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by monero-xmr 792 days ago
The problem is the government has to acquire the hardware. There isn’t 51% of the hash power in spare mining equipment lying around. It’s all decentralized.
2 comments

You're assuming you dont have state sponsors heavily invested in it already - and have been for years. Which is actually kind of hilarious, as it also assumes the blockchain is safe from other threat models. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant chunk of bitcoin movements were state sponsored; its the next logical move - first you build a brivate internet, then you build a private currency.
Ummm really?, is that your counter-argument for governments that have Trillions in their budget?
The US government could spend trillions to surreptitiously manufacture extremely specialized equipment without anyone knowing, turn it on to do a 51% attack, and when it’s over the network will just fork and reverse the transactions. It’s illogical
I think it's fair to say that western cryptologic agencies could likely repurpose hardware, perhaps to a degree unknown in the public space.
delusional to think, the western governments can't attack the forked version too.

Also, who decides which transactions to reverse? and why would an entity with 51% power agree to that?

No one in crypto has thought through this

Yep you’re the first person to ever consider this - tell the world!