Sounds like the opposite of housing from a national security POV. If a Chinese national buys a house in the US, then the US has 'control' over their property. The US would want Chinese nationals to buy houses in the US.
Thanks for providing some nuance on the banking accounts. It's helpful to be able to compare crypto's impact (which I still think is substantial) against a realistic situation instead of the "centralized strawmen" that seem so common in crypto arguments.
The article mentions the Lebanese pound has "lost more than 90% of its value". For an equivalent loss in value from holding USDT that would mean that each USDT is only backed by 10 cents of value? I mean there are certainly arguments to be made about how much value is actually backing USDT but to claim that it's only 10% seems way off. I think people would be shocked and there would be crypto-wide panic if USDT dropped to 85 cents on the dollar. If USDT 'collapses' that does not mean that one USDT is worth 0$ only that the value drops enough that it causes a structurally significant sell-off. This is what people worry about, not USDT becoming worthless. If I'm Lebanese, yes I'll take the USDT
To give maybe a good parallel take a look at clients of Bernie Madoff's fund. This was by all measures considered a 'collapse' and a 'disaster' but when all was said and done clients still recovered 70-80% of their claims. Granted it took a long time ~10yrs or so but still a very far cry from 10%
USDT is hosted on Ethereum. The value of the USDT coin does not come from cryptocurrency as you've correctly pointed out, it comes from centralized authority backing USDT. But what part does come from cryptocurrency is the decentralized tracking of account balances. If it were't for the Ethereum blockchain, the only alternative would be to get physical USD into the country or for a Lebanese individual to open up a bank account denominated in USD (which is most likely illegal and impossible). So crypto is actually part of the solution here. Hope that makes sense
Assuming 8hr work days and a 250 day working year for humans. No such constraints for robots. That's 2,000 hrs/yr for a human vs 8,760 (assuming 24/7) hours for a robot. Obviously there will be other costs for robots (downtime, electricity, repair etc) so no telling whether it will be worth it in the long run but the hour calculation there does seem a little off.