Depends. Do they live or host in a country with, say, FBI-coerced "SIGINT-enabling" or something similar? And they be held indefinitely without trial? And are the foreign nationals subject to rendition? Can their assets be frozen by tax authorities and their datacenter equipment seized like some colos? Are they creating something that's straight-up designed to piss those organizations off in many countries and/or aid their opponents?
Most proposals succeeding wouldn't bring this risk up: very specific to this project's goals given it ties in anonymity and money. We actually have no idea what they'll do outside some surveillance, court-ordered searches or seizures. Hopefully, it doesn't get popular among their targets. The closest thing is Tor but it's unusual: a tech used and funded by U.S. organizations including military, LEO's and propaganda teams (conflict of interest); anti-censorship getting it special treatment for exports; non-profit; extra smart and dedicated people. Quite a combo. The rest of the carriers and projects fell to FBI, NSA, or both when they became important enough to target with the big guns. If not immediately, then eventually. We know some were paid off but the coercive techniques are unknown.
So, yes, centralizing control of something for untraceable money into few, known hands is a huge risk depending where you're at. A risk of what I can't tell you as they won't tell me. ;) The other commenter wisely added the for-profit angle as another dimension of the risk. Most of those screw their users, get hacked, or fail for business reasons. So, that should probably be No 1.
EDIT: Conflict of interest on Tor is meant to indicate that, internal to U.S. government, there would be battling over doing something to weaken or end it. Not the Tor team or organization itself.
Most proposals succeeding wouldn't bring this risk up: very specific to this project's goals given it ties in anonymity and money. We actually have no idea what they'll do outside some surveillance, court-ordered searches or seizures. Hopefully, it doesn't get popular among their targets. The closest thing is Tor but it's unusual: a tech used and funded by U.S. organizations including military, LEO's and propaganda teams (conflict of interest); anti-censorship getting it special treatment for exports; non-profit; extra smart and dedicated people. Quite a combo. The rest of the carriers and projects fell to FBI, NSA, or both when they became important enough to target with the big guns. If not immediately, then eventually. We know some were paid off but the coercive techniques are unknown.
So, yes, centralizing control of something for untraceable money into few, known hands is a huge risk depending where you're at. A risk of what I can't tell you as they won't tell me. ;) The other commenter wisely added the for-profit angle as another dimension of the risk. Most of those screw their users, get hacked, or fail for business reasons. So, that should probably be No 1.
EDIT: Conflict of interest on Tor is meant to indicate that, internal to U.S. government, there would be battling over doing something to weaken or end it. Not the Tor team or organization itself.