What if #BITCOIN is more than a monetary protocol? What if it has implications that extend beyond its use as a Store of Value, and its use for inscriptions?

Major Jason Lowery of the US Space Force published a thesis two years ago that some of you who are new to X may have missed.

In the book, Jason points out that one of his favorite quotes is from General Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander of WW1 who said that "airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value whatsoever".

He also points out that the Chinese invented "black powder", but for centuries, they only saw it as medicine.

He uses these examples to show that humans are historically bad at recognizing how new technologies will forever change the arena of warfare. What if there are technologies today that we simply cannot see as being critical to national defense in the future?

He posits that Bitcoin is a cyber war fighting technology, and hardly anyone sees it. We are all being Ferdinand Foch by not being able to recognize this about Bitcoin.

Animals, including people, have always used physical power to secure our resources and defend our freedom of action on land, in the air, at sea, and even in outer space. We impose physically prohibitive costs on belligerent actors who would try to deny our access to one of these domains. Nations around the world all compete to ensure that control over these domains remains decentralized, beyond the control of any single nation.

If someone tries to deny our access to land, we use troops, guns, artillery, and tanks to secure our access to the land.

If someone tries to deny our access to the sea, we use submarines, destroyers, and battleships to secure our access to the sea.

If someone tries to deny our access to airspace, we use fighter jets, bombers and drones to secure our airspace.

We even have weapons in outer space to defend our access to space.

But what about the new, 5th domain of cyberspace? How do we protect our data which exists in this new domain? We use physical power to protect our access to every other domain. Why wouldn't we also use physical power to protect our cyber resources? For some inexplicable reason, when we try to secure our data in cyberspace, we tend to rely on encoded logic instead of physical power.

Computer scientists continue to act as if there is some magical combination of "if" "then" and "else" statements that will keep our cyber resources secure. It doesn't work very well. Cybercrime is the 3rd largest economy in the world behind the USA and China. Trying to secure encoded logic using nothing but encoded logic (think, Proof of Stake protocols) is a "demonstrably ineffective cybersecurity strategy".

To physically constrain bad guys in cyberspace, we have to physically constrain their computers. How?

By doing the opposite of what computer scientists have been doing for the last 80 years. Over the last 8 decades, chips have been getting smaller and smaller, to the point where we now have "microchips". The trend has been toward smaller, faster, cheaper and lighter computers that use less energy over time. All of this in the name of efficiency. The result is that computers nowadays are pretty easy and cheap to operate.

So, if you wanted to make a physically constrained computer, you would reverse optimize the prevailing design strategy. Instead of a microchip, you would use a "macrochip" and you'd have to "march in the opposite direction". Instead of energy efficiency, you would design for maximum energy expense. The circuitry that you would need to build the largest and most energy intensive computer in the world is already in place in the form of our global electric power grid. The grid is so powerful that no nation can power it on its own. You would have to use Boolean logic to convert watts into bits. Turns out we already have this. It's called Bitcoin.

"Bitcoin converts our global electric power grid into a giant, physically expensive computer and then uses it to secure data and messages passing through the internet. Bitcoin is special because it secures this data not by relying exclusively on encoded logic, but by tapping into the physical constraints of the power grid to physically constrain the bad guys trying to use it".

"Bitcoin also decentralizes control over this data by enabling people to compete in a global scale physical power competition for that control." This is what Max Keiser has termed "global hash wars". This is no different than nations competing to ensure that no single nation gains monopoly power over the domains of land, air, sea and space. "Bitcoin serves the same function as other war fighting technologies but takes a different form that we haven't seen before." Nations will engage in hashwars to ensure that no other nation has unilateral control over Bitcoin.

Lowery believes that we are at the dawn of a new era of digital power projection as humanity extends its influence into cyberspace. He thinks nations will rely on it to secure their cyberspace just like we use airplanes to secure our airspace.

Lowery is urging the Department of Defense to take notice because other nations will explore the domain of cyberspace whether the United States does or not. He points out that since the US has taken a somewhat harsh stance to Bitcoin and crypto assets, that our two biggest adversaries, Russia and China, have embraced it over the last two years. They are now the second and third largest players in crypto and he fears that they may have figured out Bitcoin's potential before the USA has.

Bitcoiners have a way of seeing what others cannot see. So, it is no wonder that Bitcoiners are the first people who have figured out how to project physical power in, from, and through cyberspace. It is our job to continue to educate the rest of the world about the importance of embracing Bitcoin.

The stakes are high. If the USA fails to recognize the strategic significance of #BITCOIN, then we are no different than the Chinese alchemists who failed to recognize the significance of black powder, or General Foch, who failed to see the significance of airplanes. We would fall behind in the domain of cyberspace which would put the nation and its citizens at risk.

No nation, especially the USA, can afford to "Foch" this up.