{"id":7282,"date":"2026-05-08T22:16:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/what-does-bitcoin-power-projection-mean-to-the-u-s-military\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T22:16:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:16:46","slug":"what-does-bitcoin-power-projection-mean-to-the-u-s-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/what-does-bitcoin-power-projection-mean-to-the-u-s-military\/","title":{"rendered":"What does Bitcoin \u201cPower Projection\u201d mean to the U.S. Military?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

What does Bitcoin \u201cPower Projection\u201d mean to the U.S. Military?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

On April 21st and 22nd 2026, during a Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Samuel Paparo of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command made comments<\/a> on Bitcoin\u2019s utility in cybersecurity for the country\u2019s military, calling it a \u201cvaluable computer science tool as power projection,\u201d and disclosing that INCOPACOM is running a Bitcoin node<\/a> in their experiments with the protocol.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The comments by the INCOPACOM Commander came just days after the Islamic Republic of Iran demanded payment in Bitcoin<\/a> for safe passage across the Strait of Hormuz. The mention of \u201cpower projection\u201d echoed the work of a famous and controversial Bitcoiner, Jason Lowery<\/a>, author of Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection, MIT Fellow and Special Assistant to the Commander of INDOPACOM.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his work \u2014 which involved an MIT thesis and book expanding on his work \u2014 Lowery discussed the cybersecurity value of Bitcoin and its unique ability to deliver \u201cpower projection\u201d in cyberspace, a landscape of national security and military operations that otherwise lacks traditional deterrence options.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The book gained significant popularity and earned Lowery both fans and critics across the Bitcoin industry, but was later taken down from distribution by Lowery at the request of his superiors<\/a>. An event that suggested to some that the book might have something important enough that the U.S. military wants to keep it quiet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what is this unique value that Bitcoin brings to military matters, and what does \u201cPower Projection\u201d in this context actually mean?\u00a0<\/h3>\n

According to Department of Defense\u2019s 2002 Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms<\/a>, power projection is; \u201cThe ability of a nation to apply all or some of its elements of national power \u2013 political, economic, informational, or military \u2013 to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces in and from multiple dispersed locations to respond to crises, to contribute to deterrence, and to enhance regional stability.\u201d In other words, the ability of a nation to influence the behavior of other nations or political entities of interest, at a range beyond its national borders. Examples can range from diplomatic to economic influence, as well as military capabilities such as long-range missiles, drones or a powerful navy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The word deterrence is also doing a lot of work here. The DoD defines<\/a> it as: \u201cThe prevention from action by fear of the consequences. Deterrence is a state of mind brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowery brings Bitcoin into the world of deterrence in the physical world by presenting a particularly interesting insight. That just as microchips are essentially wires moving electric power in \u201cencoded logic\u201d inside a computer\u2019s motherboard, so can the globe\u2019s electric grid be seen as a kind of \u201cmacrochip\u201d, with giant wires moving large amounts of electricity from power sources across nations and throughout the world. These macrochips now also have logic gates in the form of Bitcoin mines \u2014 Lowery argues \u2014 they consume large quantities of energy, converting it into the scarce digital asset, which can be programmed via Bitcoin script.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bitcoin macrochip could, in theory, bind cybersecurity matters to the physical world, since energy output is one of the most important and expensive resources a nation can muster. While governments can print paper money at will, summoning massive amounts of electricity to influence something like Bitcoin\u2019s proof of work competition is orders of magnitude more difficult and is the basis of Bitcoin\u2019s resilience.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s Multisignature Deterrence<\/h3>\n

The most obvious and powerful demonstration of Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cembedded logic\u201d security is the invention of multisignature Bitcoin wallets, which safeguard much of the Bitcoin wealth today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Multisignature wallets require multiple predefined private keys to sign valid transactions before Bitcoin can be transferred, making it possible to geographically decentralize the storage of Bitcoin private keys across space and jurisdictions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Multisig challenges hackers not just to hack one key pair, but multiple, across multiple locations under time constraints, since users have the advantage of legitimate access to those keys and can potentially move the bitcoin quickly in response to a threat. Hackers must gain access to enough keys while also fooling alarms and safeguards, avoiding getting caught. Multisig imposes high costs on attackers and, as such, might very well fit the definition of \u2018deterrence\u2019. It may even fit the definition of \u2018power projection\u2019 as Bitcoin funds can be kept secure and available to be sent when needed anywhere in the world, thanks to Bitcoin\u2019s other networking-based censorship resistance qualities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This differs from traditional finance and its centralized databases since Banks can freeze and confiscate assets from their rightful owners when pressured politically, as seen in cases like that of Cyprus and their 40% bail in, or the United States\u2019 confiscation of Russia\u2019s foreign treasury reserves held in European custody.<\/p>\n

But INDOPACOM did not explicitly talk about Bitcoin, the asset, in their comments; they seemed to think Bitcoin\u2019s proof of work protocol could secure data and networks external to the Bitcoin asset. But the Bitcoin script, the logic internal to the Bitcoin blockchain, only governs BTC, its internal asset.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For external networks to benefit from Bitcoin\u2019s powerful proof of work macrochip, they would have to be anchored to Bitcoin somehow, and that\u2019s where much of Lowery\u2019s thesis starts to stall out. He does, however, develop this idea further by proposing the \u201cElectro-Cyber Dome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cyber Security Threats and the Electro-Cyber Dome<\/h3>\n

In Software 2.5, Lowery argues that \u201csoftware system security vulnerabilities are derived from insufficient constraints on control signals\u201d sent to networked machines. An example of this might be fake login attempts that cost a website more computer resources to authenticate than they cost attackers to send. Lowery adds that such vulnerabilities \u201ccan be exploited in such a way that it puts software into insecure or hazardous states.\u201d Examples of such network security exploits include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n

Email spam and comment spam<\/strong> \u2014 superfluous emails and comments that flood inboxes or forums.<\/p>\n

Sybil attacks<\/strong> \u2014 creation of large numbers of fake identities to manipulate systems.<\/p>\n

Bots and troll farms<\/strong> \u2014 automated or coordinated accounts used to amplify malicious activity.<\/p>\n

Weaponized misinformation\/disinformation campaigns<\/strong> \u2014 flooding networks with false or manipulated information.<\/p>\n

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks<\/strong> \u2014 flooding networks with superfluous control signals (service requests) to overwhelm bandwidth.<\/p>\n

Forged or replayed control signals<\/strong> \u2014 impersonating legitimate commands, orders, or data that put software into insecure\/hazardous states.<\/p>\n

Systemic exploitation of administrative permissions\/insider abuse<\/strong> \u2014 exploitation of trust-based hierarchies where high-privilege accounts can be compromised or misused.<\/p>\n

Lowery suggests that other networks could defend themselves against all of these threats to some significant degree using proof of work (POW) protocols like Bitcoin\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In the Bitcoin white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto defined Bitcoin\u2019s POW<\/a> quite elegantly: \u201cThe proof-of-work involves scanning for a value that when hashed, such as with SHA-256, the hash begins with a number of zero bits. The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nakamoto specifically references Adam Back\u2019s \u201cHash Cash, A Denial of Service Counter-Measure\u201d<\/a>, which was designed to make email spam costly by requiring computers sending an email to produce a POW stamp of a difficulty defined by the recipient of the email. Recipient servers would need to keep a list of stamps already used, in order to prevent reuse of the same work by attackers, aka to prevent \u201cdouble-spending\u201d attacks. These stamps, however, were not transferable, a quality which some cypherpunks wanted in their pursuit of digital money. Hal Finney was one such engineer who furthered the field by inventing RPOW, or reusable proof of work<\/a>. <\/p>\n

RPOW essentially tokenized POW stamps via a centralized server that kept track and facilitated transfers. One of Nakamoto\u2019s key innovations was decentralizing this server and its list of spent stamps, in the form of the blockchain, while also defining a global difficulty algorithm that all Bitcoin miners must satisfy, rather than relative difficulty targets chosen by each website at will.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lowery, in his concept of the Electro-Cyber Dome, is essentially talking about Hash Cash. He specifically says that servers can choose the difficulty target they see fit, and never proposes that the Dome would or should use Bitcoin\u2019s SHA-256 protocol, though it is implied in his idea of the macrochip. What he does do is use Bitcoin as the principal example of such a cybersecurity network actually working at scale; \u201cWe know for sure that electro-cyber domes can function successfully as a security protocol because this is what Bitcoin uses to secure itself and its own bits of information against systemic exploitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowery goes further than defense, pointing out that as such systems gain adoption, a concept of aggression becomes possible by large miners, he writes; \u201cit should be noted that this wouldn\u2019t be a strictly \u201cdefensive\u201d power projection capability\u2026People with access to proof-of-power can theoretically \u201csmash\u201d through these electro-cyber dome defenses if desired. Thus, proof-of-power protocols are not strictly \u201cdefense only\u201d protocols as some have argued. A top threat to people using physical cost function protocols like Bitcoin is other people using the same protocol (hence why Nakamoto mentions the word \u201cattack\u201d 25 times in an 8-page whitepaper, each time referring to people running the same protocol).\u201d<\/p>\n

Criticisms of Lowery\u2019s Softwar Thesis\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Lowery\u2019s Softwar thesis can be fairly described as controversial within the Bitcoin community. It\u2019s optimistic take that large portions of military conflict could instead be settled via hash rate wars in some future has been described by Shinobi at Bicoin Magazine<\/a> as \u201cdelusional\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, critics reject the idea that data or networks external to Bitcoin can be secured in any way with Bitcoin\u2019s technology stack, be it its POW, its blockchain or its native asset. Jameson Lopp<\/a> did a multi-part review of Lowery\u2019s thesis and book, praising many aspects of the thesis but ultimately dismissing its conclusions, saying that: \u201cSoftwar falls short on acting as a blueprint for how we should build the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most obvious question to me is whether using SHA-256 proof of work to gatekeep access to networks outside of Bitcoin makes sense in the first place, or if it could even be considered using Bitcoin. If the Electro-Cyber Dome is not demanding a high enough POW difficulty to mine any Bitcoin, if it does not use Bitcoin\u2019s target difficulty, its asset or its blockchain, then is it using Bitcoin?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Furthermore, given that China has the bulk of the ASIC manufacturing industry for Bitcoin mining, would INDOPACOM \u2014 the U.S. military branch in charge of keeping the Indo Pacific in check \u2014 really want to secure its cyber networks with algorithms that China mass produces chips to brute force? That seems like an awkward decision to make at best, and is more likely to lead them to consider alternative POW algorithms. But at that point, they certainly would not be using Bitcoin and would lose the macrochip argument. It would instead be using classic Hash Cash, and maybe that\u2019s the lesson in this story. Lowery\u2019s affinity with Bitcoin might be more of a marketing strategy and a shout-out to an industry that inspired him, rather than the actual tool that INDOPACOM might end up using.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Happy Middle Ground<\/h3>\n

In the gap between theory, implementation, and criticisms of Software style ideas, there exist some projects that serve as young but curious examples of how Bitcoin can secure more than money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SimpleProof<\/a>, an Open Time Stamps-based Bitcoin notary of sorts, has been using the blockchain to record hashes of data, demonstrating that a certain version existed at a certain time. This very narrow use of Bitcoin as a time-stamping server helped defend one side of the Guatemala elections a few years ago from accusations of fraud by the opposition, resulting in real political consequences for the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael Saylor, on the other hand, led the creation of what some have called the Orange Checkmark protocol on top of Bitcoin. This tech stack, which can be found on Github<\/a>, is a privacy preserving Bitcoin native decentralized digital identity system. It gained some interest from the Bitcoin community when it was announced a couple of years ago, but it does not appear to have gained any adoption.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally and ironically enough, Jameson Lopp, perhaps Lowery\u2019s most verbose critic with three dedicated articles on the topic, actually implemented a proof-of-work-based spam protection mechanism on his website<\/a> for a submission form, which, according to Lopp, works well. So if even he can see the use of these old ideas, even if just based on Hash Cash, then perhaps we will one day see Bitcoin-like technologies used to secure the networks and data of the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

This post What does Bitcoin \u201cPower Projection\u201d mean to the U.S. Military?\u00a0<\/a> first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine<\/a> and is written by Juan Galt<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine What does Bitcoin \u201cPower Projection\u201d mean to the U.S. Military?\u00a0 On April 21st and 22nd 2026, during a Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Samuel Paparo of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command made comments on Bitcoin\u2019s utility in cybersecurity for the country\u2019s military, calling it a \u201cvaluable computer science tool as power projection,\u201d and disclosing that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}