内容摘要：Breaching physical security is an entirely different type of work.

Breaching physical security is an entirely different type of work.

That has a knock-on effect on local energy prices, which is also provoking a backlash in some areas.In 2017, Bitcoin miners flooded into Plattsburgh, New York – a city of about 20,000 people a couple of hours to the north of Dresden – because of cheap hydroelectricity rates. "We were getting Bitcoin applications from operators all around the world," says the city's mayor at the time, Colin Read.

Yet they used so much power that electricity rates shot up. Within a year, some residents were paying up to 40% more during winter months, Read says.The following year, he and other local lawmakers passed rules against buildings blasting out hot air."Fortunately we put a stop to it," he says, noting that all but one Bitcoin mining operation left the city.

Resistance to Bitcoin mines extends to places with the biggest Trump support.Cyndie Roberson was retired and unaware of the crypto industry until a Bitcoin mining operation moved to her small town in North Carolina in 2021. The locals banded together and managed to ban new Bitcoin developments in their area - but the existing one was allowed to stay and the bitterness of the fight made her decide to move south, to Gilmer County in Georgia.

There, Ms Roberson has campaigned against crypto mining in a region that is solidly pro-Republican. In the county where she lives, she says that around 1,000 people came to a public meeting to oppose a mine, which then wasn't allowed to operate.

Just north of Gilmer, the Fannin County Commission has enacted a ban on crypto mining, while a Georgian commission representing 18 primarily rural counties has published advice on how to restrict the development of Bitcoin mines.A submariner who was on board one of those long patrols described to me a worrying situation in which the crew ran low on food and medicines. Towards the end of the patrol he described how hungry crew members rummaged for tins of food in hidden compartments inside the submarine. He said they even had to make bread out of custard powder, because they'd run out of flour.

The navy has long found it difficult to recruit sailors into its Submarine Service, often known as the "Silent Service".But the case of the 204-day patrol by HMS Vanguard raises a wider issue.

Virtually everyone agrees that Britain's armed forces are depleted. Troop numbers are down, morale is weak, and some ageing equipment is in a poor state. And all this comes at a time of greater geopolitical uncertainty, as the threat from Russia looms large across Europe.Within the next few months, the government will publish its long-awaited Strategic Defence Review - a consultation launched by Sir Keir Starmer shortly after he arrived in Downing Street last summer, designed to identify threats to Britain and recommend how the armed forces can meet them. But there are already doubts over how much it can realistically achieve.