China’s new digital currency is a Trojan horse “disguised as a payment mechanism,” says Erik Bethel, a global finance professional who served as the U.S. representative to the World Bank. “There are a lot of ways that the Chinese government could use this as an instrument of surveillance, tying it to their social credit score, and ultimately keeping an authoritarian regime alive, in effect, forever.”

As the Chinese Communist Party rolls out China’s new digital yuan, it could soon strongarm other nations to adopt it, Bethel says.

And he argues the digital yuan could eventually threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency, with devastating consequences for America and the rest of the free world.