Paying Cash, Preserving Freedom | Susan Luschas

"The best thing that we can do today is refuse to comply with the digital control grid. And the way we do that is by paying with cash every day." —Susan Luschas Fighting the Digital Control Grid with Cash "The only hope we have to keep our freedom is mass noncompliance. "And I think one of the best things, in fact, the best thing in my opinion that we can do today is refuse to comply with the digital control grid. "And the way we do that is by paying with cash every day." Susan Luschas holds a PhD in electrical engineering from MIT and worked on some of the earliest Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and camera chips used in smartphones. Later she moved into the energy sector where she worked on electromagnetic energy generation and storage. She also taught as a professor at Santa Clara University. Susan and her husband Manuel Luschas left Silicon Valley in 2020 during the so-called pandemic and moved to a small town in South Dakota so that their two daughters could attend school in person, unmasked. Freezing Bank Accounts of Canadian Truckers Was a Wakeup Call In early 2022, the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act and ordered banks to freeze the bank accounts of truckers organizing the Canadian Freedom Convoy. For at least a week, the bank accounts of around 300 people with about 8 million Canadian dollars in them were frozen. That, Luschas said, was a real wakeup call for many people, including herself. Truckers were left stranded in Ottawa. Many had no cash on them and could buy neither food nor drink. They could not pay for their hotels and could not buy gas for their trucks to drive home. Luschas told me: "They let the cat out of the bag with freezing their bank accounts because then people got a whiff of it: this is possible, they might do this. "And thank God they did that to the Canadian truckers because that was a lesson and kind of a wake-up call to a lot of people. "And I think they learned after that 'Ooh, people are getting suspicious. We better not snap the mouse trap until we're really ready to snap it on everybody.'" "Team Cash" Promotes the Use of Physical Cash Luschas founded the group "Team Cash" which promotes the use of physical cash as pushback against moving toward centrally-controlled payment systems and programmable money systems. She led the effort behind South Dakota's legislation demanding that schools must accept cash at school events like sport games after local school districts moved to cashless ticketing. Catherine Austin Fitts's Solari Report named her 2025 Hero of the Year for her work promoting the use of cash. The Power of Cash to Fight a Digital Control Grid "It's entirely possible today to control us. It's just we don't have the infrastructure to control everybody all of the time. "Once they have the infrastructure to control all of us, they will." Cash, Luschas told me during the interview, is the only form of money that can't easily be frozen, tracked, or shut off remotely, in contrast to bank accounts, credit cards, or crypto wallets. She believes paying with cash every day, in particular for groceries and gas, is a practical and easy way for people to resist a fully digital, centrally controlled financial system. Luschas recommends keeping about three months' worth of cash at home for emergencies like power outages, cyberattacks or freezing of your bank accounts. "And I think if you're someone like me who's potentially putting a bullseye on your back, then you might want to have more like six months." Cash, she says, does not only block financial control but also all the surveillance data needed to power and finetune that control. Are There Backdoors into Cash? Even cash, Luschas says, has backdoors through which cash can be controlled but in contrast to digital payment methods these backdoors are cumbersome and not easily built. "There are serial numbers and some things on cash that can be identified. "I'm sure if they put enough effort into it, they could identify the cash and identify that Susan has that cash and is going to spend it and they want to stop her from spending it. "I think that's entirely possible, but at this moment in time they are not tracking cash and we have a chance to push back and to send a message by all using cash all the time. So I think we have an opportunity. "Will they eventually put chips into money or more tracking, better tracking? They may even put QR codes on cash eventually. I don't know." But for now, there is no backdoor into cash. And that is our opportunity to resist perfecting the digital control grid by not letting go of cash. "It's entirely possible that there's things they could do, but at this moment in time, we have the opportunity to send a very loud message that we will not comply with the digital control grid." Utopia Movie — a Horror Movie of Life inside the Digital Control Grid During the interview we watch Kosta Nika's short and powerful sci-fi film from 2021 about life inside a totalitarian control grid. Afterwards, Susan discusses in detail which facets of life in Utopia are already present in our lives today and which ones are in the process of being created. The one big difference between the movie and our lives is that we still have cash. CHAPTERS 04:00 Leaving Silicon Valley and Starting Over in South Dakota 06:39 Mass Non-Compliance and Paying With Cash Every Day 07:38 Silicon Valley's "We Control the Idiots" Mentality 08:26 The Infrastructure of Control Is Already Here 09:17 The Canadian Trucker Lesson and the Digital Backdoor 15:23 Explaining the Two-Lock and Three-Lock Payment Paradigm 18:16 Surveillance as the Engine Behind Automated Control 19:43 Farming, Bartering, and Building Resilient Communities 20:59 Which Businesses and States Refuse Cash 22:41 State-by-State Cash Acceptance Laws From Solari 25:15 Passing South Dakota's Cash Law With a Republican Sponsor 28:37 Enforcement Gaps in New York City's Cash Law 32:01 Cash as an Emergency Preparedness Tool 35:49 How Much Cash to Keep at Home 37:29 Scandinavia's Cashless Rollback and the US Federal Cash Bill 38:40 The Digital Control Grid Needs a Digital Monetary System 39:42 Debating Whether a Digital ID Is Even Necessary 41:17 The Freedom Trucker Convoy and Bank Compliance 43:14 Introducing the Short Film Utopia 46:16 Watching Utopia: Fines, Cameras, and a Cashless Homecoming 60:40 Post-Film Reaction: More Freedom in Jail Than in Society 63:47 5G Towers Encroaching on South Dakota Schools 64:08 Flock Cameras and Automated License Plate Readers 66:39 Who Controls the Camera Data and Who Can Access It 67:18 Losing Local Control Over Cell Tower Placement 68:26 School Bus Surveillance Cameras Made Legal 70:18 Hidden Cameras Disguised as Safety Lights 71:26 Ring Doorbells, Neighbor Surveillance, and Flock Partnerships 73:04 How Amazon Ring Data Reaches Police Departments 75:03 Manufacturing Fear to Justify More Surveillance 77:03 Nineteen-Dollar Smart Camera Light Bulbs at Menards 78:41 A New Data Center Rezoned Next to Brandon, South Dakota 80:55 How Paid Petition Circulators Sabotaged the Ballot Measure 89:27 Data Centers Placed to Control Every City's Population 91:29 No Power Plan and No Water Plan for the New Data Center 92:39 A White Paper in Progress on Data Centers and Control 93:19 Mandatory Vehicle Kill Switches Starting in 2026 94:24 The Safety Danger of Cars That Can Be Remotely Disabled 95:35 Modern Cars as Rolling Surveillance Devices 95:54 Digital Vehicle Titles and Losing Proof of Ownership 97:57 Getting Rid of Cash Starting: With the Penny 99:12 Why Eliminating Coins Makes No Economic Sense 100:01 The Fed's New "Cashless Sentiment" Tracking 101:26 What Freezing Bank Accounts, Cars, and Crypto Looks Like 103:09 Which Car Model Years Can Still Be Frozen or Tracked 104:09 Why Banks Always Comply: FDIC Insurance Leverage 106:01 Why Cash Matters Most for Groceries and Gas 107:30 Sanctioning Software and the Politically Exposed Persons List 110:43 Screening Systems Built for Crime but Applied to Everyone 112:07 Why Legislative Bills Alone Can't Save Freedom 114:22 Unenforced Laws and Conflicts of Interest in South Dakota 118:21 Corruption Parallels Beyond South Dakota 119:57 Handing Out Dollar Bills With Cash-Is-King Stickers 121:03 Cash Halloween, Easter Eggs, and Teaching Kids About Money 122:57 The Long-Term Decline in Cash Payment Preference 124:41 Low-Income Households Are the Ones Keeping Cash Alive 126:41 Credit Card Rewards Are Funded by Low-Income Debt 128:10 South Dakota's Nation-Leading Swipe Fees Per Person 130:10 Where to Find Team Cash Resources and Contact Susan RESOURCES https://www.luschasforsd.net/news Turtling for Cash with Susan Luschas Utopia (Omeleto channel on YT)