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CyberWar & The False Comfort Of Mutually Assured Destruction
Submitted by Jim Rickards via Bonner & Partners,
During a recent financial war-game exercise at the Pentagon, I recommended that the SEC and New York Stock Exchange buy a warehouse in New York and equip it with copper-wire hardline phones, handheld battery-powered calculators, and other pre-Internet equipment. This facility would serve as a nondigital stock exchange with trading posts.
The SEC would assign 30 major stocks each to the 20 largest broker-dealers, who would be designated specialists in those stocks. This would provide market making on the 600 largest stocks, covering more than 90% of all trading on a typical day.
Orders would be phoned in on the hardwire analog phone system and put up for bids and offers by the specialists to a crowd of live brokers. This is exactly how stocks were traded until recently. Computerized and algorithmic trading would be banned as nonessential. Only real investor interest would be represented in this nondigital venue.
In the event of a shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange by digital attack, the nondigital exchange would be activated. The U.S. would let China and Russia know this facility existed as a deterrent to a digital attack in the first place.
If our rivals knew we had a robust nondigital Plan B, they might not bother to conduct a digital attack in the first place.
Russia Strikes the Nasdaq
Financial warfare attacks vary in their degree of sophistication and impact. At the low end of the spectrum is a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. This is done by flooding a targeted server with an overwhelming volume of message traffic so that either the server shuts down or legitimate users cannot gain access. In such attacks, the target is not actually penetrated, but it is disabled by the message traffic jam.
The next level of sophistication is a cyberhack, in which the target, say, a bank account record file or a stock exchange order system, is actually penetrated. Once inside, the attacking cyberbrigade can either steal information, shut down the system, or plant sleeper attack viruses that can be activated at a later date.
In 2010, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security located such an attack virus planted by Russian security services inside the Nasdaq stock market system. You have probably noticed that unexplained stock market outages and flash crashes are happening with increasing frequency. Some of these events may be self-inflicted damage by the exchanges themselves in the course of software upgrades, but others are highly suspicious and the exact causes have never been disclosed by exchange officials.

A recently revealed classified map showing cyberattacks by the Chinese government against U.S. interests. Notice the concentration of attacks against technology targets in San Francisco, financial targets in New York, and military and intelligence targets in the Washington-Virginia area.
The most dangerous attacks of all are those in which the enemy penetrates a bank or stock exchange not to disable it or steal information but to turn it into an enemy drone. Such a market drone can be used by attackers for maximum market disruption and the mass destruction of Americans’ wealth, including your stocks and savings.
In this scenario, an attacker could penetrate the order entry system of a major stock exchange such as the New York Stock Exchange or one of the order-matching dark pools operated by major investment banks, such as the SIGMA X system controlled by Goldman Sachs. Once inside the order entry system, the attacker would place large sell orders on highly liquid stocks such as Apple or Facebook.
Other system participants would then automatically match these orders in the mistaken belief that they were real trades. The sell orders would keep flooding the market until eventually other participants lowered their bids and began to deflect the selling pressure to other exchanges.
An attack of this type would be launched on a day when the market was already down 3% or more, about 550 points on the Dow Jones index. Using exogenous events like that to increase the power of a planned attack is called a “force multiplier” by military strategists.
The result could be a market decline of 20% or more in a single day, comparable to the stock market crash of October 1987 or the crash of 1929. You would not have to trade anything or be in the market during the attack; you would be wiped out based on the market decline even if you did nothing.
The False Comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction
Another type of highly malicious attack is to penetrate the account records system of a major bank and then systematically erase account balances in customers’ deposit accounts and 401(k)s. If the attack extended to backup databases, you or other customers might have no way of proving you ever owned the deleted accounts.
Some analysts respond to such scenarios by saying that the U.S. has cyberwarfare attack capabilities that are just as effective as our enemies’. If Iran, China, or Russia ever launched a cyberfinancial attack on the U.S., we could retaliate.
The threat of retaliation, they claim, would act as a deterrent and prevent the enemy attack in the first place. This is similar to the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD, that prevented nuclear conflict between the U.S. and Russia during the Cold War.
This analysis is highly flawed and gives false comfort. MAD worked during the Cold War because both sides wanted to avoid existential losses. In financial warfare, the losses may be existential for the U.S., but this is not true for Russia, China, and Iran. Because they are far less developed than the U.S., their markets could be destroyed and it would have little impact on their overall economy or national security.
Many stocks in Russia and China are owned by U.S. and European investors, so any damage would come back to haunt Western interests.
The technological warfare capabilities may be symmetric, but the potential damage is asymmetric, so the deterrent effect on China and Russia is low. There is essentially nothing stopping Russia, Iran, or China from launching a “first strike” financial warfare attack if it serves some other national strategic purpose.
Be Prepared
What can you do to preserve wealth when these cyberfinancial wars break out?
The key is to have some portion of your total assets invested in nondigital assets that cannot be hacked, wiped out or disrupted by financial warfare.
Such assets include gold, silver, land, fine art, and private equity that is usually represented by a paper contract and does not rely on electronic-exchange trading for liquidity.
For gold, I recommend you have a 10% allocation to physical gold if you don’t already.
As an investor, you have enough to be concerned about just taking into account factors like inflation, deflation, Fed policy, and the overall state of the economy. Now you have another major threat looming – financial warfare, enabled by cyberattacks and force multipliers. The time to take defensive action by acquiring some nondigital assets is now.
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If it's connected in any way to the ether, "they" own it. EOC
It is always interesting discovering what Rickards doesn't discuss as much as it is what he does discuss.
OMG!! HaX0rs!!
I knew this girl called Wanda. She was real good at computer. I'd guess you'd call her a hacker. She was quite talented. But ended up in prison. Word to your mother.
Rickards thinks analog phone lines will work outside of their local area? Like a DS0 pots line is going to go from coast to coast. What a moron.
True. Even if you were able to rig a completely analog path from your handset to the phone company's demark, you will most likely enter the digital world at that point. And even if you had enough money to convince the telco to engineer a fully analog line to their central office, it all gets digitized and packetized there. Except for some very special-purpose military systems, the analog phone system hasn't existed for decades.
I know Rickards is not completely stupid, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably just means verbal instructions only (over the modern, fully computerized phone system). No online trading. Servers cut off from the internet.
The analog phone line business is a red herring.
In the absence of computers... which MONEY do they intend to exchange?
E.M.P. Bitchez!
Rickards does not understand blockchain. In interviers he says that he does but his essays prove otherwise. He makes the same mistake that most anti-digital people do: he fears the digital, whereas he should have feared the centralized. No wonder he wrongly dismisses bitcoin as no game changer.
Funny, HFT isn't mentioned at all in this article.
"You have probably noticed that unexplained stock market outages and flash crashes are happening with increasing frequency. Some of these events may be self-inflicted damage by the exchanges themselves in the course of software upgrades, but others are highly suspicious and the exact causes have never been disclosed by exchange officials."
That says HFT to me. Or just outright manipulation. SinoRussian Cyberwarfare? Not so much. But there has to be a scapegoat to blame it all on...
Gold Shill. You take this guy's advice and buy a lump of gold. Then the markets are crashed by hackers from China/Russia, just like he says, and all our electronic wealth are belong to them. How then are you going to sell your gold so you can buy food? I'm just wondering.
I'll attempt an answer. If markets are crashed by hackers, eventually a marketplace for goods and services will re-emerge. It has to, in order for people to live their lives. Meanwhile, you have your bullion in your possession, ready to exchange. No way for hackers to magically evaporate Au.
If you read his books you would hardly call him a gold shill.
He recommends a diverse set of holdings..... to hedge accordingly .. and includes gold/silver as a minor component.
Specifically, he says use more or less than 10% gold allocation, according to your personal risk preference, and never expect gold/silver to return a profit. It is used simply as the ultimate insurance, and on that basis he is probably right.
You might choose 0% holding in gold - a reasonable choice if you are comfortable with risk and have better opportunities elsewhere.
Rickards also strongly recommends regular review of your portfolio balance... he is not a 'set and forget' proponent. Things change all the time, so you need to be paying attention.
There is no way I can trust these "markets" with all the rigging and outright manipulations happening every trading day. I am my own central bank and only invest in hard assets. Why a smart guy like Jim would even participate in such a fraudulent and vunerable system (and make no mistake about it...he does KNOW it's all a fraud) is beyond me. Why put only 10% of your wealth into gold, and have a minority of your wealth in other hard assets, as insurance against the collapse WHICH YOU KNOW IS COMING? How about 90% in phyzz and hard assets and 10% playing in the casino...because thats really what the system is.
The faster this quadrillion+ dollar derivatives laden farce of an economic system vaporizes into the fiscal fireball it deserves, the better, because with each passing day, the debt grows, the amount of derivatives grow, and the damage the inevitable collapse causes grows.
Good luck to those whose fiscal life depends on the growth of paper, or it's digital equivelents
fw190:
... er ... he's making money for his book?
- Ned
By Saying 10%, he is going down the insurance path, not the investment path.
I think that he does this for two reasons: One, he is not sure the total system will fail.
or Two, he is not sure how the total system will fail, or more accurately, will the total system fail to the point that Gold will go beyond insurance and become a necessity.
Changes to either of those points would probably result in his %allocation to going up. I am guessing
Visit Ricktards's Twitter feed for a fairly nauseating mixture of self-aggrandisement, sycophantism, and oversize photoshopped pics of MSM bimbos.
Man, what a heavy handed way of getting people to adopt "the internet of things"!
A Grand Soporific Future
Better be full time with a continuous drip IV, they're gonna need it.......
FDIC Bitches
Take that!
Food is number one. Long term storable food. Can't go wrong with that as an investment.
And so they want to end cash, perfect.
So this is the meme for when the markets finally collapse? I'm sure they will throw gold in there somewhere.
my thoughts exactly.
End cash... I love it..
tell that to all the people who went thru Katrina and Sandy, and check back with me...
Barter bitches! Give me your gold and I'll give you some eggs.
Too late. The WOPR has FUBAR'ed the markets and TSHF. WABOB.
In his book, Rickards describes his participation in war games at the Pentagon. I have a problem with anybody who works or contracts with the Washington bureaucracy.
This article looks to me like the typical scaremongering designed to scare the public into the arms of the government protection racket. I don't trust this guy. And now I'm not so sure about Bonner either.
Part of the sources of his information are his extensive DOD and Gov E contacts.
What does he say that you think might benefit TPTB?
He's controlled "opposition". He's one of the faces they use to put information out to the general public without having their name directly on it and scaring the sh*t out of people. Could you imagine if the pentagon came out and told the general population stuff like that?
Best I can gather, they want us "prepared" for something. Presumably the collapse of the dollar, but possibly more. If you're going to start a war with Russia or China, presumably you want your population to be somewhat prepared for something equivelent to a Zombie apacalypse of a meteor strike to mitigate collateral damage when things do get nasty.
Presumably they're not that stupid, but they know there are other forces at work, and it's best to plan for the worst case scenarios.
Listen to all, and follow none. I wouldn't listen to Ricards without assuming there's alterior adgendas. At the same time, I wouldn't write him off completely. In order for controlled opposition to work well, they have to be fed useful tidbits to get your attention and be proven to have vision and forsight of things to come. Meanwhile they spin you off into whichever direction they choose, because they've gained your trust. It's up to you to figure out what he says is of value and what is propoganda designed to mislead you.
Correct. You have to ask - why would he share information from the Pentagon and CIA with the unwashed?
See above.
...and the government confiscates the gold and art and your wealth is decimated better are assets the government has no idea on nor use for like wine and cars,for example in my country a GTHO Phase 3 Falcon cost $5302 from the factory in 1971 its now worth $250,000 in the US if you have a hemi cuda convertible your on a million bucks.Mustang,Camaro,Charger and Challenger all have limited editions which in the future will be worth much more.
They won't be worth much when it isn't safe to be on the roads. Unless you're thinking a 'Mad Max' kind of scenario.
At least with cyber-warfare there isn't bloodshed. At least not until the ATMs and credit cards stop working.
Just to be on the safe side, I'm telling my broker to deliver certificates for all the stock I own. Then I'm moving to North Dakota. Does anyone know if N.D. has the web yet?
Illustrates how full of self importance these clowns are. For the majority of the populatiojn the loss of the stock exchange would a total irrelvance - it disconnected from the real world decades ago. Protecting energy, water, food supply chain might be a bit more important. I guess they would like the majority of us to die off.
Stock markets switch off lead to confused prices and the stopping of trade.
Which leads to financial problems in corporations and difficulty with oil. And peoples money not being available.
Which means that transport stops, people can't go to work, food isn't delivered to supermarkets.
It took 3 days for the population at hurrican Katrina to descend into mass looting, violence and murder.
yes but they've learn better since then. it only took one day for Ferguson to achieve the same goals.
The stock market is 'off' for three days on holiday weekends and nothing bad happens. It would take much longer for problems on main street to develope from a market shut down. Maybe three weeks or three months. Shoot an unarmed dangerous black criminal and you have trouble immediately.
You can't just recycle 50 year old east/west propaganda by sprinkling microchips on it and not expect people to notice.
you know... if decent people took over all this digital infrastructure... it could easily be reprogrammed to be of great benefit to all humanity. why do we let maybe 5000 psycopaths, who probably dont know how to defrag their own hard drives dictate to millions of IT experts Digital Infrastructure Programming that is destroying humanity.
bd: who are these decent people? Met any recently?
Who was the first Chairman of the SEC? Why?
Thanks,
- Ned
Joseph P. Kennedy
he was sooooooo 'decent'
Never trust the interwebs
... but keep using it anyway ... especially if you're paranoid ...
Exactly. Never let them know what you might or might not know.
Keep them off base...
With my personal set of aggrandizement I think there are at least .00000001 person allocated directly to me, occurring only on me.... But that is because I may be a troublemaker...... Others may be less....
The only attacks we need to worry about come from the NSA. They and the rest of US Government have declared war on Americans.
This is true, but it is coming more from Cochise County ..
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/07/02/us-army-declare-war-on-free-media/
I will preface this by stating I'm a USMC vet (MOS 2542/0211/0311)
"For gold, I recommend you have a 10% allocation to physical gold if you don’t already."
cashless and nsa cyber-attacks, sounds like correlation...i'll go to 95% gold
one of obola's latest kingly decrees:
"Executive Order -- Creating a National Strategic Computing Initiative"
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/29/executive-order-c...
https://vimeo.com/137312643
MAD is bullshit anyway. It's taught to university shills to maintain order and a facade of logic. The idea is that the US phones in the attack of the next target, and then Russia phones back with a similarly valued target - perfect order until one side gives in or they call a nuke ceasefire. Extremely unlikely that it would ever go down like this.
And of course, why do you think Kennedy was assassinated? Precisely because he exposed the fundamental flaw in MAD theory, he was not calm and rational. He was emotional, a hothead, and they believed he was bringing down their nuclear peace with the USSR. So the military spooks stepped in and killed him to return to their fantasy of a large-scale tic-tac-toe stalemate.
the only certainty in military planning is that NOTHING will go as planned
Gulf War v1.0 ... yeah, sometimes they go waaaaaay better than 'folks' expected.
How did the average US citizen gain anything from that war? It was based on lies just like all other wars.
I don't remember anyone promising you anything, do you?
The insinuation was Saudi oil what held directly at risk and a breach of sovereign territory via conquest and annexation must be reversed.
"The result could be a market decline of 20% or more in a single day ...
you would be wiped out based on the market decline even if you did nothing."
wait, what? leverage much Jim? 20% decline would only cost me 20%
Why bother with the stock exchanges when they can go after Goldman Sachs directly. I mean if they went after the corporations they'd have the entire population of the United States, the EU, Japan, Cananda and Austrailia on their side.
MOAR GOLD HUSTLE!!!!
MOAR I SAY!!!!!
PUMP HARDER, SCHMUCK!!!!
PUFF IT LIKE ITS PORNHUB YOU SWISSY BITCHEZ' BITCH!!!!!
"attacks vary in their degree of sophistication and impact."
1. "those in which the enemy penetrates "
2. "penetrated"
3. "is actually penetrated"
4. "Once inside"
5. "those in which the enemy penetrates"
6. "an attacker could penetrate"
7. "Another type of highly malicious attack is to penetrate"
FOR GOD"S SAKE: DON"T GET PENETRATED!!!!
"buy a warehouse in New York"
"For gold, I recommend you have a 10% allocation to physical gold if you don’t already."
SAY WHAT ??!
Ackkkk, my server was raped.
"Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense."
- Something that no one reads much anymore.
The Chinese are probably wondering if their markets have been hacked and ambushed recently.
Nope, doubt they are wondering. They know for sure that they are being hacked and ambushed by the NSA.
Reports from the DC US of so-called cyberwarfare and attacks have as much credibility as 19 with some box cutters being led to miraculous feats of flying and building demolition by a bearded man residing in a cave halfway around the world.
Now cyberwarfare of the fiat-currency and fiat-debt type by the grifting banksters and their Zion patrons is a different story. That type of cyberwarfare on society produces unease at the grocery stores, and funds tyranny's terror in the streets.
Zion is a scheme, not an ethnicity.
Droogies,
Reports of the Virginia murders where a Newswoman and her camera man were murdered by a clazy gay "Black" man are bullshit false flag.
Show us the fucking bodies...they can't because it was faked. The Newswoman's father was a bad actor and her lover was a bad actor.
You are being stupified and programmed Bitchez.
Get your guns, learn how to use them and make sure to have plenty of ammo. You will need it when the time comes.
You will thank me some day.
Love Alexa
Allow me to ask the question here. WHY would China (PRC) and ROC attack (economically) the US? If what the FBI provides is true, at least in the last five (5) years. So that would be since 2010. If not before that. If China had been double-crossed multiple times say since [at the very least] September 7, 2006. That would represent at the very least four (4) years of patience, and probably some unreported and/or under-reported dealings in those four years. To me, FOUR years of patience is a lot of patience ..
http://wantarevelations.com/2014/01/wanta-plan-macro-financial-economic-...
Word count in above article:
China: 50 (including Chinese)
Russia: 15 (including Russian)
India: 7
Israel: 3
Federal Reserve: 24
Wanta Plan: 38
Leo Wanta: 24
Leo Emil Wanta: 4
Lee E Wanta: 2
Now so far as Russia (Putin); if I were owed $30 BILLION -- under AGREEMENT, and I have yet to be paid. Might I be just a little pissed? And to lesser extent, the following would be just a little peeved over their mere (cost of coup of Ukraine):
France
Germany
Spain
Italy
Greece
Canada
Mexico
Israel
Palestine
I would fair to guess, there is considerable [valid] motive for such [cyber] economic attack on the USG, sanctioned via the "consent of the governed" (even if via their selective and willful ignorance) in these matters. Why not you would agree?
Yo you suckers only have a few years to live anyhow so why worry about it. MagneticReversal.org
Actually nobody knows what will happen because it hasn't happened in a long time. But the earth is losing its magnetic sheild. We won't have much protection from space energy for a while and the solar minimum is hitting at the same time.
This article missed the most important assets to have when TSHTF.
prospectus
Bonner & Partners is now offering shares in the Brooklyn Bridge.
There are only a few Limited Partnerships left. Call today to be assured of your piece of non-digital history.
5 years ago this might have been relevant .... presently the Stock Exchanges repel thousands of hacks each day. Thos that actually make it onto to the network are discovered real time and killed,.
Its the new game in town. ha sless to do with gold and more woth ZIRP and QE.
Most of these critters have to call the IT department to fix their computer. Yet, they pass laws without a fucking clue.
Watch when the ignorance sets in. But, but... we didn't know. It will be a afternoon laugh fest.
So am I to understand about this that if the stock market goes down because of Western near infinite stupidity and society gets 'f'd up' that the 'Russians' will be to blame?
The red capes are coming, the red capes are coming, the red capes are coming!
Hide under your desk!
Exactly right. The western security agencies are so duplicitous we can never know if anything they report is for real or a false flag.
I think Tim Cook can take down the Nasdaq all by himself.
I'm simple, Every piece of garnishing was grown in my garden.
Cooked in real mesquite charcoal.
Boneless chicken breast and lean pork chops
basil, tangelo slices, garlic, brown onions, and some extras.
Yummy.
Oh please, you cannot be serious? Whatever are you smoking?
And don’t you yet realise that the old way of doing things for the old guard and founding family guardians of the modern printed fiat currency systems of mass manipulation with a politically adept but virtually inept Future Great Game Plan, is gone and a history never to be repeated by smart programmed human beings and/or smarter virtual machine programming systems of APT ACTive Operation …… Zeroday Vulnerability Exploitation and Exploration ….. which is a seriously lucrative markets for novel able bodied and nimble minded pioneers in the filthy rich, deep and dark webs with ITs Enterprising CyberIntelAIgent Fields ….. SMARTR Application Disciplines.
And please, No wisecracks asking the same question as above ..... Whatever are you smoking?
Oh, and with further specific peculiar and particular regard to ......
..... no easy way of one knowing if there ever really was such an attack. A nice little earner for a discovered dodgy bankrupt and bankrupting, fallen from grace and favour, banking system though.
Then methinks will Henry Ford's words become active and a live events trigger/catastrophic catalyst ...... It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
I'm safe! I saved all of my Bitchcoins to my Smart-Watch!!!
Report: France Mulls Joining Syria Airstrikes On IS
Agence France-Presse 4:16 p.m. EDT September 6, 2015
Cyber terrorism - give me a break!
With fed manipulated derivatives on commodities and interest rate swaps, HFT trading, Plunging Protection Team, day to day digital forgery, false accounting, money laundering, theft etc. the attackers appear to be totaly outclassed.
"This mothers going down" with or without a "cyber attack".
Oh and i want a refund for my life please!
Within two hours after tweeting this post out, I was added to the British government’s snooping list.
http://imagizer.imageshack.com/img673/3318/k9ehXg.png
They even have a “non-conformist” list, how Orwellian. Looks like a method to intimidate Corbyn supporters. To counter this utilize Hotspot Shield.
http://winteractionables.com/?p=24830
Full-scale Western online offensive and information dominance campaign has begun. The whole point of it is to use state agencies to intimidate, punish and eliminate commentary, blogging, views and voices they don't like voiced, read:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-extremism-sp...
Are you fucking kidding me? It's a parody account.
It's put there to log IPs.
As Michael Lewis notes in Flash Boys.
The best financial programmers are Russian.
Anyone see a problem?
Long copper lines are very vulnerable to EMP attacks.
Back to the drawing board.
Drawing board? No chance. They'll repeat the lie until it's a commonly accepted "truth."
Was it the Russians and Chinese that nearly bought down the Western financial system?
No it was Wall Street with its Complex Financial Instruments.
The enemy is within.
Those Russian and Chinese baddies can wipe our bank accounts but can they wipe our loan balances and credit card balances?
And yet strangely enough the government wants to ban cash which at least can withstand cyber attacks. Makes me wonder.
I think I see Rickards' game. His government sponsors see the collapse coming and they know it can't be stopped. The next best they can do is engage in misdirection by blaming the Russians and Chinese. Stories like that are already making front page headlines. As this collapse grows in intensity, I would be watching such stories to increase in intensity. And sadly, the brain dead public will swallow it.
In those immortal words of the cartoon character Pogo: I have seen the enemy. And it is us.
This collapse was made in London, Washington and New York. That's what Rickards doesn't say.
and there is plenty of blame to the voters....Congress has an approval rating of 15% yet the voters keep re-electing these clowns.
because the voters are only allowed to choose from a group of clowns!
If money was still in the form of gold and silver, this occurance would matter much less. Everyday trade between merchants and customers would still carry on, at least on the local level which is the most important.
Yes, governments are developing cyber-war. But the rest of us are finding out that, unlike in meat-space, cyber-revolution is ten times more powerful than the old kind.
That's what Thieves Emporium is about. If you haven't read it, go to TheDailyBell.com where it's being serialized for free.
The book shows what is really happening. There is hope.
Sam.Spade,
Thanks for link to the Daily Bell and suggestion about reading The Thieves Emporium. What a neat story. It is just amazing what one can learn from the readers of this site. Thanks to all.
Sweet Cheeks
"This facility would serve as a nondigital stock exchange with trading posts."
Hey, as long as we're protecting the bankers who created this mess, let's make sure to build special EMP-proof bunkers for their new Ferraris.
Talk about people who don't get it! You're talking about preserving an utterly corrupt and broken system of capital misallocation. If there is one single problem with our country and its current system of misrule, it is the stock exchanges, run by the big broker dealers. That's the one thing we all hope WOULD BE destroyed in an emergency. Boy, what misguided advice.
There was a time when we policed our financial sector. We prevented the worst abuses and prosecuted the rest. We were a model to the world of how to run a financial sytem, and competitor nations did not want to attack it. They wanted to adopt it. Rather than advising ways to protect these criminal parasites, you should be recommending ways to reform the system they have hijacked. Not only would this preserve the current system, it would remove the incentive other nations have to attack it.
This kind of myopia is why our system will fall.
"The key is to have some portion of your total assets invested in nondigital assets that cannot be hacked, wiped out or disrupted by financial warfare."
I keep saying that the only safe investments are land, away from populated areas, that you can grow food on, and the tools to work that land. If you want to piss away your resources on gold, knock yourself out. Just remember that your good neighbors will find a lot more "intrinsic value" in your fence post auger, tractor, horse-drawn plow, _________ (fill in the blank), than your gold. The bad neighbors, well, they are going to steal your gold.
Just saying.