The Trump Administration Wants USAID on the Blockchain

According to a memo circulating among State Department unit and reviewed by WIRED, the Trump medication plans to rename the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) arsenic US International Humanitarian Assistance (IHA), and to bring it straight nether the Secretary of State. The document, connected which Politico archetypal reported, states that arsenic portion of its reorganization, the bureau volition “leverage blockchain technology” arsenic portion of its procurement process.

“All distributions would besides beryllium secured and traced via blockchain exertion to radically summation security, transparency, and traceability,” the memo reads. “This attack would promote innovation and ratio among implementing partners and let for much flexible and responsive programming focused connected tangible interaction alternatively than simply completing activities and inputs.”

The memo does not marque wide what specifically this means—if it would encompass doing currency transfers successful immoderate benignant of cryptocurrency oregon stablecoin, for example, oregon simply mean utilizing a blockchain ledger to way assistance disbursement.

The memo comes arsenic staffers astatine USAID are trying to recognize their future. The bureau was an aboriginal people of the alleged Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has efficaciously been headed by centibillionaire Elon Musk. Shortly aft President Trump’s inauguration, the State Department enactment the full agency’s unit connected administrative leave, slashed its workforce, and halted a information of payments to spouse organizations astir the world, including those doing beingness redeeming work. Since past a national justice has issued a preliminary injunction against the dismantling of the agency, but the memo appears to bespeak that the medication has plans to proceed its ngo of drastically cutting USAID and afloat folding it into the State Department.

The plans for the blockchain person besides caught staffers disconnected guard.

Few blockchain-based projects person managed to execute large-scale usage successful the humanitarian sector. Linda Raftree, a advisor who helps humanitarian organizations follow caller technology, says there’s a crushed for that—the incorporation of blockchain exertion is often unnecessary.

“It feels similar a fake technological solution for a occupation that doesn’t exist,” she says. “I don’t deliberation we were ever capable to find an lawsuit wherever radical were utilizing blockchain wherever they couldn’t usage existing tools.”

Giulio Coppi, a elder humanitarian serviceman astatine the nonprofit Access Now who has researched the usage of blockchain successful humanitarian work, says that blockchain technologies, portion sometimes effective, connection nary evident advantages implicit different tools organizations could use, specified arsenic an existing payments strategy oregon different database tool. “There’s nary proven vantage that it’s cheaper oregon better,” helium says. “The mode it’s been presented is this tech solutionist attack that has been proven implicit and implicit again to not person immoderate important interaction successful reality.”

There person been, however, immoderate palmy instances of utilizing blockchain exertion successful the humanitarian sector. In 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ran a tiny aviator to springiness currency assistance to Ukrainians displaced by the Russia-Ukraine warfare successful a stablecoin. Other pilots person been tested successful Kenya by the Kenya Red Cross Society. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which works with the Kenya team, besides helped to make the Humanitarian Token Solution (HTS).