Softwar: A Review of the US Space Force Major’s Book on the Strategic Significance of Bitcoin

The digital era is changing public perceptions of power and what has real value. These transformations are explored by Maj. Jason Lowery of the US Space Force and an MIT researcher in the book Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection and the National Strategic Significance of Bitcoin.

The author examines the deep interconnections between nature and cyberspace. He contends that Bitcoin goes beyond the notion of a "cryptocurrency" and becomes a unique instrument of power projection in the digital realm thanks to the consensus algorithm Proof-of-Work (PoW).

Lowery’s 400-page work became a bestseller on Amazon, though it drew criticism from within the Bitcoin community, including Casa CTO Jameson Lopp.

In this article we briefly summarise the main theses of Softwar and present the notes directed at the book.

Key ideas

Every author of Bitcoin books describes it in their own way. Thus, “Mastering Bitcoin” by Andreas Antonopoulos focuses on the technical features of the first cryptocurrency, “Digital Gold” by Nathaniel Popper on its creation, and “The Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous — on the history of money more generally.

The uniqueness of Lowery’s work lies in his treating PoW as a continuation of biological life principles. He speaks of it as a constant struggle for resources, with its own benefits and costs.

The survivor is the one who can show that an attack on them would severely injure the attacker. This principle is called the projection of physical force.

War is a decentralising force that regulates property relations on our planet, with zero trust and without permission. These terms—zero-trust and permissionless—are central to Lowery’s book. The author uses them to build a logical chain from descriptions of military action to Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work.

Lowery is convinced that the projection of force can include not only kinetic energy based on mass but also electrical energy. In both cases the same rules of the game and the laws of physics apply. The difference is only how that energy was obtained.

He explains that through Bitcoin people have obtained a new form of property and effectively shifted warfare from kinetic to electrical:

“Einstein suggested that mass can be swapped with energy. If he is right, it may one day be possible for countries to replace some of their mass-based (i.e. kinetic) defense systems with energy-based (i.e. non-kinetic) ones to address tasks related to physical security and national defence.”

The author also cites the works of Nikola Tesla, who foresaw the advent of nuclear weapons—the limit (kinetic ceiling) of wars—within humanity’s development.

Among Tesla’s other predictions is some electrical competition between nations where global order is determined, among other factors, by energy.

“In 1900 Tesla predicted that intelligent machines would perhaps compete with one another in an energy race, while humans would observe the proceedings from the side.”

Lowery concludes that using electrical energy in PoW is equivalent to waging war with kinetic energy.

The first cryptocurrency will not end war: we will need a kinetic projection of power to stake a claim to physical resources. Yet Bitcoin already creates globally neutral digital money, dematerialising the kinetic game of “backing” fiat currencies with armed forces.

The author emphasises: Bitcoin is not only money. Lowery compares the first cryptocurrency to black powder, whose weaponisation was initially overlooked.

He suggests that a future alternative Internet will emerge that uses PoW to ensure data authenticity. But how Bitcoin would operate in this alternative global network, and what the economic incentives for its adoption would be, is not explained by Lowery.

Criticism

The Bitcoin community has greeted Softwar with ambivalence. While many welcomed the idea of the global strategic importance of digital gold, some cryptocurrency users saw in the book an endorsement of militarism.

Critics also noted that the author ignores many technical aspects of the Bitcoin protocol, focusing on the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm.

A detailed analysis of Softwar was published by Jameson Lopp, Chief Technology Officer of Casa. In his view, Softwar appears persuasive thanks to a faithful explanation of PoW, but contains no practicable use-case for the theory.

“Lowery is right that Bitcoin is not strictly a monetary technology, but creates a new game theory. He [Lowery] correctly analyses part of this game theory, but does not explain how it can be applied to data unrelated to Bitcoin.”

noted Lopp.

Moreover, Softwar’s author repeatedly says humanity needs a way to protect data in cyberspace, but offers no concrete implementation ideas.

The host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, Peter McCormack, asked Lowery to give examples of such methods, but the only thing he could offer was verification and recording of data in the Bitcoin blockchain.