Digital economic warfare

Digital economic warfare is the use of digital payment infrastructure, data controls, cyber operations or digital assets to deny access, preserve resilience or impose economic cost in a conflict. These mechanisms share technology but not necessarily legal authority, operator or strategic purpose. A central-bank digital currency is not inherently a sanctions-evasion system, and a cryptocurrency case does not measure an entire state's digital finance.

Digital currency infrastructure

Chinese official reporting published in December 2025 stated that, by the end of November 2025, the e-CNY had recorded 3.48 billion cumulative transactions worth RMB 16.7 trillion and 230 million personal wallets. These figures are cumulative domestic and reported programme metrics. RMB 16.7 trillion is not a cross-border annual flow or a share of global payments.

Project mBridge tested cross-border central-bank digital currency settlement. The Bank for International Settlements states that it handed the project to participating central banks in October 2024. BIS also conditions real-value deployment on each jurisdiction's legal, regulatory and operational readiness. The platform's existence does not prove large-scale use, displacement of the dollar or sanctions circumvention.

Data controls

The United States Department of Justice Data Security Program became effective on 8 April 2025. It regulates specified covered data transactions involving countries of concern and covered persons under the programme's rule and guidance. This is an operative national-security control, not merely an executive-order proposal.

Data restrictions work differently from payment denial. They can prohibit or condition access to sensitive personal or government-related data, while payment systems move value. An assessment should identify the regulated transaction and dataset rather than treating all digital restrictions as one instrument.

Cryptocurrency cases

Cryptocurrency can support theft, fundraising, settlement and laundering, but totals require precise definitions. A Justice Department civil-forfeiture action concerning assets associated with an Iranian national states allegations about identified wallets, transactions and property. It does not establish total Iranian state cryptocurrency activity or a national annual flow.

Private estimates can be used where their address-attribution method, period and inclusion rules are transparent. They must distinguish activity associated with sanctioned entities from all exchange exposure or ecosystem volume. Without those boundaries, large totals create false precision.

Assessment

The relevant metrics vary by mechanism: transaction value and adoption for payment systems, settlement finality and jurisdictional reach for cross-border platforms, data type and covered transaction for data controls, and attributed wallets or adjudicated proceeds for cryptocurrency cases. Strategic intent and effect require separate evidence.

Digital systems can reduce dependence on an adversary-controlled network, but they also create new governance, surveillance, liquidity and interoperability dependencies. Resilience for one actor may become a chokepoint for another.

Operational analysis should identify who controls admission, identity, messaging, settlement and recovery. These functions may sit with different public and private bodies. A system can remain technically available while access is denied through compliance, authentication or liquidity rules. Conversely, a new payment rail does not remove dependence if users still require the same reserve asset, correspondent bank or conversion market.

This functional map prevents technology labels from substituting for evidence. The strategic question is which transaction or information flow changed, under whose authority, and with what measurable consequence.

See also

Central bank digital currencies | e-CNY: digital yuan infrastructure | mBridge | State-directed cryptocurrency theft | Data as strategic resource and cross-border data flows

Sources

• Ministry of Justice of the People's Republic of China, official report carrying People's Bank of China digital-renminbi statistics, 30 December 2025.
• Bank for International Settlements, Project mBridge, accessed 29 July 2026.
• United States Department of Justice, Data Security Program, accessed 29 July 2026.
• United States Department of Justice, civil-forfeiture action concerning cryptocurrency associated with an Iranian national, 11 September 2025.