Contemporary armed conflict increasingly unfolds within digital systems that generate, store, and circulate vast quantities of transactional data. Blockchain infrastructures shape how wars are financed, sanctions enforced, and humanitarian aid delivered.  

In the Russia–Ukraine war, cryptocurrency was used both by Ukraine to raise substantial funds for defense and relief, and by sanctioned Russian actors to seek alternative channels for cross-border transactions. In the Israel–Palestine context, blockchain has similarly served multiple and opposing functions: as a fundraising tool for Hamas, as an object of seizure through Israeli blockchain analytics, and as a channel for humanitarian donations to Gaza when traditional banking routes were constrained.  

While terrorist and militant organizations have been documented to experiment with cryptocurrencies for fundraising and financial transfers, the broader role of blockchain-based finance within contemporary economic warfare remains insufficiently understood, particularly regarding its scale and institutional embeddedness.

This project examines blockchain technology as contested data infrastructure of algorithmic security within contemporary conflict. It combines large-scale blockchain data analytics with socio-political and legal analysis. The project will produce an empirical analysis of cryptocurrency transactions linked to terrorist organizations, a blockchain network modeling framework, and analytically grounded insights into the scale and structure of these financial flows.
 

Project team:

• Andrea Leiter (Faculty of Law)
• Simon Trimborn (Faculty of Economics and Business)