Chris Giancarlo: new cyber-privateer rules can't target North Korea

Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs, discussed the Trump administration's new offensive-cyber policy on the Unchained episode Why America's New Cyber Privateers Can't Go After North Korea (27 October 2026), hosted by Laura Shin. Giancarlo helped inspire the policy with a 2025 proposal to revive 18th-century letters of marque, but the version the White House adopted carries a carve-out he says was not in his original plan: it cannot be used against nation-states.

The argument

Giancarlo and Chris Perkins first proposed authorizing private "privateers" to counter state-sponsored hackers such as North Korea's Lazarus Group. The White House's August 2026 memorandum followed that pitch but changed its scope. "It is different than our proposal. The White House proposal doesn't go to Congress." (from 0:12:44), Giancarlo said, explaining that the memo relies on different legal authority and a narrower target list. "They actually can't go after state actors. They can only go after black hatted private actors." (from 0:15:35)

Giancarlo framed the restriction as a question of who in government gets to act: "The question is just who pulls the trigger. If we want to go after North Korea, you might think about the private sector actors just hand the gun over to a government agency." (from 0:45:34) Redbord situated the urgency behind the policy in how automated attacks have changed: "In 2026, we've seen end to end human out of the loop ransomware attacks." (from 0:03:48)

What it rests on

Giancarlo and Perkins' original pitch ran as an op-ed proposing letters of marque and reprisal so licensed private actors could hack into wallets controlled by sanctioned adversaries and recover stolen funds, citing Article I of the Constitution and the fact that the US never signed the 1856 Declaration of Paris that abolished privateering: Cointelegraph, 26 February 2025. What the White House actually signed in August 2026, the National Security Presidential Memorandum titled Expanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber-Enabled Crime, authorizes vetted contractors to act only against foreign Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations, and explicitly leaves out government-sponsored threat actors, according to reporting on the memo's text: CyberScoop. That confirms Giancarlo's account: a constitutional proposal aimed partly at state actors became a narrower program, built on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, aimed at criminal networks instead.

Where it was discussed

• Unchained: Why America's New Cyber Privateers Can't Go After North Korea, 27 October 2026, from 0:11:24