• Major Jason Lowery argues that Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism could wage a new kind of war among global superpowers.
• He further explained that US policymakers should adopt and support Bitcoin immediately in order to retain America’s status as a global superpower.

A new and interesting theory suggests that Bitcoin mining could actually help America stay the superpower of the future. In a new MIT masters degree thesis, one major from Space Force argues that Bitcoin is not just a new form of internet money, but instead could be a potential weapon for the Pentagon in modern warfare.

In his 400-page dissertation, Major Jason Lowery argues that Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism offers a major shift in the way that world powers could wage a war. Competing for the bitcoin block rewards would be the new battleground as per Lowery.

Created in December 2019, Space Force is the newest branch of the US armed forces that looks after organizing, training and equipping military persons across the stars in a bid of protecting US and allied interests. Lowery is an active-duty US Space Force astronautical engineer as well as the US National Defense Fellow at MIT who will be responsible for advising senior military personnel over the implications of Bitcoin.

In its report, Politico noted that Lowery’s thesis was released as a book last month in February under the title “Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection and the National Strategic Significance of Bitcoin”. Similar somewhat to the Cold War, the governments could compete over hashrates, Bitcoin, and bragging rights. The blurb from the book reads:

Using scientific concepts from biology, evolution, anthropology, political science, and computer theory, Lowery summarizes the dynamics of power projection in human society and provides an argument for why emerging proof-of-work technologies (namely Bitcoin) will have a dramatic impact on how humans organize, cooperate, and compete on a global scale by empowering populations to project physical power in, from, and through cyberspace.

Bitcoin Holds A ‘National Strategic Imperative’?

In his book, Lowery explains that Bitcoin’s consensus could be harnessed to deter denial-of-service attacks. This would make it costly as well as prohibitive for bad actors to spam software systems based on its principles.

Viewing Bitcoin through this lens would serve US’ interest in protecting the network and fostering an industry for domestic crypto mining. In a major warning to US policymakers, Lowery explains that they should adopt and support Bitcoin immediately in order to retain America’s status as a global superpower.

The book’s description reads: “Major Lowery concludes that Bitcoin represents a national strategic imperative that the US should support and adopt as quickly as possible, else it risks losing its lead as a global superpower in the 21st century”.

In one of his recent tweets, Lowery added: “Our first amendment rights to free speech will not protect you from government regulators who are actively maneuvering to ban bitcoin under the argument that it represents a threat to national security. Your best bet is to argue that it would be a national strategic security hazard to ban bitcoin. It would be against the second amendment (not just the first). It’s an undefeatable argument, you just have to have the courage to use it”.