.

She has repeatedly raised concerns about fraud, theft, ransomware, sanctions evasion, terrorist financing, misleading promotion, market manipulation, weak custody practices, and conflicts between crypto companies and their customers.

She has also argued that lawmakers should not create weaker standards for blockchain-based finance than they require for similar activity in traditional markets.

Her approach is based on the principle that the economic function of an activity matters more than whether it uses a blockchain.

For example, a business that holds customer assets, executes trades, provides payments, or transfers money may create familiar financial risks even when its technology is new.

Supporters of Warren’s approach argue that clear safeguards can improve trust and reduce losses.

Critics argue that applying traditional financial rules too broadly can restrict self-custody, open-source development, decentralized networks, and permissionless innovation.

Elizabeth Warren’s Crypto Market-Structure Principles

In July 2025, Warren presented five priorities for federal cryptocurrency market-structure legislation.

Her official market-structure statement focused on securities law, investor protection, financial stability, anti-money-laundering compliance, and conflicts involving public officials.

Her first principle was that new digital-asset rules should not create a way for ordinary securities issuers to avoid existing securities laws simply by tokenizing an asset.

Her second principle was that crypto investors should receive protections comparable to those available in other financial markets.

Her third principle was that crypto market failures should not spread into the banking system or require taxpayer support.

Her fourth principle was that financial crypto services should maintain anti-money-laundering programs and comply with sanctions requirements.

Her fifth principle was that public officials should not be able to issue, promote, or profit from crypto assets while shaping the laws that govern them.

What Is Crypto Market Structure?

Crypto market structure refers to the laws and rules governing how digital assets are issued, classified, traded, held, settled, and supervised.

A market-structure law may determine which regulator oversees a token or trading activity.

It may also establish registration requirements for intermediaries, disclosure standards for token issuers, custody rules, capital requirements, conflict-of-interest limits, and procedures for customer complaints.

The subject is politically difficult because cryptocurrency activities do not always fit neatly within legal categories developed for stocks, commodities, payments, or banking.

Some tokens begin as fundraising instruments and later operate as network assets.

Some applications execute transactions through smart contracts without one company controlling every step.

Warren generally argues that technological complexity should not be used to remove protections from people who are exposed to financial risk.

The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act

Warren is closely associated with the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act.

She first introduced a version of the proposal in December 2022 and introduced an expanded version in July 2023 with senators from both major political parties.

The official GovInfo record for S. 2669 shows that the 2023 bill was introduced, read twice, and referred to the Senate Banking Committee.

The GovInfo record lists July 27, 2023 as the last legislative action for that version.

It remained an introduced proposal during the 118th Congress and should not be described as enacted law.

A future Congress could introduce similar language under a new bill number.

What Did the Anti-Money-Laundering Proposal Seek to Do?

The proposal sought to expand parts of the Bank Secrecy Act framework to more digital-asset activities.

The Bank Secrecy Act requires covered financial institutions to maintain compliance programs, keep certain records, and report suspicious activity.

Warren’s proposal directed the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to treat several categories of digital-asset participants as money service businesses under specified conditions.

The proposed categories included wallet providers and certain miners, validators, and other participants that facilitate or validate digital-asset transactions.

The proposal also addressed transactions involving self-hosted wallets, digital-asset mixers, foreign accounts, privacy-enhancing technologies, and sanctions compliance.

Warren’s official explanation of the legislation described its purpose as closing gaps that could be used for money laundering, sanctions evasion, cybercrime, and terrorist financing.

Why Warren Supports Stronger Crypto AML Rules

Warren argues that digital assets can transfer value internationally without relying on the same intermediaries used by traditional bank payments.

This feature can help lawful users transfer assets, but it can also be used by ransomware groups, sanctioned entities, fraud networks, traffickers, and hackers.

Public blockchains create permanent transaction records, yet addresses are often pseudonymous rather than directly connected to verified legal identities.

Investigators can analyze transaction patterns, but attribution may require information from service providers, devices, seized records, or counterparties.

Warren’s position is that businesses performing financial functions should not escape compliance simply because funds move through blockchain addresses.

She also argues that inconsistent rules can encourage criminals to select the least regulated path through the financial system.

Criticism of Warren’s AML Proposal

Critics have argued that Warren’s proposal could apply financial-institution duties to people or software that do not hold customer funds and may not know the identities of blockchain users.

A miner or validator usually confirms protocol-valid transactions rather than entering a direct business relationship with every sender and receiver.

An open-source wallet developer may publish software without operating a service that controls user assets.

Requiring such participants to identify every user could be technically impossible or could force them to stop serving people in the United States.

Critics also argue that self-hosted wallets provide privacy, independence, and protection from the failure of a custodian.

Senate Banking testimony on self-hosted wallet risk has noted that self-hosted wallets are not automatically illicit and that blockchain analysis can support investigations without treating every wallet as suspicious.

The central debate is therefore not whether financial crime should be prevented.

The debate concerns which participants can realistically perform compliance duties and how regulation can target risky services without eliminating ordinary self-custody or software development.

Elizabeth Warren and Self-Custody

Self-custody means that a user controls the private keys needed to move cryptocurrency rather than giving those keys to a financial intermediary.

Warren’s proposals have attracted concern from self-custody advocates because they include rules involving transactions with self-hosted wallets.

A self-hosted wallet does not have an employee who can review identification documents or freeze a suspicious transfer.

The software creates and signs transactions according to the user’s instructions.

Rules aimed at self-hosted wallets are therefore often applied at points where those wallets interact with regulated businesses.

Possible requirements can include recordkeeping, counterparty information, transaction monitoring, or enhanced review above defined thresholds.

Supporters say these measures reduce opportunities to move illegal funds into or out of regulated finance.

Opponents say broad monitoring can reduce financial privacy and treat lawful users as potential criminals.

Elizabeth Warren and Stablecoins

Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to maintain a value linked to a reference asset, commonly the U.S. dollar.

They can be used for blockchain payments, trading, savings, remittances, decentralized finance, and settlement between financial applications.

Warren has not argued that every stablecoin must be eliminated.

In March 2025, she stated that she could support sensible stablecoin legislation if it adequately protected consumers, national security, and financial stability.

Her Senate Banking remarks on stablecoin legislation criticized the proposal then under consideration for what she viewed as weak safeguards.

Her concerns included consumer remedies, sanctions enforcement, reserve quality, conflicts of interest, and the ability of large commercial companies to issue widely used private money.

Stablecoin Consumer-Protection Concerns

Warren argues that consumers using stablecoins should receive clear information about redemption, reserves, fees, complaints, fraud, and issuer failure.

A token that normally trades near one dollar is not necessarily the same as an insured bank deposit.

The holder may depend on the issuer, reserve custodian, blockchain network, wallet provider, smart contract, and available redemption channels.

A stablecoin can temporarily or permanently lose its target value when confidence falls or reserves cannot be accessed quickly.

Warren generally supports rules designed to ensure that issuers hold safe and liquid reserves and can honor redemption requests.

She also favors restrictions intended to prevent misleading claims that could cause users to mistake a private token for government-guaranteed money.

Stablecoins and Financial Stability

Financial stability refers to the ability of the financial system to continue functioning during market stress.

A large stablecoin could create broader risk when many users attempt to redeem it at the same time.

The issuer may need to sell reserve assets quickly, potentially spreading pressure into short-term funding markets.

A stablecoin used across many crypto applications could also cause failures in lending, trading, collateral, and payment systems if it loses its peg.

Warren has argued that legislation should prevent risky reserve investments and should not create an expectation that taxpayers will absorb private losses.

Supporters of lighter regulation respond that strict limits could reduce competition and prevent useful payment innovation.

Elizabeth Warren and Securities Regulation

Warren generally supports strong application of federal securities laws to crypto assets and arrangements that function like investments.

Securities laws commonly require issuers and intermediaries to provide disclosures, avoid fraud, manage conflicts, and register when the law requires registration.

The difficult question is determining when a token or transaction falls within those rules.

A digital asset can be used for governance, network fees, payments, speculation, fundraising, or several purposes at once.

Warren has warned against legislation that would allow traditional securities to avoid regulation merely because their ownership records are placed on a blockchain.

Tokenization changes the technical form of an asset but does not necessarily change the economic rights or risks received by the investor.

Elizabeth Warren and Consumer Protection

Consumer protection is the foundation of Warren’s wider financial-policy career.

In crypto, she emphasizes clear disclosures, honest marketing, protection of customer assets, complaint procedures, cybersecurity, and accountability after fraud or failure.

Blockchain transfers can be difficult to reverse, and users may have fewer recovery options than they expect.

A crypto company may also operate through complicated terms that divide responsibilities among several affiliated businesses.

Warren argues that consumers should be able to understand who holds their assets, how those assets are used, and what happens during bankruptcy.

She also supports action against deceptive celebrity promotions, fake investment opportunities, impersonation scams, and fraudulent tokens.

Elizabeth Warren and Crypto Fraud

Warren frequently cites crypto fraud as a reason for stronger oversight.

Common schemes include fake investment platforms, romance scams, impersonation, fraudulent mining programs, malicious wallet applications, phishing, and promises of guaranteed returns.

Fraudsters often ask victims to purchase cryptocurrency because transactions can move quickly and may be difficult to recover.

Older adults can be especially vulnerable when criminals impersonate government officials, family members, technology support, or financial advisers.

Warren’s membership on the Senate Special Committee on Aging gives her another platform for examining these scams.

Regulation cannot eliminate fraud completely, but reporting requirements, asset tracing, public education, and faster cooperation between companies and law enforcement may reduce losses.

Elizabeth Warren and National Security

Warren treats cryptocurrency regulation as a national-security issue as well as a consumer-finance issue.

She has raised concerns about hostile governments and cybercrime groups stealing digital assets, avoiding sanctions, funding weapons programs, and laundering ransomware proceeds.

Cryptocurrency can move across borders without the same clearing process used by traditional international bank transfers.

However, most public blockchains also create transparent transaction histories that investigators can analyze.

The effectiveness of enforcement depends on identifying the people behind addresses and limiting their ability to convert, conceal, or spend illegal proceeds.

Warren supports stronger obligations at businesses and services that connect blockchain activity with identifiable customers or conventional finance.

Elizabeth Warren and Regulatory Agencies

Several federal agencies can affect cryptocurrency depending on the product and activity involved.

The Securities and Exchange Commission oversees securities markets and securities-related intermediaries.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversees derivatives and has authority over certain fraud or manipulation involving commodities.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network administers major anti-money-laundering rules.

Banking regulators supervise insured banks and certain activities conducted by their affiliates.

The CFPB can address consumer-finance products and unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices within its jurisdiction.

Warren generally argues that regulators need sufficient staff, legal authority, funding, and independence to enforce the rules assigned to them.

Warren’s 2026 Crypto Oversight Activity

Warren remained active in cryptocurrency oversight during 2026.

In June 2026, she questioned whether the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had enough staff and independence to supervise expanding responsibilities involving cryptocurrency and prediction markets.

Her June 2026 oversight letter requested information about staffing, enforcement, communications, and possible political influence.

The request illustrates Warren’s continuing focus on the strength and independence of financial regulators.

An oversight letter does not establish that wrongdoing occurred.

It is a congressional tool used to request records, explanations, and policy information from an agency or private organization.

Elizabeth Warren and Conflicts of Interest

Warren has argued that elected officials and senior government personnel should not personally profit from digital assets while setting cryptocurrency policy.

A conflict can arise when an official owns, issues, promotes, or receives income from an asset that may benefit from government decisions.

Disclosure can help the public identify a conflict, but disclosure alone may not remove the incentive.

Possible policy responses include divestment, recusal, blind trusts, limits on issuance, and restrictions on gifts or special transactions.

Warren’s 2025 market-structure principles called for preventing public officials from issuing, sponsoring, or profiting from crypto tokens.

Supporters consider this necessary for public confidence.

Critics may argue that restrictions must be written carefully so they do not prevent ordinary diversified investment or violate constitutional protections.

Does Elizabeth Warren Want to Ban Cryptocurrency?

Warren has not introduced a general proposal that simply prohibits all cryptocurrency ownership or blockchain use in the United States.

Her proposals focus on regulating activities, participants, and risks that she considers similar to those found in conventional finance.

She supports stronger oversight of financial intermediaries, stablecoin issuers, token markets, sanctions compliance, and digital-asset money movement.

Some critics describe the practical effect of her proposals as hostile to crypto because compliance costs could make certain services unavailable.

Supporters describe the same policies as necessary for bringing crypto into the regulated financial system.

The disagreement concerns how strict the rules should be and which decentralized participants can reasonably follow them.

Does Elizabeth Warren Control U.S. Crypto Regulation?

No single senator controls cryptocurrency regulation in the United States.

A federal bill normally must pass both chambers of Congress and receive presidential approval unless Congress overrides a veto.

Committee leaders can influence hearings, amendments, negotiations, and voting schedules, but they cannot enact a law alone.

Regulatory agencies also operate under existing statutes, court decisions, executive appointments, and administrative procedures.

State governments maintain additional authority over money transmission, securities, consumer protection, and business licensing.

Warren is influential, but the final policy results from competition and negotiation among many political and legal institutions.

How Warren’s Policies Could Affect Crypto Users

Stronger consumer rules could require clearer risk disclosures, better custody controls, and more reliable complaint procedures.

Expanded anti-money-laundering rules could require more identity verification and transaction monitoring.

Stablecoin regulations could improve reserve transparency while reducing the number of issuers able to operate economically.

Market-structure rules could clarify legal responsibilities but limit access to tokens that do not meet registration or disclosure standards.

Rules involving self-hosted wallets could increase reporting when users transfer funds between personal wallets and regulated services.

Conflict-of-interest restrictions could limit token activity by public officials and their businesses.

The final effect would depend on the exact statutory language, agency interpretation, court decisions, and technical implementation.

How Warren’s Policies Could Affect Crypto Developers

Developers could benefit from clearer definitions that separate software publication from regulated financial intermediation.

They could also face increased legal risk if rules define wallet software, smart contract interfaces, validators, or decentralized governance participants as financial service providers.

A developer who controls customer funds creates different risks from a developer who publishes code without custody.

Well-designed legislation can distinguish between these activities.

Poorly defined legislation can cause cautious developers to restrict access, block locations, or move development activity abroad.

Warren’s policy challenge is to target financial crime and consumer harm without treating every person who writes or runs blockchain software as a conventional bank.

How Crypto Investors Should Interpret Warren’s Statements

Investors should distinguish between a speech, an introduced bill, a committee-approved bill, an enacted law, an agency rule, and a court decision.

A political statement can affect market sentiment without changing current legal obligations.

An introduced bill may never receive a committee vote.

A bill that passes one chamber may change significantly before final enactment.

An enacted law may direct regulators to write detailed rules over several months or years.

Investors should read primary documents and avoid trading solely on headlines that say Warren has banned or approved an asset.

Her statements are policy positions rather than personalized financial advice or guaranteed predictions of market performance.

Potential Benefits of Warren’s Crypto Approach

Her approach could reduce misleading promotion, undisclosed conflicts, weak custody, and misuse of customer funds.

It could establish clearer expectations for reserve management and stablecoin redemption.

It could improve cooperation among regulators, financial institutions, and law enforcement.

It could make it harder for sanctioned groups and cybercriminals to convert stolen crypto into usable funds.

It could also give consumers more information about the companies and assets they use.

Strong rules may encourage long-term institutional participation when market participants believe that legal responsibilities are clear and consistently enforced.

Potential Drawbacks of Warren’s Crypto Approach

Broad rules could impose high costs on small developers, startups, node operators, and wallet providers.

Identity and monitoring requirements could reduce privacy for lawful users.

Applying intermediary regulations to decentralized software could be technically impractical.

Strict domestic rules could move some businesses or activity to less regulated jurisdictions without eliminating demand.

Overlapping agency authority could increase legal uncertainty instead of reducing it.

A policy that focuses heavily on risks may also overlook useful applications such as low-cost settlement, programmable payments, self-custody, and open financial infrastructure.

Common Misunderstandings About Elizabeth Warren and Crypto

One common mistake is claiming that Warren created a law banning cryptocurrency.

Another mistake is describing the 2023 Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act as enacted law.

A third mistake is assuming that she opposes every possible stablecoin framework.

A fourth mistake is claiming that one senator can directly order a blockchain to stop processing transactions.

A fifth mistake is treating every criticism of crypto fraud as opposition to blockchain technology itself.

A sixth mistake is ignoring the possible privacy and technical effects of her anti-money-laundering proposals.

A seventh mistake is assuming that self-hosted wallets are automatically anonymous or criminal.

An eighth mistake is assuming that transparent blockchain records make identity verification and enforcement unnecessary.

A ninth mistake is trading crypto solely because of a headline about a Warren speech or letter.

A tenth mistake is treating political arguments from either side as a substitute for reading the actual bill text.

FAQ

Who is Elizabeth Warren?

Elizabeth Warren is a United States senator from Massachusetts, former law professor, consumer-finance specialist, and senior participant in federal cryptocurrency policy.

What is Elizabeth Warren’s current Senate role?

In the 119th Congress, she is the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

Why does Elizabeth Warren matter to crypto?

Her committee position gives her influence over legislation and oversight involving securities, banking, stablecoins, consumer finance, digital-asset markets, and financial regulators.

Is Elizabeth Warren pro-crypto or anti-crypto?

She is generally viewed as a strong crypto critic who supports allowing innovation only under strict consumer, market, anti-money-laundering, and national-security rules.

Does Elizabeth Warren want to ban Bitcoin?

She has not introduced a general law that simply prohibits all Bitcoin ownership or transactions.

Does Elizabeth Warren want to ban all cryptocurrency?

No general ban is the core of her public platform, although critics argue that some of her proposals could make certain crypto activities difficult to operate.

What is the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act?

It is a Warren-sponsored legislative proposal intended to expand anti-money-laundering and sanctions obligations across more parts of the digital-asset ecosystem.

Did the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act become law?

The official record for the 2023 version shows that it was introduced and referred to committee during the 118th Congress rather than enacted.

What would Warren’s AML bill regulate?

It proposed requirements affecting wallet providers and certain miners, validators, network participants, self-hosted wallet transactions, mixers, and other digital-asset activities.

Why is the AML bill controversial?

Critics argue that some non-custodial participants cannot identify blockchain users and that broad rules could harm privacy, self-custody, and open-source development.

What is Warren’s position on self-hosted wallets?

She supports stronger monitoring and compliance around transactions involving self-hosted wallets, particularly when they interact with regulated financial businesses.

Does Warren believe every self-hosted wallet is criminal?

No, but her proposals treat some self-hosted wallet transactions as creating money-laundering and sanctions risks that may require additional controls.

What is Warren’s position on stablecoins?

She has stated that she could support stablecoin legislation containing strong consumer protection, national-security, reserve, and financial-stability safeguards.

Why does Warren worry about stablecoins?

Her concerns include weak reserves, failed redemptions, fraud, sanctions evasion, issuer conflicts, financial contagion, and misleading claims about safety.

Does Warren support securities laws for crypto?

Yes, she generally supports applying securities protections when a token or arrangement functions as an investment covered by those laws.

What are Warren’s five crypto market-structure principles?

They cover preserving securities law, protecting investors, limiting financial contagion, enforcing AML and sanctions rules, and preventing public-official conflicts.

Can Elizabeth Warren regulate crypto by herself?

No, federal legislation requires action by Congress and the president, while agency rules must follow existing laws and administrative procedures.

Can Elizabeth Warren reverse a crypto transaction?

No, a senator cannot personally reverse a valid transaction confirmed by a decentralized blockchain.

Does Warren control a cryptocurrency regulator?

No, she can conduct oversight and participate in nominations and legislation, but regulatory agencies have their own statutory responsibilities and leadership.

Why does Warren connect crypto with national security?

She points to ransomware, sanctions evasion, cyber theft, terrorist financing, and the use of digital assets by hostile state-linked groups.

Does blockchain transparency prevent money laundering?

Public records help investigators trace funds, but authorities still need reliable methods to connect blockchain addresses with people and organizations.

Could Warren’s rules benefit crypto users?

They could improve custody, disclosures, reserve quality, complaint procedures, enforcement, and protection against conflicts or misuse of customer assets.

Could Warren’s rules harm crypto innovation?

Broad or unclear requirements could increase costs, reduce privacy, restrict self-custody services, and create obligations that decentralized software cannot meet.

How should investors follow Warren’s crypto policy?

Investors should read official Senate statements, bill records, enacted laws, agency rules, and court decisions rather than relying on political headlines.

Are Elizabeth Warren’s crypto statements financial advice?

No, her statements express legislative and policy positions rather than personalized investment advice.

Conclusion

Elizabeth Warren is one of the most influential U.S. lawmakers in the debate over cryptocurrency regulation.

Her influence comes from her position as a Massachusetts senator, her financial-law background, and her role as Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee.

Her crypto agenda emphasizes consumer protection, securities enforcement, anti-money-laundering compliance, sanctions, financial stability, regulatory independence, and conflicts of interest.

She sponsored the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, although the 2023 version remained an introduced proposal and did not become enacted law in the 118th Congress.

She has also criticized stablecoin legislation that she believes lacks sufficient protections while stating that she could support a stronger framework.

Her policies may reduce fraud and financial crime, but they also raise important concerns about privacy, self-custody, open-source software, validators, and decentralized development.

Warren does not control blockchain networks and cannot enact federal cryptocurrency rules by herself.

Crypto users should evaluate her influence by reading the exact legislation, understanding the legislative process, and separating political statements from current legal requirements.

Understanding Elizabeth Warren helps cryptocurrency users follow the continuing debate over how the United States should balance blockchain innovation with consumer protection, financial integrity, privacy, and national security.