Currently reading. It's interesting to note that there are essentially two overall cypherpunk paradigms: "crypto anarchy" and "crypto justice". The former was promoted by Timothy May and the latter promoted by Julian Assange.
Discussion
curious how those are being distignished as i've tended to read them as one and the same
I think one is primarily rooted in libertarianism and privacy for all, whole the other one is (more) rooted in ethics and transparency for the powerful, relevant passage:
"The two paradigms under examination here are May’s “crypto an-archy” (his term) and Assange’s “crypto justice” (my term). In the chapter on cypherpunk meta-ethics, I juxtapose the moral philoso-phies of May and Assange to highlight the radical differences between their distinct articulations of cypherpunk philosophy. May’s ethics are thoroughly libertarian, grounded in a theory of anarcho-capitalism, while Assange’s ethics are a version of virtue ethics, giving priority to the virtues of justice and courage. In the chapter on cypherpunk theo-ries of the state, I demonstrate how May’s anarcho-capitalist rejection of the state and Assange’s cybernetic theory of the state as a computa-tional network offer competing understandings of government power and surveillance. Some commentators have misinterpreted Assange, claiming that because he is a cypherpunk, he must be a crypto anar-chist (Manne 2011; Di Salvo 2020). As these chapters show, however, crypto anarchy and crypto justice provide radically different philo-sophical foundations for cypherpunk ethics, though each is compati-ble with the cypherpunk call for privacy and transparency."
Side note that might interest you, the author quotes norbert weiner in the introduction when talking about power and communication
😂 This quote really highlights the contrast in attitudes to being cypherpunk:
"While WikiLeaks has excelled among its cypherpunk platform siblings, this has not resulted in Assange receiving admiration from all other cypherpunks. Young accused Assange of being seduced by fame and wealth (Golianopoulos 2010); he also accused WikiLeaks of being in cahoots with the CIA (Assange 2011). Young ended his short tenure on WikiLeaks’ advisory board after Assange notified him of a plan to raise money; in his email, Young wrote, “Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign against legitimate dissent. Same old shit, working for the enemy” (Greenberg 2012, 132). While Young was willing to be part of WikiLeaks for at least a few months, May has expressed his distaste for the politics of WikiLeaks. When asked why May never used his cypherpunk ethics and technical skills in crypto to build a whistleblowing and publishing platform, May explained, “I’m not concerned about things like that. Let the Africans kill each other. I don’t have those kinds of political interests…the idea of trying to be Julian Assange gives me the creeps” (Greenberg 2012, 91). May’s comment captures a fundamental difference between crypto anarchy and crypto justice. Assange uses crypto to push the entire world toward a state of justice, which entails curtailing western imperialism and undermining authoritarianism wherever it maybe, while May is primarily interested in using crypto as arenas of realizing a kind of elite, individualistic—white and western—autonomy."