1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,200 All right. Yes, we're good to go. So today we're going to talk about the first chapter of Jason 2 00:00:07,200 --> 00:00:12,980 Lowry's software thesis. So we don't have the book here. We're just reading a PDF that's floating 3 00:00:12,980 --> 00:00:16,940 around the internet. I don't know. There's a hard, there's like a hardcover book or softcover. 4 00:00:17,260 --> 00:00:22,780 I don't know if that's the exact text of the thesis, but I assume if not, it tracks very 5 00:00:22,780 --> 00:00:29,420 closely. And the actual book is going for like thousands of dollars on Amazon. So we're not 6 00:00:29,420 --> 00:00:34,920 going to actually have the book we just have the pdf here um and so we're going to do the first 7 00:00:34,920 --> 00:00:39,780 chapter which the first chapter it begins with executive summary and the first chapter is 8 00:00:39,780 --> 00:00:47,140 essentially that as well it's like a summary of the thesis of what software is um why he's doing 9 00:00:47,140 --> 00:00:53,360 what like what is the background that led him to this why he thinks this is important that type of 10 00:00:53,360 --> 00:00:58,600 thing it kind of lays out the progression of the rest of the thesis which is like 400 pages pdf 11 00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:01,320 and 40 pages in the first chapter here. 12 00:01:01,900 --> 00:01:04,420 So we could just start with the executive summary 13 00:01:04,420 --> 00:01:05,980 and then move on to the first chapter. 14 00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:07,420 The executive summary is like a page, 15 00:01:07,500 --> 00:01:10,620 and then the first chapter is basically the executive summary reset. 16 00:01:12,440 --> 00:01:15,000 And he has kind of, throughout the thesis, 17 00:01:15,540 --> 00:01:19,400 illustrations to illustrate what illustrations do, 18 00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:20,940 kind of what he's talking about. 19 00:01:21,720 --> 00:01:25,320 And so the most maybe canonical illustration 20 00:01:25,320 --> 00:01:27,840 is there's these different domains of warfare. 21 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:30,940 There's different thoroughfares that militaries are used to control. 22 00:01:31,460 --> 00:01:34,280 Land, sea, air, recently space. 23 00:01:34,860 --> 00:01:36,400 And there's another one, cyberspace. 24 00:01:36,880 --> 00:01:44,760 So softwar, basically, this book is going to be about controlling how do you project physical power into cyberspace. 25 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:47,120 Land, sea, air, and space. 26 00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:50,360 These are obviously realms where you can have kinetic warfare. 27 00:01:50,660 --> 00:01:56,520 You can move mass and use that mass to secure physical property. 28 00:01:56,520 --> 00:02:01,280 Basically, that's what a military does, and as Jason Lowery is going to describe it here. 29 00:02:01,820 --> 00:02:11,580 So this book is about how Bitcoin, but more loosely speaking, or more specifically speaking, proof of work can be used to secure cyberspace. 30 00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:15,940 That is what soft war as opposed to hard war is going to be. 31 00:02:15,940 --> 00:02:24,940 so that's kind of i think the executive summary to just generally lay out that we can have this 32 00:02:24,940 --> 00:02:29,840 operation this theater of warfare this thoroughfare we're trying to control which is cyberspace and 33 00:02:29,840 --> 00:02:36,380 we have a way to operate and do war within that realm which is soft war and that's going to be 34 00:02:36,380 --> 00:02:42,640 done by the aspect of bitcoin that is proof of work which is going to allow kind of physical 35 00:02:42,640 --> 00:02:49,660 power projection in cyberspace as a really general executive summary does that sound right to you 36 00:02:49,660 --> 00:02:57,780 lucas that's what this is about yeah i think again to restate you've got the progression of 37 00:02:57,780 --> 00:03:07,120 the domains of warfare um land air or sorry land land sea airspace cyberspace um you've got the 38 00:03:07,120 --> 00:03:16,540 kind of the novel, um, novel engagement, the novel power projection, uh, tactic of what a 39 00:03:16,540 --> 00:03:24,100 cyberspace, um, cyberspace domain would look like for engagement of, uh, power competition, 40 00:03:24,100 --> 00:03:30,900 which would be the utilization of proof of work, um, which I'm sure we'll get more into, but, 41 00:03:30,900 --> 00:03:47,820 effectively using power instead of logic, which is a novel approach and appears over the last 16 years to be working or 15 years to be working. 42 00:03:48,980 --> 00:03:59,660 So, yeah, I think other than that, and then I guess, you know, finally, the kind of the point of the thesis, I guess, his recommendation. 43 00:03:59,660 --> 00:04:09,920 would be that the United States needs to immediately adopt Bitcoin as a power projection tactic 44 00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:18,160 to as a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which incidentally, there's a bill that just went 45 00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:26,300 into the Senate now sponsored by Cynthia Lummis that does just that, which would be the purchase 46 00:04:26,300 --> 00:04:29,500 of a million Bitcoin over the next four or five years. 47 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:30,000 Right. 48 00:04:30,660 --> 00:04:36,760 So we can advocate that specific adoption of a strategic reserve or barring that adoption 49 00:04:36,760 --> 00:04:38,420 by the people of Bitcoin. 50 00:04:38,420 --> 00:04:41,120 And so we have land. 51 00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:42,680 That's the military. 52 00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:43,520 That's the army. 53 00:04:43,680 --> 00:04:44,160 We have the sea. 54 00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:44,700 That's the Navy. 55 00:04:44,840 --> 00:04:45,280 We have the air. 56 00:04:45,500 --> 00:04:46,420 That's the air force. 57 00:04:46,500 --> 00:04:47,080 You have the space. 58 00:04:47,160 --> 00:04:48,080 That's a space force. 59 00:04:48,400 --> 00:04:49,680 We have cyberspace. 60 00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:53,180 And that's going to be Bitcoin, going to be proof of work protocol. 61 00:04:53,260 --> 00:04:56,160 But also in the picture, I just wanted to mention, there's actually the picture of the 62 00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:00,860 ASIC application specific integrated circuit that is used to mine the Bitcoin. 63 00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:05,220 So there is like a physical infrastructure and there would need to be a concomitant maybe 64 00:05:05,220 --> 00:05:11,420 like, I mean, maybe that's the, that is the strategic national reserve is the, that's 65 00:05:11,420 --> 00:05:16,420 the analog to the military or I'm sorry, to the army or to the Navy or to the air force. 66 00:05:16,420 --> 00:05:21,780 Like in cyberspace, the strategic national reserve is the analog arm of the military. 67 00:05:22,060 --> 00:05:23,100 I don't know. 68 00:05:23,100 --> 00:05:31,020 Do you think there's more that's going to be advocated there or is logical to – should there be a cyber force? 69 00:05:31,100 --> 00:05:32,180 Or maybe there is a cyber force. 70 00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:32,520 I don't know. 71 00:05:32,580 --> 00:05:33,260 That would make sense. 72 00:05:34,540 --> 00:05:37,180 Yeah, I'm sure there is. 73 00:05:37,320 --> 00:05:41,100 But, yeah, that would be the logical next step would be the cyber army. 74 00:05:41,300 --> 00:05:51,420 I think maybe the way I would think about the miners, the ASICs, would be kind of the delivery mechanism of the power projection technology. 75 00:05:51,420 --> 00:06:11,500 So you've got the bullet and the delivery mechanism is the gun or actually the power projection technology would be the gunpowder and the delivery mechanism would be the bullet. 76 00:06:12,420 --> 00:06:15,920 So that's, I think, probably how maybe I would think about that. 77 00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:22,120 And I do think that that is that would probably be such a vital thing. 78 00:06:22,380 --> 00:06:23,620 We talk about Bitcoin. 79 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:25,380 Everybody talks about Bitcoin. 80 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:27,700 Kind of like everybody talks about Bitcoin. 81 00:06:27,820 --> 00:06:28,940 Nobody talks about mining. 82 00:06:29,060 --> 00:06:35,060 But I think what what the recommendation here would be that that's probably the most overlooked thing. 83 00:06:35,060 --> 00:06:44,600 And that would be the most important thing would be not just to own it, but to actively compete in order to own more of it. 84 00:06:44,640 --> 00:06:44,980 Yeah. 85 00:06:45,220 --> 00:06:47,920 In this, you know, in this power projection. 86 00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:48,580 Right. 87 00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:50,700 Global competition. 88 00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:55,640 Chapter one, I think, starts, it validates that in the way that it starts. 89 00:06:55,640 --> 00:07:02,860 It starts with a section called inspiration and begins with a quote from or the observation from Einstein, the theory or whatever, that mass is energy. 90 00:07:02,860 --> 00:07:27,420 And so if mass is used by the Air Force, the Navy, the Army as a way to project power and secure control of some sort of property to protect our nation, to protect a nation, energy, if energy is equivalent to mass, then energy perhaps can be a substitute for the use of mass as a way to project power. 91 00:07:27,420 --> 00:07:42,480 In cyberspace, that makes a lot of sense. And as you were saying, the ASIC to secure the Bitcoin network through the proof of work protocol, proof of work aspect of Bitcoin does use energy for that specific purpose. 92 00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:53,580 And so mass is energy. Energy then is a way to project power in the same way that mass is energy in the cyberspace realm through the proof of work protocol. 93 00:07:54,020 --> 00:08:07,200 That is the way that perhaps power can be projected and property rights can be secured as a sort of surrogate to the type of kinetic or violent warfare that we usually have. 94 00:08:07,200 --> 00:08:09,100 That's kind of how I think this gets off. 95 00:08:09,100 --> 00:08:23,640 Yeah, this is so far, this is probably the favorite thing that I've read regarding Bitcoin in the last four years is the first couple paragraphs of this because talks about. 96 00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:51,000 So like this is this is not necessarily a novel concept from Jason Lowry. Tesla hypothesized that Tesla hypothesized that society would develop such destructive kinetic power that they would eventually start using human out of the loop energy delivery competitions, which if you maybe step back and squint your eyes a little bit, that's I don't even know if you have to squint your eyes. 97 00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:54,480 That's kind of exactly what Bitcoin mining is. 98 00:08:55,720 --> 00:09:08,920 And then the other thing, which is by far my favorite, because you expect something like that out of Tesla, you know, brilliant, brilliant theorist that he was and doer and and everything. 99 00:09:09,060 --> 00:09:10,400 You kind of expect that out of him. 100 00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:17,640 But then the thing that really struck me and I kind of went down this rabbit hole a bit was Henry Ford. 101 00:09:17,640 --> 00:09:32,280 Henry Ford at the same basically the same time 20 years later was trying to create a currency based on electricity that could not be centralized. 102 00:09:32,280 --> 00:09:42,220 um claiming that the problem like gold was the root of all wars because um due to some of the 103 00:09:42,220 --> 00:09:48,640 faults of gold as a currency um basically that it's it's so heavy and you can't really move it 104 00:09:48,640 --> 00:09:53,500 around easily and that it needs to be guarded and so it's a bearer instrument obviously if you hold 105 00:09:53,500 --> 00:09:59,900 it it's yours um it's hard to verify like all of those things um due to all of those shortcomings 106 00:09:59,900 --> 00:10:05,720 the natural tendency for gold is that it is hoarded and that it is centralized. 107 00:10:06,260 --> 00:10:18,980 And by doing that, you end up with competitions that when you hoard something that is what's called dead money. 108 00:10:19,720 --> 00:10:22,760 So it's just, it's potential energy. 109 00:10:23,160 --> 00:10:28,320 It's, you know, it's a representation of the energy that it took in order to mine that gold. 110 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:49,820 But it's not actually the energy. And the, you know, Bitcoin is actually a live energy competition that is continuously proving the ability to deliver power on behalf of the competitors. 111 00:10:49,820 --> 00:11:14,040 And I went and looked this up. I found the newspaper article that this was quoting where he talks about it. Henry Ford bought a unfinished dam and he was planning on finishing it at a cost of $30 million in order to create this electric currency that could not be centralized. 112 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:20,300 That would be and he's very, very keen to say that it could not be centralized. 113 00:11:20,300 --> 00:11:27,840 And I think that hinges really, again, on one of the things that is root to Bitcoin, which is that it's decentralized. 114 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:34,620 And just one one final last thing is that there is the quote from Tesla in here where he's talking about this. 115 00:11:34,620 --> 00:11:43,320 But my favorite quote about Tesla is if you want to understand the world, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. 116 00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:57,020 And I'm not quite sure how vibration fits in, but energy and frequency, you know, Bitcoin is this energy competition and frequency is the types of things that we have used for money. 117 00:11:57,020 --> 00:12:07,380 They are merely, you know, everything, everything that is matter is merely the same root molecules, I guess, vibrating at different frequencies. 118 00:12:08,300 --> 00:12:13,220 And so they all stand to represent some sort of energy. 119 00:12:13,580 --> 00:12:13,600 Yeah. 120 00:12:13,780 --> 00:12:15,080 It's very, very prescient. 121 00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:17,140 And I think interesting to think about that. 122 00:12:17,140 --> 00:12:17,660 No, definitely. 123 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:21,640 And you're right, Lowry does mention those two specific kind of proto thinkers. 124 00:12:22,260 --> 00:12:28,080 People have this kind of prototype thinking on energy as a way to get around mass-based 125 00:12:28,080 --> 00:12:30,100 or kinetic or violent warfare. 126 00:12:30,660 --> 00:12:34,040 So, I mean, that's an important part that's going to go into, like kinetic or mass-based 127 00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:39,140 warfare is that violent warfare where we go out and kill our brothers we draw blood we have tanks 128 00:12:39,140 --> 00:12:44,820 we shoot things at each other and it results in death and dying and um copious amounts of violence 129 00:12:44,820 --> 00:12:49,700 whereas electronic warfare as the quote from tesla as you mentioned luke is like that one 130 00:12:49,700 --> 00:12:54,880 it's about like how can we have human out of the loop warfare where we can replace mass-based 131 00:12:54,880 --> 00:13:01,220 warfare with kind of energy delivery competitions and then as you mentioned uh henry ford also 132 00:13:01,220 --> 00:13:07,700 mentioned a different aspect of electronic, of an electronic type of obviation of warfare 133 00:13:07,700 --> 00:13:13,740 would be that if our money was electronic in the sense that, as Bitcoin is, but in a 134 00:13:13,740 --> 00:13:18,800 way that it was not manipulable by a central bank or anybody else, then you wouldn't, that 135 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:19,720 wouldn't lead to war. 136 00:13:19,920 --> 00:13:24,240 So that's kind of the inspiration as Lowry has it in the first part. 137 00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:38,040 But then he kind of goes on to talk about justifying why he's writing a thesis and why does he need to ring the bell as he's kind of like a Paul Revere type character. 138 00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:42,900 Why does he need to go out and tell people that Bitcoin is not just money? 139 00:13:43,120 --> 00:13:45,380 It's also a type of defense system. 140 00:13:45,380 --> 00:14:06,800 And he has some historical examples of why soft warfighting technology, that is the replacement of mass or kinetic warfare with electronic non-kinetic warfare, might not be recognized at first as a valid substitute for warfare or a valid type of warfighting technology. 141 00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:20,160 And he has these historical examples of the most striking one is the invention of like the Chinese alchemist, the ninth century invent gunpowder and they deem it medicine. 142 00:14:20,980 --> 00:14:29,060 And so for a while, they're stuck with that notion of gunpowder as medicine without making the leap that it could also be used as a warfighting technology. 143 00:14:29,060 --> 00:14:36,040 and he has these other historic examples of failing to acknowledge that some sort of advance 144 00:14:36,040 --> 00:14:42,900 was going to be necessary for fighting war and i think what emerges from that is not just that oh 145 00:14:42,900 --> 00:14:48,540 you know boo boo we didn't notice that but that you you know when you don't notice that you lose 146 00:14:48,540 --> 00:14:53,840 the nation loses and they're conquered and you also not just you know there's a failure to notice 147 00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:59,360 sometimes. There's also like this hubris of we're not going to fight wars that way. And we're going 148 00:14:59,360 --> 00:15:04,520 to just not like the last war wasn't fought that way. So the next one will not be. And the nation 149 00:15:04,520 --> 00:15:09,520 that adopts that attitude towards potentially emerging technologies, perhaps like Bitcoin or 150 00:15:09,520 --> 00:15:16,420 proof of work is also going to simply be defeated. Yeah. So two things I want to talk about there. 151 00:15:16,420 --> 00:15:46,179 So first is the like it wasn just a matter of a couple couple weeks or a couple months right that black powder was not recognized for its capacity to produce power and deliver it as a power projection technology It was like literally centuries And so these things can go unnoticed by the best minds who are merely not able to see the 152 00:15:46,179 --> 00:15:47,979 thing that's in front of their own face. 153 00:15:49,359 --> 00:15:57,419 But one of the things I want to go back to, which I think is the most fascinating thought 154 00:15:57,419 --> 00:16:02,019 that I've had the last couple of days about this, which is the idea of dead money versus live money. 155 00:16:02,759 --> 00:16:08,859 So if you think about the types of money that we've had in the past, which is, you know, 156 00:16:09,059 --> 00:16:14,459 the cows and the salt and the tobacco and the gold and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 157 00:16:14,459 --> 00:16:26,599 They're all representations. They're all proxies. They're all stand-ins for energy. So gold is a 158 00:16:26,599 --> 00:16:34,359 valuable, not just because it's gold, but because of the energy that it takes to get that. I could 159 00:16:34,359 --> 00:16:40,939 go get that gold on my own, but it would take X amount of energy. The salt is valuable because it 160 00:16:40,939 --> 00:16:47,459 allows you to save the energy that you would otherwise be spending replacing the meat that 161 00:16:47,459 --> 00:16:57,939 would rot without the salt. And so these are types of money that must be effectively kind of like 162 00:16:57,939 --> 00:17:05,959 consumed in order to be used or in order to realize their potential. And therefore, again, their 163 00:17:05,959 --> 00:17:15,939 natural tendency is to be hoarded and stored and kept. And what's unique about the proof of work 164 00:17:15,939 --> 00:17:26,379 system is that it's live. It's a nonstop, constant, never ending competition of energy. 165 00:17:26,379 --> 00:17:36,079 And so if you think about over the course of human civilization, if you want to chart the 166 00:17:36,079 --> 00:17:44,519 quality of the average human life and the, you know, the way that we've progressed and been able 167 00:17:44,519 --> 00:17:51,859 to protect ourselves from certain things and have certain luxuries, etc., is that you can 168 00:17:51,859 --> 00:17:59,439 basically chart that step for step with an increase in the amount of energy consumed per 169 00:17:59,439 --> 00:18:07,679 capita. And since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, you can also think of the amount of 170 00:18:07,679 --> 00:18:15,579 energy consumed as the amount of energy captured, where we live in a world of potential energy, 171 00:18:16,019 --> 00:18:22,819 and we're only able to capture and bottle and then direct a certain amount of it. 172 00:18:22,819 --> 00:18:29,459 And not only that, I think the capture part is the most specifically important part for 173 00:18:29,459 --> 00:18:33,539 Lowry's thesis. The capture is, how do we defend that money once we have the money? 174 00:18:33,539 --> 00:18:40,679 um like so bitcoin overlaps with money it's only incidentally money on lowry's framework it's not 175 00:18:40,679 --> 00:18:45,539 that like energy necessarily is money there's always probably going to be a value to it because 176 00:18:45,539 --> 00:18:50,379 it's valuable for us to defend ourselves but bitcoin has this ability to prevent its own 177 00:18:50,379 --> 00:18:56,819 capture the cow the gold those things require defense by separate kinetic arms we have to have 178 00:18:56,819 --> 00:19:01,219 the army the the you have to have the army the navy all these things to defend our property 179 00:19:01,219 --> 00:19:07,479 Bitcoin, the proof of work aspect of that is a self-defense, is a defensive aspect of it. And 180 00:19:07,479 --> 00:19:12,579 that's really what Lowry's thesis expands upon is that this not just isn't money, but it's something 181 00:19:12,579 --> 00:19:18,999 that defends itself and it is a defense mechanism. And so I think that anti-capture aspect of Bitcoin 182 00:19:18,999 --> 00:19:25,939 is like absolutely key for at least Lowry's thesis here. Yeah. Just to finish that thought too, 183 00:19:25,939 --> 00:19:33,919 which is that if we are going to be engaging in a continual nonstop competition of who can deliver 184 00:19:33,919 --> 00:19:42,159 the most energy, which also is going to be a competition of who can capture the most energy 185 00:19:42,159 --> 00:19:50,839 or extract the most potential energy. And we know that human quality of life increases step by step 186 00:19:50,839 --> 00:19:55,459 with the amount of energy that we are as a society able to capture, 187 00:19:55,739 --> 00:19:59,519 then what we have is this aligned incentives. 188 00:19:59,779 --> 00:20:07,079 And that to me has always been probably the most joyful philosophical thought about Bitcoin, 189 00:20:07,079 --> 00:20:13,559 which is that it creates aligned incentives for people to move in the same common direction. 190 00:20:13,859 --> 00:20:20,219 So anyone who engages in this global power projection tactic in this continual competition, 191 00:20:20,219 --> 00:20:41,179 is going to find themselves seeking and sourcing additional power, power that will be accretive to human society and that will raise the level of the world around us. 192 00:20:41,179 --> 00:20:52,679 And so I think where he looks, you know, we're looking backward, kind of thinking about this and talking about, you know, what these things are when they're not recognized immediately. 193 00:20:53,799 --> 00:20:59,619 But yeah, the looking forward of, you know, what potentially can this lead to? 194 00:20:59,819 --> 00:21:09,279 What I think it leads to is a global aligned incentive for nation states to do better by their citizens. 195 00:21:09,279 --> 00:21:23,839 And the last thing I wanted to say is just to to add a little put a little put a little dressing on what you had mentioned, which is the thing where we always seem to overlook what things are when they come out. 196 00:21:23,939 --> 00:21:25,799 And here's just a couple of quotes. 197 00:21:26,659 --> 00:21:31,279 1993, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, quoted the Internet. 198 00:21:31,499 --> 00:21:32,999 We are not interested in it. 199 00:21:33,699 --> 00:21:36,419 That turned out to not be very accurate. 200 00:21:36,419 --> 00:21:56,179 The co-founder of Warner Brothers in 1933 on hearing that talking movies were coming out said, who the hell wants to hear actors talk? Western Union in an internal memo in 1876 said that the telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. 201 00:21:56,179 --> 00:21:59,199 and it has inherently no value to us. 202 00:21:59,999 --> 00:22:04,559 Thomas Edison said that fooling around with alternating current, 203 00:22:04,679 --> 00:22:08,979 which is the type of electricity we all use, is a waste of time. 204 00:22:09,379 --> 00:22:10,959 No one will use it ever. 205 00:22:10,959 --> 00:22:17,259 I mean, it's just what I'm, you know, there's just a litany of these 206 00:22:17,259 --> 00:22:21,299 where every single new technology is always misunderstood 207 00:22:21,299 --> 00:22:24,139 by the experts in that domain. 208 00:22:24,139 --> 00:22:39,519 And I think that's what he's really, Lowry's really trying to scream at the top of his lungs, saying, because you are in the position that you are as an expert of such and such domain, you are the most likely probably to not recognize this thing. 209 00:22:39,519 --> 00:22:47,819 Not only that, but like in the domain of warfighting, that's actually a very kind of even more blind spot for many people. 210 00:22:47,819 --> 00:22:54,719 And he gives four specific reasons why emerging warfighting technologies are overlooked even more than other types of emerging technologies. 211 00:22:55,219 --> 00:22:58,619 One is the lack of general knowledge about the profession of warfighting. 212 00:22:59,039 --> 00:23:00,599 Like not every one of us is a soldier. 213 00:23:00,759 --> 00:23:03,819 Not every one of us is consumed day to day with how to defend the country. 214 00:23:03,939 --> 00:23:04,439 That's one. 215 00:23:04,939 --> 00:23:06,259 Two, analytical bias. 216 00:23:06,259 --> 00:23:15,679 That's the idea, again, going back, that once we have a technology, gunpowder, we call it medicine, and then it becomes lodged conceptually in our mind as medicine. 217 00:23:15,799 --> 00:23:16,919 So we have that analytical bias. 218 00:23:16,999 --> 00:23:17,459 That's two. 219 00:23:18,279 --> 00:23:19,679 Three, pacifism. 220 00:23:20,279 --> 00:23:21,719 That's kind of – we all know what that is. 221 00:23:21,719 --> 00:23:34,579 People just have moral, ethical, ideological objections to warfare, which impedes a lot of us from really thinking deeply about introducing something new as helping us fight wars because we kind of have this pacifist tendency. 222 00:23:34,579 --> 00:23:40,579 and then cognitive dissonance that we just like it's tough for us to admit we're wrong sometimes 223 00:23:40,579 --> 00:23:45,439 we have we build this huge military based on kinetic warfare and all of a sudden they're 224 00:23:45,439 --> 00:23:49,679 telling us we have to fight a new type of war software so there's like the lack of general 225 00:23:49,679 --> 00:23:56,479 knowledge about war fighting pacifism analytical bias and cognitive dissonance and of those he also 226 00:23:56,479 --> 00:24:02,619 kind of generally talks about a camp or the the pacifist and lack of knowledge as being a result 227 00:24:02,619 --> 00:24:06,659 of our self-domestication, which is a really interesting idea he's going to expand upon 228 00:24:06,659 --> 00:24:07,339 later in the book. 229 00:24:07,439 --> 00:24:11,639 So it bears mentioning that we are animals. 230 00:24:11,859 --> 00:24:16,679 A domesticated animal is an animal that has not had to fight for its life and so loses 231 00:24:16,679 --> 00:24:21,579 the ability to fight for its life and to recognize that fighting is necessary at all times to 232 00:24:21,579 --> 00:24:25,199 preserve its right to preserve its access to resources. 233 00:24:25,579 --> 00:24:30,159 So comfort and complacency lead us to forget the importance of projecting power. 234 00:24:30,159 --> 00:24:52,679 And so what he's going to do in this thesis, again, he's talking about justifying the thesis is raise awareness and education and then talk about proof of work as enabling users to keep cyber resources secure and as a way that is able to do this by harnessing energy instead of relying on logical encoded constraints and opposing instead physical costs. 235 00:24:52,679 --> 00:24:57,999 and from there in the next section he goes into actually kind of the the background which this is 236 00:24:57,999 --> 00:25:02,619 a super interesting part of this because what software represents there's so many and i mean 237 00:25:02,619 --> 00:25:07,639 larry says it specifically there's so many like avenues of looking at bitcoin from the monetary 238 00:25:07,639 --> 00:25:12,719 the financial the economic perspective he's looking at it from the aspect of military theory 239 00:25:12,719 --> 00:25:18,579 and he starts off with klausowitz to give the reader who's probably uninitiated in modern 240 00:25:18,579 --> 00:25:23,619 military theory, a kind of a primer on what military theory consists of. 241 00:25:24,259 --> 00:25:30,859 And in Clausewitz's estimation, he says that it has three characteristics, that war is composed 242 00:25:30,859 --> 00:25:33,979 of blind natural forces and is primordial. 243 00:25:34,199 --> 00:25:39,399 We have been fighting wars since we were animals, and animals fight wars as well. 244 00:25:39,459 --> 00:25:40,079 It's that basic. 245 00:25:40,659 --> 00:25:46,479 And two, it involves chance and probability and requires creative spirits, requires continual 246 00:25:46,479 --> 00:25:47,819 creative endeavor to fight it. 247 00:25:47,819 --> 00:26:08,499 And three, that it is an instrument of national policy to resolve political disputes. That's kind of what we most naively think it is. But it's also something we share with the animals. And it's also this creative endeavor that involves chance and probability. So that's kind of the really basic military theory background that's going to underlie this. 248 00:26:08,499 --> 00:26:20,079 Yeah, I think pacifism is something to think about because it's probably, at least by me, it was very misunderstood or kind of glazed over. 249 00:26:20,079 --> 00:26:34,079 But the idea that battle or war is just not something that you would ever consider, I think is inherently false. 250 00:26:34,079 --> 00:26:41,419 it's just that we have not been able or not only sorry not only do i think that it's inherently 251 00:26:41,419 --> 00:26:49,939 false i think that um you know these competitions if you look at what war is as he defines it which 252 00:26:49,939 --> 00:26:53,899 is you know a projection of power and a competition to see who can do that best 253 00:26:53,899 --> 00:27:05,639 it is the most fair, the most meritocratic. It is the least, it really is in the end, 254 00:27:05,899 --> 00:27:09,999 probably the least messy. And if you look at the history of war fighting, 255 00:27:09,999 --> 00:27:19,259 we have continually made it less and less messy where, you know, it began with two guys just 256 00:27:19,259 --> 00:27:26,039 beating each other to death with rocks and sticks. And that's a pretty brutal thing. And now, 257 00:27:26,519 --> 00:27:32,799 you know, I know that this, it's like a very morbid thing to consider. But the way that people 258 00:27:32,799 --> 00:27:44,619 typically are, die in wars today is actually more humane than they did 500 years ago, 259 00:27:44,619 --> 00:27:54,099 a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago. And if we are able to move power projection 260 00:27:54,099 --> 00:28:02,879 competitions to a cyber domain, then I think what we will have realized is that pacifism is 261 00:28:02,879 --> 00:28:13,919 inherently a poor framework to consider how to distribute resources and how to resolve conflict, 262 00:28:13,919 --> 00:28:23,479 I guess resolve conflict is probably it. But also it will be that we've kind of reached the apex of what warfighting is in the most humane manner. 263 00:28:23,479 --> 00:28:46,559 Yeah, no, and pacifism is not only, it's even, pacifism is unethical in Lowry's estimation, because it blinds us to the things we need in order to actually preserve ourselves, our access to resources. So he's definitely hard on that. And it's very interesting, like, he focuses a lot on the benefits of warfighting. 264 00:28:46,559 --> 00:28:48,819 and you mentioned 265 00:28:48,819 --> 00:28:49,799 Lucas this 266 00:28:49,799 --> 00:28:50,879 and a bit earlier 267 00:28:50,879 --> 00:28:52,459 that like focusing on 268 00:28:52,459 --> 00:28:54,139 the like once you go down 269 00:28:54,139 --> 00:28:55,199 the route of proof of work 270 00:28:55,199 --> 00:28:55,599 in Bitcoin 271 00:28:55,599 --> 00:28:56,459 it kind of leads 272 00:28:56,459 --> 00:28:57,399 to further innovation 273 00:28:57,399 --> 00:29:00,359 but I think this is the part 274 00:29:00,359 --> 00:29:02,099 that stuck out to me a bit 275 00:29:02,099 --> 00:29:03,319 is that he talks about 276 00:29:03,319 --> 00:29:04,599 there's kind of two ways 277 00:29:04,599 --> 00:29:06,459 to preserve peace 278 00:29:06,459 --> 00:29:07,799 one is the rule of law 279 00:29:07,799 --> 00:29:08,799 and the other is war 280 00:29:08,799 --> 00:29:10,199 and we tend 281 00:29:10,199 --> 00:29:11,999 and good liberal citizens 282 00:29:11,999 --> 00:29:12,579 that we are 283 00:29:12,579 --> 00:29:13,659 in a democracy 284 00:29:13,659 --> 00:29:15,119 to think that the rule of law 285 00:29:15,119 --> 00:29:15,719 is king 286 00:29:15,719 --> 00:29:31,279 But the rule of law is preserved because we fought for it. And not only that, but the rule of law has issues. It's inegalitarian. There's a ruling class over the ruled. It's trust-based. It requires people to trust that the law is going to be executed correctly. 287 00:29:31,279 --> 00:29:38,559 it's vulnerable to systemic abuse because people can manipulate the law and you can write your law 288 00:29:38,559 --> 00:29:43,779 into the code essentially if you have control it's also susceptible to invasion from the outside 289 00:29:43,779 --> 00:29:49,659 people who are not going to accept your rule of law whereas on the other hand war is egalitarian 290 00:29:49,659 --> 00:29:54,639 the king and the peasant are both equally subject to violence it's zero trust you don't have to have 291 00:29:54,639 --> 00:30:00,559 any trust for a tank to work in crushing the enemy or crushing the other side and securing access to 292 00:30:00,559 --> 00:30:06,239 resources and it's neutral it doesn't really care about your belief system a rule of law can be 293 00:30:06,239 --> 00:30:12,499 co-opted by a viral wave of marxist thought or something like that whereas war you know we're all 294 00:30:12,499 --> 00:30:17,739 equal before it and it's not going to be co-opted it's a competition of power projected physical 295 00:30:17,739 --> 00:30:24,359 energy uh or kinetic energy like the kinetic or the non-kinetic the energy mass or energy 296 00:30:24,359 --> 00:30:32,239 so he focuses on you know we want us to acknowledge that that wars do have benefits because 297 00:30:32,239 --> 00:30:39,039 proof of work is going to be kind of a perpetual electronic warfare i think and so we want to see 298 00:30:39,039 --> 00:30:45,699 the benefit of having wars in that they can like reset corrupt rule of law systems wars are 299 00:30:45,699 --> 00:30:51,199 meritocratic they don't depend on what you believe or don't believe it's egalitarian everyone has 300 00:30:51,199 --> 00:30:56,299 access to it. It's decisive and easy to audit the victor who knows who has access to the resources. 301 00:30:56,299 --> 00:31:03,099 It has proven efficacy. We have nation states today because they were carved out through 302 00:31:03,099 --> 00:31:18,237 violent conflict And we have distributed property in people possession now because war has done that and so has actually provided a sort of protocol to prove the ownership and access to resources in addition to accelerating technology 303 00:31:18,237 --> 00:31:36,277 Yeah. So the main thing we go back to again is proof of work and how it changes the playing field for competition from logic to power. 304 00:31:36,277 --> 00:31:56,057 And you can say a lot about power in the way that you could use it could be not ethical, but power itself is not subject to any sort of ethical dilemma or it is not subject to being corrupted. 305 00:31:56,057 --> 00:32:04,057 Um, but when you think about logic, so again, you want to look at, um, the court system, 306 00:32:04,178 --> 00:32:10,358 obviously like there's ways to, um, you have laws, uh, what, whatever the saying, I think 307 00:32:10,358 --> 00:32:11,617 you've, you've said it before. 308 00:32:12,117 --> 00:32:18,338 Um, or I can't remember for, for my friends, everything for my enemies, the, the law or 309 00:32:18,338 --> 00:32:19,138 something like that. 310 00:32:19,138 --> 00:32:46,318 But logic is easily corrupted. Logic is what software is in almost every instance other than Bitcoin. And that software is continuously being corrupted by actors that are seeking to find the security holes and the ways that they can corrupt it through that way. 311 00:32:46,318 --> 00:33:05,838 And societies are continuously corrupted by people who look into that society and they have a different outcome in mind that is not cohesive with what the group dynamic would be. 312 00:33:05,838 --> 00:33:26,098 And you can go into a group and making a series of plays, you can disrupt that society, which is, you know, it's faulty logic that you would assume that people in a society all want the society to get along. 313 00:33:26,098 --> 00:33:52,998 And they want it to do better and they want it to do well, but you can very easily have actors within a group that choose to, you know, just watch the world burn. And that's not something that's possible within a power competition. So yeah, he does a fantastic job of framing that and talking about what the innovation is there. 314 00:33:52,998 --> 00:34:12,238 Yeah, yeah. Those logically encoded constraints. I mean, we see the failure of those literally in our software whenever you get a virus, right? Like the logic is there, but people know what the rules are, and they find inferences or results of those rules that they can manipulate. 315 00:34:13,157 --> 00:34:19,798 Crafty lawyers do that with the actual computer code of our society and lead to kind of perverse results that were not intended. 316 00:34:20,518 --> 00:34:26,498 We see that the powerful have access to better lawyers, and we see at the end of the day that lobbyists create different laws. 317 00:34:26,617 --> 00:34:33,798 And so the code is subject to systemic abuse in a way that physical power is not. 318 00:34:33,798 --> 00:34:40,597 You might say, well, the strong man has more strength than the weak man, but they at least still are operating on the same playing field. 319 00:34:40,597 --> 00:35:06,317 And the actual like substratum of what they're using to compete power is itself neutral. One cannot manipulate their way out of that. So he's going to move on to there. Like, he's talking about power specifically, of course, in cyberspace, more specifically, as securing through proof of work, our information systems. 320 00:35:06,317 --> 00:35:25,337 And so the difference between the cyberspace warfare and the warfare on land, sea, and space is that it's massless, right? It's soft war. And that's where his kind of metaphor comes in. It's dematerialized war. It's massless, immaterial, disembodied. 321 00:35:25,337 --> 00:35:30,198 And yet there still is a way that we can have a war. 322 00:35:30,317 --> 00:35:31,738 We can have a power competition. 323 00:35:32,018 --> 00:35:35,018 And that's a good thing, again, remember, because he's talking about the benefits of warfare. 324 00:35:35,278 --> 00:35:41,258 So we have hard war, which is the war with mass, material, bodied. 325 00:35:41,438 --> 00:35:45,558 And we also have soft war, massless, immaterial, disembodied. 326 00:35:45,957 --> 00:35:47,377 They're both power competitions. 327 00:35:47,718 --> 00:35:50,018 One uses mass, the other uses energy. 328 00:35:50,018 --> 00:35:52,498 and you're going to have soft war fighting 329 00:35:52,498 --> 00:35:54,357 which is going to, he says, 330 00:35:54,438 --> 00:35:56,558 satisfy all of the Klauswitzian 331 00:35:56,558 --> 00:35:57,198 criteria 332 00:35:57,198 --> 00:36:00,438 and it's going to also bring the benefits 333 00:36:00,438 --> 00:36:02,198 that hard war brings. It's going to be 334 00:36:02,198 --> 00:36:04,398 egalitarian, it's going to 335 00:36:04,398 --> 00:36:05,398 serve to 336 00:36:05,398 --> 00:36:08,617 not be subject to 337 00:36:08,617 --> 00:36:10,317 those systemic abuses 338 00:36:10,317 --> 00:36:11,778 and it's going to 339 00:36:11,778 --> 00:36:14,137 help establish 340 00:36:14,137 --> 00:36:16,258 dominance hierarchy over limited resources 341 00:36:16,258 --> 00:36:18,477 so soft war is going to be analogous 342 00:36:18,477 --> 00:36:23,558 a hard war and it's going to bring along the benefits that again, he is saying war does bring. 343 00:36:24,718 --> 00:36:30,977 Yeah. I, while you were talking, I remember a quote that I heard that it's like money is not 344 00:36:30,977 --> 00:36:36,457 the best way of measuring a man's character, but it happens to be the best one that we have. 345 00:36:36,698 --> 00:36:44,817 If, if you're thinking about money as a way that society values a person for the value that they 346 00:36:44,817 --> 00:36:51,898 create. And if money is energy, then you could re simply restate that and just say, you know, 347 00:36:52,177 --> 00:36:59,837 energy is not the best way of, um, having these competitions, but it is the best one that we have. 348 00:36:59,837 --> 00:37:06,837 So, um, you know, uh, it's not, it's not subject or it's, it's still subject to everyone's 349 00:37:06,837 --> 00:37:13,058 ideological fantasies that, um, you know, woulda, coulda, shoulda in a world, in the world that I 350 00:37:13,058 --> 00:37:17,457 design, you know, everything would be different and it would be better and blah, blah, blah. 351 00:37:17,898 --> 00:37:24,698 But in this world, um, we play the cards that were dealt and, and it turns out to be that, 352 00:37:24,778 --> 00:37:30,157 yeah, like this is like, this is a great way. Like it's the most fair, like in the end, 353 00:37:30,218 --> 00:37:35,398 what do you want? Do you want fairness? Like that's, that's what it is. It's the most fair. 354 00:37:35,398 --> 00:37:40,938 It's the, um, it's the least disruptive. Yeah. At the end of the day, it doesn't care what you 355 00:37:40,938 --> 00:37:46,157 want it's that fair right yeah but it's like it's not the world that we designed it's not the world 356 00:37:46,157 --> 00:37:51,018 that anyone designed the world that evolution made through a process of continual war fighting 357 00:37:51,018 --> 00:37:56,677 such that you know power projection techniques were developed by animals to establish dominance 358 00:37:56,677 --> 00:38:01,077 hierarchies and survival of the fittest that's where we came about and that's what we're still 359 00:38:01,077 --> 00:38:06,738 doing he goes into this in depth later in the book and it's incredibly interesting um because 360 00:38:06,738 --> 00:38:16,698 I mean, and it's also Klaus with his first criteria of war, that war is this primordial endeavor that ties it like that goes back to how animals fight blind natural forces. 361 00:38:17,198 --> 00:38:27,357 We're still doing that. We're still animals. We're still we still have the same need to establish dominance hierarchies, access to resources, clear ownership over who has resources. 362 00:38:27,918 --> 00:38:33,817 And that's simply the case, as you mentioned, like, it's not just like the good that it's the case. 363 00:38:33,817 --> 00:38:35,258 It simply is the case. 364 00:38:35,498 --> 00:38:37,077 And there's no better, there's no worse. 365 00:38:37,398 --> 00:38:42,718 You can have fantasies, you can have pacifistic dreams about how things could be, but it's 366 00:38:42,718 --> 00:38:43,597 not the way things are. 367 00:38:43,718 --> 00:38:48,617 And we do live in a world of survival of the fittest, of constant warfighting. 368 00:38:48,817 --> 00:38:55,038 And perhaps soft war is a more ethical alternative, all things being equal, than hard war, than 369 00:38:55,038 --> 00:38:58,617 bodies spilling blood, us killing our brothers and sisters. 370 00:38:58,617 --> 00:39:01,837 And so that's kind of one of the uplifting. 371 00:39:01,837 --> 00:39:14,617 If a person is completely demoralized by the realization that war fighting is part of our nature, an uplifting part of this thesis is maybe we can move on to soft war for some of our wars. 372 00:39:14,617 --> 00:39:30,157 Like, you know, we're not, there's always going to be the need for hard war in the end in certain areas, but maybe a large part of that can be supplanted by soft war, by human out of the loop energy delivery competitions. 373 00:39:30,337 --> 00:39:32,198 And maybe that's proof of work. 374 00:39:32,198 --> 00:39:35,778 And maybe Bitcoin is the best example currently existing of that. 375 00:39:35,778 --> 00:40:04,998 Yeah, I think it's evidentiary of the shroud of influence that we have lived under in this country for the last 50 or so years, if probably more, truly, where the idea of patriotism has always been hand in hand with war. 376 00:40:04,998 --> 00:40:24,957 And the concept of not wanting to have wars has been, at least since my youth, I would say painted as a kind of a sissy's idea or, you know, just that it's not honorable. 377 00:40:24,957 --> 00:40:48,578 Um, but I think what Lowry is saying, and I heard, I've, I've heard him say on a, on a podcast before, he's like, you know, like, look, I'm a soldier. Like I, I want war less than any of you. Like, understand, like you need to understand that like the people that, um, die in wars, like they're not excited about war. 378 00:40:48,578 --> 00:41:04,538 Um, it's the, um, you know, it's, it's the upper level, upper echelon of those who continue policy by other means, um, in order to, uh, in order to resolve disputes. 379 00:41:04,538 --> 00:41:30,837 And so I think it's just really an idea whose time has come and truly, truly just almost miraculous, really, that we're having this discussion kind of right now in the age of free speech with X and the ability to have conversations that couldn't happen otherwise. 380 00:41:30,837 --> 00:41:39,117 where now we are considering a type of warfare that otherwise would not be considered. 381 00:41:39,117 --> 00:41:48,297 Yeah, yeah. And a humane type of warfare, a warfare that brings moral, ethical and ideological benefits with it, 382 00:41:48,418 --> 00:41:54,898 but also, and this is the interesting and necessary part, an extension of the way that war is actually done, 383 00:41:54,898 --> 00:42:03,637 not an ideological pacifistic fantasy about what war should be, but simply another energy, another power delivery competition. 384 00:42:04,498 --> 00:42:05,898 And that's what proof of work does. 385 00:42:06,277 --> 00:42:16,698 And so like the objective of this work is really to establish this is the last section of the first chapter established kind of why he's talking about proof of work. 386 00:42:17,637 --> 00:42:20,817 Proof of work historically began in the 1990s. 387 00:42:20,817 --> 00:42:26,097 It was initially – so now proof of work is most famously instantiated in Bitcoin. 388 00:42:26,097 --> 00:42:45,238 But initially it was just a cybersecurity kind of hypothesis or an innovation or something we're talking about as a possibility in cybersecurity that we could secure our information through energy competitions, through energy supply. 389 00:42:47,558 --> 00:42:50,117 He makes a really interesting point here. 390 00:42:50,117 --> 00:43:09,718 So proof of work, again, we think of it as this financial technology. But actually, when it was initially developed apart from Bitcoin, it was a separate development, a separate thesis, a separate theory being tested apart from Bitcoin, separate technology. It was actually first called bread pudding. 391 00:43:10,317 --> 00:43:18,558 Obviously somebody, I didn't look this up, but I would say obviously somebody just giving a placeholder name for some type of technology that was going to have an indeterminate use. 392 00:43:19,018 --> 00:43:36,898 And he's going to talk about this later in the book, that the names that we give things, especially within software, are often a name associated with that technology's or innovation's intended use, but does not perfectly describe the camp of possible uses that the technology has. 393 00:43:36,898 --> 00:43:42,198 so too with proof of work that we call it proof of work, but even you can call it bread pudding 394 00:43:42,198 --> 00:43:46,877 if you want. It doesn't matter. It is a thing when you know what that thing is. And possibly 395 00:43:46,877 --> 00:43:52,558 that thing is going to have more uses than securing a financial network. It's maybe going 396 00:43:52,558 --> 00:43:58,157 to have this broader use as a form of cybersecurity that's going to provide an energy-based 397 00:43:58,157 --> 00:44:06,617 competitive form of warfare. Yeah. So Adam Back is the creator of proof of work. 398 00:44:06,617 --> 00:44:11,097 And it was created in order to, you know, this is fascinating. 399 00:44:11,418 --> 00:44:24,177 He was annoyed at getting spam emails and he was trying to create a way to make it costly for spammers to send him, you know, to basically break his defense. 400 00:44:25,597 --> 00:44:28,597 And so that came about in 1996. 401 00:44:28,597 --> 00:44:38,877 and I believe he did utilize it in his attempt at a digital currency called HashCash. 402 00:44:39,957 --> 00:44:47,058 But then, you know, so it's 12 years later that it comes out in the Bitcoin white paper 403 00:44:47,058 --> 00:44:53,558 as the consensus mechanism for how to confirm transactions. 404 00:44:53,558 --> 00:45:03,597 and I like to think of this as like it's it's a you know it's just a race like it's fascinating 405 00:45:03,597 --> 00:45:08,297 but it's just it's just a race like who can deliver the most power over the shortest amount 406 00:45:08,297 --> 00:45:16,998 of time in order to find the answer to this difficult question and that which is what we're 407 00:45:16,998 --> 00:45:27,738 talking about now, which could very well be the way that we engage in this newest domain of warfare 408 00:45:27,738 --> 00:45:34,837 in cyber warfare that was created because some guy was just annoyed at getting, you know, 409 00:45:34,837 --> 00:45:42,177 whatever it was, boner pill ads or something. Right. Yeah. And it, again, it speaks to this 410 00:45:42,177 --> 00:45:49,977 idea that not everything is as it appears. And what you're first presented with is quite often 411 00:45:49,977 --> 00:45:55,157 not what something truly is. Especially in the realm of cyberspace, where the ontology of things 412 00:45:55,157 --> 00:46:01,058 is not the same as it is in the physical realm. So, I mean, that's the key distinction between 413 00:46:01,058 --> 00:46:09,477 land, water, air, and space. Those all exist within three dimensions, our material. Cyberspace 414 00:46:09,477 --> 00:46:17,837 is not. So the technologies that we use within it are maybe going to require some creative thinking. 415 00:46:18,238 --> 00:46:24,418 And that's, again, the first Klaus-Witzian kind of criteria of warfare. It's that it's blind and 416 00:46:24,418 --> 00:46:30,097 primordial, or the second one, rather, that it's a probabilistic game that requires the application 417 00:46:30,097 --> 00:46:34,918 of creative spirits. And that's more than anywhere else in this cyberspace that we're going to need 418 00:46:34,918 --> 00:46:37,477 to defend, we're going to need to use creativity. 419 00:46:37,998 --> 00:46:51,117 We going to need to look and not fall prey to our own analytical bias of thinking somebody called Bitcoin money and therefore that all that it is And so that what this thesis wants us to do is kind of open your eyes 420 00:46:51,436 --> 00:46:56,776 look at Bitcoin from a completely new perspective, turn it around in your hands. It's not just money, 421 00:46:56,776 --> 00:47:04,776 it's also a defense network. And to do that, this thesis really has to go and does, 422 00:47:05,496 --> 00:47:08,697 it's creating a whole new theoretical framework. And that's what's fascinating. And so it goes 423 00:47:08,697 --> 00:47:15,556 clear-backed first principles. It's going to talk about evolution, animals, survival of the fittest 424 00:47:15,556 --> 00:47:20,637 and developing survival technologies like antlers. And it's going to talk about all these other 425 00:47:20,637 --> 00:47:27,396 things from really first principles perspectives to enable us to look with fresh eyes at this thing 426 00:47:27,396 --> 00:47:31,356 that we've taken for granted as money because that's what we first heard it to be. 427 00:47:32,236 --> 00:47:37,617 Yeah. The first conversation that you and I had about this was, I remember saying, 428 00:47:37,617 --> 00:47:44,736 What I find fascinating is that it makes being perfect money the least interesting thing about Bitcoin. 429 00:47:44,736 --> 00:47:54,516 But something I think that we can also consider is that, yes, Bitcoin might not just be money. 430 00:47:54,716 --> 00:47:56,657 It might also be a defense network. 431 00:47:57,356 --> 00:48:00,716 But money is a defense network. 432 00:48:00,716 --> 00:48:28,716 So the more money you have, the more readily able to defend yourself against threats you are capable of. You can defend yourself against threats to your health by accessing the best doctors. You can defend yourself from threats to your freedom by accessing the best lawyers. You can defend yourself from threats to your body and your person by having the best security. 433 00:48:28,716 --> 00:48:46,677 And so it is in a manner the same type of thing, just in an analog fashion where you have to deploy it in the physical world and you deploy it against threats that are coming in on certain vectors. 434 00:48:46,677 --> 00:49:03,657 Um, so yeah, I think that it's, it's not only, it's not only unique to think about Bitcoin, um, that way, but it's also consistent, um, from kind of a philosophical standpoint of what can money do. 435 00:49:04,117 --> 00:49:12,197 Um, I think, I think, you know, it can act as an analog defense network against threats from nearly any vector. 436 00:49:12,197 --> 00:49:34,916 No, yeah. Money is a stand-in for all of the things we find valuable and useful in the world. It is the way we delineate value. It's clear why we need to defend our land, our seas, the air above us, the air that we breathe, the air that's over the land that we want to live in, and the space in which our satellites orbit. 437 00:49:34,916 --> 00:49:42,117 cyberspace too it's it should be obvious why we need to defend that as if it were it is a theater 438 00:49:42,117 --> 00:49:48,576 of operations because now our money exists in cyberspace we have green paper things we call 439 00:49:48,576 --> 00:49:55,236 dollars but the dollar actually exists as a mark in an electronic ledger in a bank and bitcoin 440 00:49:55,236 --> 00:50:01,276 makes of course dramatizes this because it has no material instantiation and in dramatizing this 441 00:50:01,276 --> 00:50:09,796 also takes it very seriously by including its own defense network, not relying on the army to defend 442 00:50:09,796 --> 00:50:15,637 it as the US dollar does. It doesn't require the US military to back it. It backs itself. 443 00:50:17,117 --> 00:50:27,716 Yeah, the physical currency that we currently think about is really such a tiny portion of the 444 00:50:27,716 --> 00:50:34,016 money that does exist in the world. Like you said, most of it exists as an entry in a ledger. It's 445 00:50:34,016 --> 00:50:40,496 already digital. The only difference, and Andres Antonopoulos, I know, makes this point very well, 446 00:50:40,916 --> 00:50:47,316 is that the only difference going forward is you have a choice of what money or what defense 447 00:50:47,316 --> 00:50:53,677 network, now that we can maybe use those terms interchangeably, what defense network you use 448 00:50:53,677 --> 00:50:57,977 in order to protect yourself against threats to your person and your property. 449 00:50:58,876 --> 00:51:05,456 One of them is digital and it is able to be centralized or it already is centralized. 450 00:51:06,216 --> 00:51:08,677 And the other is digital and it's decentralized. 451 00:51:09,216 --> 00:51:12,356 So yeah, I would say, go ahead. 452 00:51:12,356 --> 00:51:18,536 I was just going to say, just because of small, like terminological clarification, 453 00:51:18,536 --> 00:51:31,276 Like it's not – like Lowry's thesis is not that money – so Bitcoin is both money and a form of cyberspace security and warfighting. 454 00:51:31,657 --> 00:51:36,637 But that's not to say that money is necessarily a form of warfighting or self-defense. 455 00:51:37,316 --> 00:51:45,756 Bitcoin happens by pure chance to fulfill both of these functions, but they're not – it's not necessarily so. 456 00:51:45,756 --> 00:51:57,657 Like what Lowry is interested in is the proof of work aspect of Bitcoin, which is in the form of Bitcoin is incidentally very effective in securing financial information. 457 00:51:57,916 --> 00:52:12,836 But it's also generalizable to the rest of cyberspace in securing all of our information, our identity, our medical information, our property rights, any sort of thing that can be that can exist in cyberspace, which is going to be more and more things. 458 00:52:12,836 --> 00:52:18,196 right as we have a metaverse and all these things um everything that can exist in cyberspace 459 00:52:18,196 --> 00:52:23,596 including money is defensible um through a power projection technique called proof of work 460 00:52:23,596 --> 00:52:34,796 yeah um just to be able to have that option um yeah i don't know i 461 00:52:34,796 --> 00:52:42,477 i have nothing to add to be completely honest there like that that was well said and i and he 462 00:52:42,477 --> 00:52:52,336 walks it out well, he spells it out well, and I think you come to kind of the conclusion that, 463 00:52:52,776 --> 00:53:01,856 yes, there comes a point in time when an innovation comes along that completely obviates the entire 464 00:53:01,856 --> 00:53:12,016 way that everything had ever been done in a domain, and it makes it utterly indefensible 465 00:53:12,016 --> 00:53:15,236 to continue moving in that same direction? 466 00:53:16,177 --> 00:53:16,356 Yeah. 467 00:53:16,716 --> 00:53:18,977 No, it's a new, an innovation has occurred. 468 00:53:19,477 --> 00:53:22,016 Gunpowder is not medicine. 469 00:53:22,416 --> 00:53:24,296 Proof of work is not just money. 470 00:53:24,896 --> 00:53:26,157 And we need to take that seriously. 471 00:53:26,296 --> 00:53:28,216 I mean, it does incidentally mean that Bitcoin 472 00:53:28,216 --> 00:53:30,677 is vastly undervalued right now. 473 00:53:31,236 --> 00:53:34,396 But that's because it is a money that embodied, 474 00:53:34,396 --> 00:53:35,836 that is its own defense network. 475 00:53:35,936 --> 00:53:37,016 And it's also a defense network 476 00:53:37,016 --> 00:53:38,796 that can extend to things beyond money. 477 00:53:38,796 --> 00:54:01,796 So the thesis, I mean, it's powerful for both an investment thesis in Bitcoin, but it's also powerful for like, we need to take it seriously because our national security is at stake. And that's why Lowry, an individual from a military perspective is writing this. And that's why we're contemplating a strategic Bitcoin reserve. 478 00:54:01,796 --> 00:54:09,316 reserve. I mean, it's really important that we know what Lowry's thesis is, because it's something 479 00:54:09,316 --> 00:54:16,276 that's in the news right now. And people don't necessarily understand why we should have a 480 00:54:16,276 --> 00:54:22,316 strategic national reserve of Bitcoin. Understanding this thesis, though, throws a whole new light on 481 00:54:22,316 --> 00:54:30,356 the necessity, not only of that, but perhaps far more greater investments and development of 482 00:54:30,356 --> 00:54:37,696 proof of work as a way to secure all real world assets and extend software as much as possible 483 00:54:37,696 --> 00:54:46,657 as a humane alternative to hard war. Yeah, software, I think, in the great tradition of 484 00:54:46,657 --> 00:54:51,436 anything that my government doesn't want me to know is something that I want to know. 485 00:54:51,936 --> 00:54:59,977 The reason why this thesis is no longer available as a book on Amazon is because it was cited 486 00:54:59,977 --> 00:55:06,716 from a directive from the Department of Defense as a sensitive nature. 487 00:55:07,496 --> 00:55:13,977 And I think that any time you see something like that, 488 00:55:13,977 --> 00:55:18,736 it should raise all of your flags and should point you into that direction. 489 00:55:20,316 --> 00:55:28,496 And when you think about the long-theorized hyper-Bitcoinization stage 490 00:55:28,496 --> 00:55:30,376 of how we progress. 491 00:55:32,536 --> 00:55:38,076 It does again take you back to why is it so important for Jason Lowery 492 00:55:38,076 --> 00:55:41,477 to be saying these things, to be saying them in the way that they are, 493 00:55:41,596 --> 00:55:43,496 and to be saying them with such urgency. 494 00:55:44,316 --> 00:55:50,836 And it's because opting into this power projection technology 495 00:55:50,836 --> 00:55:55,056 is something that you can do in an afternoon. 496 00:55:55,056 --> 00:56:19,836 It's not building a nuclear warhead. It's not building a submarine. It's not building a cannon. It is merely taking the profit that is provided to you by knowing that there is a buyer for your fiat who will sell you Bitcoin. 497 00:56:19,836 --> 00:56:32,477 and at any price it makes sense to have it because it is that valuable like just we all we all who 498 00:56:32,477 --> 00:56:39,336 believe in bitcoin as um something that is growing in value i mean we see the evidence of it growing 499 00:56:39,336 --> 00:56:47,756 in value but we believe that um it's going to be you know so much more valuable um just as a money 500 00:56:47,756 --> 00:56:58,996 I think such a very small amount of people would consider the value of it as a domain of defense. 501 00:56:58,996 --> 00:57:19,256 Yeah. I mean, you say it's not a nuclear warhead. What it is analogous to, though, is buying a handgun to defend your house from intruders because it's obtaining a form of money that is also a form of self-defense of that money because it's not subject to inflation. 502 00:57:19,256 --> 00:57:27,256 It's not also, I mean, the specific manner in which Lowry talks about the proof of work is secured from appropriation. 503 00:57:28,137 --> 00:57:46,416 So he mentions this kind of in passing, like the Second Amendment potentially should cover Bitcoin because it is, I mean, it is a form of self-defense to acquire something that is secured by a proof of work protocol because you're acquiring a piece of information. 504 00:57:46,416 --> 00:57:53,657 but a real thing given side given the importance of cyberspace that is self-securing that is 505 00:57:53,657 --> 00:58:00,157 secured by proof of work in the same way we might secure our own house not just with the deed 506 00:58:00,157 --> 00:58:06,456 recorded in the local courthouse but with a handgun under the pillow like proof of work is sovereign 507 00:58:06,456 --> 00:58:12,516 self-defense for people who don't want to you know who do want to invest in their own individual 508 00:58:12,516 --> 00:58:28,736 I don't think that's Lowry's going that far. This is like a thesis about national self-defense. But the individual can read it and say, I am from a nation of free men and women that does have a Second Amendment. And I do believe in self-defense, sovereign self-defense. And I want Bitcoin because it is self-defending money. 509 00:58:28,736 --> 00:58:44,177 I think it's just recognizing that it makes more sense to use logic to determine where you're going to fight your battles than to actually fight your battles with logic and hope that that works out. 510 00:58:44,177 --> 00:58:53,216 where you can logically look at the system that we have in place and without condemning it, 511 00:58:53,216 --> 00:59:00,936 without even speaking ill of it, you can say it is subject to corruption. It is inherently flawed. 512 00:59:01,536 --> 00:59:08,236 And now there exists a system that is not subject to the same flaws and shortcomings. 513 00:59:08,236 --> 00:59:16,596 And logically, if I'm going to engage in a competition, I want to play a fair game. 514 00:59:17,117 --> 00:59:28,396 I just like I'm not it's not it's not being a nuclear bunker in the backyard, head to toe, covered in guns and grenades, anarchist. 515 00:59:28,536 --> 00:59:33,236 It's simply it's simply saying I want to play fair. 516 00:59:33,436 --> 00:59:37,716 And this is where the fair fight or this is where the fair game is being played. 517 00:59:38,356 --> 00:59:39,716 And so that's where I'm going to go. 518 00:59:40,177 --> 00:59:41,276 Yeah, definitely. 519 00:59:41,536 --> 00:59:41,716 Yep. 520 00:59:41,856 --> 00:59:46,477 I think that that covers the first chapter and it hints toward the second, the gesture 521 00:59:46,477 --> 00:59:51,117 towards the second, which is going to be a discussion of what grounded theory is as a 522 00:59:51,117 --> 00:59:55,276 methodology, which sounds very abstract from what Bitcoin is. 523 00:59:55,316 --> 00:59:59,736 And it is, it's kind of a methodological discussion, but it's going to help. 524 00:59:59,736 --> 01:00:04,796 The really important part about software, again, is it's a turning of Bitcoin in our 525 01:00:04,796 --> 01:00:11,036 hands to see the backside of it, to look away from financial, monetary, economic theory from 526 01:00:11,036 --> 01:00:16,896 a perspective of military theory. And grounded theory methodology is a description kind of how 527 01:00:16,896 --> 01:00:24,416 Jason Lowery is able to take this kind of free form, non-analytically biased look at something 528 01:00:24,416 --> 01:00:29,477 like Bitcoin that has been so coded as a financial technology and look at it with free eyes. So I 529 01:00:29,477 --> 01:00:33,977 think it's going to be a great discussion because we are going to talk about how to help ourselves 530 01:00:33,977 --> 01:00:40,477 think and talk about a subject that's already been thought and talked about to death with new eyes. 531 01:00:41,196 --> 01:00:46,016 I agree. Absolutely. Like it is, this is the first thing that I've come across 532 01:00:46,016 --> 01:00:55,736 about Bitcoin that is taking me back to that, ooh, ah, um, inspiring type of feeling that I had when 533 01:00:55,736 --> 01:01:03,396 I first found it. So, um, which is just fascinating to be able to fall in love again, I guess, 534 01:01:03,396 --> 01:01:12,296 in a way with something that I thought that I knew a lot about and even felt like I maybe had 535 01:01:12,296 --> 01:01:18,456 theorized some of these things, but certainly not this. And so I'm looking forward to continuing in 536 01:01:18,456 --> 01:01:27,356 because, I mean, not only is the subject matter fascinating and very compelling, but Jason 537 01:01:27,356 --> 01:01:34,336 Lowry's a good writer and it's an enjoyable read. And it's for anybody who listens to this 538 01:01:34,336 --> 01:01:41,876 conversation, just because this is a PhD thesis, like don't shy away from it. It is not difficult 539 01:01:41,876 --> 01:01:50,296 at all to read and understand. He writes it at a level that, um, uh, you know, some dummy like me, 540 01:01:50,296 --> 01:01:57,236 who's just used to reading Tom Clancy novels can, can get easily. So, yeah. And, and I think he does 541 01:01:57,236 --> 01:01:57,996 a great job of it. 542 01:01:58,356 --> 01:01:59,196 Yeah, no, that definitely 543 01:01:59,196 --> 01:01:59,776 bears mentioning. 544 01:01:59,916 --> 01:02:00,516 This is a very, 545 01:02:00,617 --> 01:02:02,117 it doesn't read like a thesis 546 01:02:02,117 --> 01:02:03,756 in that it's well written 547 01:02:03,756 --> 01:02:05,396 and actually you want to read it. 548 01:02:05,516 --> 01:02:06,876 You're not forced to read it 549 01:02:06,876 --> 01:02:09,137 by dint of being an academic. 550 01:02:09,436 --> 01:02:10,736 It's really, it's worth it. 551 01:02:11,396 --> 01:02:12,236 Yeah, yeah. 552 01:02:12,456 --> 01:02:14,376 So yeah, I think absolutely great. 553 01:02:14,637 --> 01:02:15,776 Great place to stop 554 01:02:15,776 --> 01:02:17,896 and we'll do chapter two next. 555 01:02:18,256 --> 01:02:18,596 Awesome.