On Ross Ulbricht

Books | Films

19 August 2021 - Askøy

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I've known about Ross Ulbricht for many years, as he is something of a hero in the American libertarian community. As we travelled in the same libertarian circles on the internet when he was captured and his identity revealed in 2013 there was an outpouring of support. I try not to get to emotionally involved in such cases, because the magnitude of injustice in the US judicial system is monumental. Rather than agree to a plea bargain he chose to fight the principled fight, wrongly believing he would get a fair hearing in court. Sadly this idealism may cost him his freedom for the rest of his life.

So who was Ross Ulricht? He was a grad school dropout who decided to fight the Drug War against the US government by non-violent but incredibly effective means. He built a website called the Silk Road after the old trade route across Asia, and allowed the listing of any item there, especially illegal drugs. Amazingly Ulricht ran this website for over two years without being caught, facilitating billions of dollars in commerce. Ulbricht's special discovery was that with Tor and Bitcoin one could build a completely anonymous marketplace online. So he built Silk Road and it's estimated at its peak 20% of drug trade flowed through it. Like Manning and Snowden he believed in America and saw that the US government had become the enemy of Americans. Like Assange he built a website that challenged the power of the US government and thus painted a target on his back. To read Ulbricht one can almost see that he understood that if he did not win the War on Drugs he would become a martyr. And that's exactly what happened as he's now in prison for life without the possibility of parole. But the US government is still losing its futile War of Drugs, and now many of the States have joined the fight against the US. Only five states have yet to legalize marijuana in some form while it remains a crime in the US and hundreds of thousands are in prison for merely possessing it. Hundreds of thousands more have criminal records because of the US government's failed War.

So is it possible that the US government could lose the Drug War as spectacularly as they did against the Taliban? With the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, they swept back across the country and into power in a matter of weeks. But where does the Taliban get their funds? Trading Opium! The US government's War on Drugs actually caused them to lose Afghanistan as well. Ross Ulbricht believed that the Drug War would also reach such a tipping point; where a wave of public support would sweep away the old drug laws and people would take their freedom over their own bodies back. As he sacrificed his own well-being for this cause of freedom, I think he can only be called a hero.

I recently read Nick Bilton's biography of Ulbricht, American Kingpin, which only cemented my opinion of Ulbricht despite trying to paint him a criminal. Bilton took pains to frame the story as a true crime novel no doubt to improve sales, but Ulbricht's heroic character still shines through. Bilton's book is clearly well researched, but sadly the bibliography is light and doesn't include the primary sources he used. Bilton continues to write about Ulbricht, a recent article highlighting how unfair it was for Trump to consider pardoning him while not pardoning a poor black man sentenced for selling drugs in the same courtroom during a break from Ulbricht's trial. But by invoking another injustice commited by the US government, Bilton only demonstrates how bereft of justice the system really is.