An active duty US Space Forces astronautical engineer is proposing to the Pentagon a cybersecurity tool capable of transforming the country’s national security and even the Internet’s base layer architecture: Bitcoin (BTC).
In an academic thesis, Major Jason Lowery, who is also a National Defense Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presented a new theory to the US Department of Defense that Bitcoin is more than just a peer-to-peer payment system, rather it is a new form of “digital age warfare”, arguing that proof-of-work technologies will change the way humans compete globally, according to Ben Schreckinger’s review in Politico.
Published in February, Lowery’s master’s thesis titled “Softwar” ranks third on Amazon’s list of best-seller technology books as of this writing. According to his Amazon bio, Lowery has a decade of experience “as a weapons systems developer and technical adviser to senior US officials,” including Bitcoin-related policy for the White House.
Lowery’s research argues that the US military could use Bitcoin to stop certain types of attacks, such as denial of service attacks, which overload servers with too many requests. The concept is to create software programs that only respond to signals from large transactions on the Bitcoin network. This would make it more difficult for attackers to flood servers with false signals and cause damage.
THESIS PUBLISHED!!!
Announcing the public debut of SOFTWAR, a theory presented to OPOTUS, OSECDEF, & the Joint Chiefs about the national strategic significance of #Bitcoin
LET THE HASH WARS BEGIN
High-quality physical copies available now: https://t.co/WaNo7y8avl pic.twitter.com/vWF24ze9EA
—Jason Lowery (@JasonPLowery) February 20, 2023
THESIS PUBLISHED!!!
Announcing the public debut of SOFTWAR, a theory presented to OPOTUS, OSECDEF, & the Joint Chiefs on the national strategic importance of #Bitcoin
LET THE HASH WAR BEGIN
High-quality physical copies now available
Lowery also suggests that the Bitcoin network is like maritime trade lanes, meaning it is suitable for economic exchange. Consequently, it is crucial to protect the freedom of navigation on the net, just as we protect trade routes.
By designing computer programs that only respond to external signals if they are accompanied by a large enough number of registered Bitcoin transactions on the network, Lowery argues that they would prevent adversaries from gaining control of them.
According to the author, The United States should also store Bitcoin, create a national Bitcoin mining industry, and extend legal protections to this technology. In his opinion, Bitcoin is a self-defense weapon, and the country should protect it as it does other rights.
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