Oof edgy today.

No. I have no thought. Simply white noise in my head at all time.

It was nice meeting you at the conference. I’ll listen this week and get back to you 🤙

Thoughts on what?

Thoughts about Jason Lowery? Or what do you mean?

Wants people to think he is smarter than he is.

Has good points about abstract power hierarchies, but reaches conclusions that are antithetical to the ethos of Bitcoin.

Interesting character & ideas, but definitely playing games.

I listened to the episode today. Really good. Cybersecurity models are missing the physical encoding that Bitcoin/PoW brings.

I’m 80% through the episode and I thought Danny’s question about encryption being the main factor in securing data - not proof of work - was exactly the right question to ask. So far, lowery hasn’t said anything that would make me think he has a point that is both true and original.

When he says something that sounds new, it seems wholly confused, wrong. And when one of you challenge, he retreats into something true but uninteresting.

But I still have a few minutes left to listen.

WHO?

Being military myself I can see his perspective and the lens he’s seeing Bitcoin through, but also certainly see how his thesis would be controversial.

Almost done with his book, which was dense and a bit tough to get through, honestly could have been a little more direct and tends (in his writing and on podcasts) to lose people in the weeds and can say quite a lot to make a fairly simple point.

I think you’re conversation with his was great challenging some of his basic premises. Ultimately, I agree that there can be some utility in securing data (or in his thesis, “bits”) by imposing “severe prohibitive costs” to attack, and nation states may see this as an opportunity in the years to come…but I think overall I’m still not 100% there. Reminds me of the end of your FediMint podcast…like, I understand it more but I’m not 100% sold yet? We’ll see! I definitely welcome the different points of view.

Energy is essential for existence of the Bitcoin network. For the fiat system, army is. US Army is the defender and enforcer of the dollar standard. Lowery is one of the nodes in the dollar standard.

Amazing show! Where can I find softwar ebook ? And pay by sats?

Good interview. I appreciate the way you try to bring diverse viewpoints to your show.

I think he's onto something. Once you the power projection he talks about you can't unsee it. I agree with him that a fence is a projection of power, and found it frustrating you couldn't see it. I also agree with him defence and offence is a matter of perspective. I think the encryption vs proof of work muddied the conversation a bitnwhen in fact they are kind of the same thing. Only POW is brute-forcable hashing that only proves someone expended energy vs encryption which is not brute forcable and so can't be used to tell us wheter or not someone comitted energy to an act. So the two together are essential. Once you conbine proof of real worth energy expenditure with software you bring the real world into the virtual world in a really profound way, and I think we're going to see the application of that becoming more important as AI blurs the lines between human and computer generated content. At least pow will impose a real word physical cost which might well keep us all sane.

I’m only several months new to this so take with a grain of salt. I do think his book is a really interesting contribution. However, if bitcoin is not a monetary network first (ie it’s a security network) then miners don’t have incentive to mine bc individuals won’t have incentive to hold bitcoin bc it’s not money. This is the problem with his theory as it doesn’t seem like bitcoin network will work if it’s not first a monetary network (that people and miners find beneficial) and then secondarily a security network. I assume all of these can coexist but it seems like you really need to incentivize people the most if you can take advantage of secondary benefits.

Just finished listening your podcast about 30min ago.

I agree mostly with Jason. To me yes, he understands the importance of money and why everything about a Bitcoin is important., but there is more he speaks to. A weapon, defense or offensive is just a point of view. Still trying to grasp how exactly it plays out IRL. My thoughts on that below. Thanks Peter!

Hash force will most likely be a thing.

Army secures your land; allows for your “peaceful” travel and commerce.

Navy protects your sea lanes; allows for “peaceful” travel and trade

Air protects your skies a live your land and at sea; allows for “peaceful” air travel and trade.

In reality these aren’t peaceful. The US military is a projecting force that stops another nation from disrupting their trade and travel. If you choose to actually attack you could be met with real military power. The threat of of power (physically) and the rules(arbitrary) get enforced by a hierarchy of the physical power. The result of this posturing and rules set is peaceful travel and trade, on a national level.

Bitcoin PoW secures “money/information/bits” and by securing the network(mining) you decentralize and protect travel of information and trade(commerce).

Additional, mining allows you to reject transactions. If the US mines as a nation state, they could impose a real cost by winning blocks(power) and rejecting transactions of a hostile nation. Or they could protect the US from being censored from the next block. They are encouraged to win every block, beyond just the monetary incentive.

He said he uses nostr. What is his npub?

he adds no value to Bitcoin. Best he can do is orange pill the military which would mean that hodlers become targets.

Net negative.

nostr:note1764mul94fu6auju9u7duyvcvhxwcvvnxzcgn6kkdwcn5rmccpdjsur6mt9

Maybe peace is only a moment when one power structure is dominant. The bitcoin power structure could last 1,000 years resulting in a prolonged peaceful and cooperative period.

Imagine someone wants to attack you, but needs funding.

Bitcoiners can mass their bitcoin to pay for an attack on you without approval from a bank or government.

#SoftWar

Are we focused on ideas or people with ideas?

Not for me. Please don't frame Bitcoin as a weapon. It's only defensive capability is against erosion of purchasing power.

Quite simply, we don’t see bitcoin as it is, but how we are. Imo this is a feature and testament to the breadth of what Bitcoin actually is or may become.

I welcome and learned a lot from Jason’s nuanced view of power projection, systems thinking and how he looks to nature to explain his ideas and concepts. Love that part.

While listening to the podcast I felt at times ideas and concepts were wrapped in over complication. Not sure if it’s just the way his brain works or if he intentionally does it to make his points seem more unique or original.

Appreciated the podcast.

✌️

Charge me 1,000,000 sats to login, then return it to me when I do no harm and logout.

https://damus.io/note1rahtqza7h7ut6a6enw62n2frq5wlhsvq0avqkesvv8s9q75mgq2qpsly6n

nostr:note1rahtqza7h7ut6a6enw62n2frq5wlhsvq0avqkesvv8s9q75mgq2qpsly6n

Brevity is the soul of wit. Mother fucker can shorten his shit by a lot but I don't think that makes him seem like the book writin' folk.

TLDR; His thesis is only a thesis without a code proof of concept/implementation. Knowing what's bad is harder than stopping it.

His thesis is interesting and makes sense, but I don't see it having a practical implementation that would not be better serve with just robust key management. Because Bitcoin depends on the ownership/control of private keys to use, that is the core security protocol. You can have asymmetric cryptography using private/public key pairs without having Bitcoin involved. I **do** see widespread use and knowledge growing around handling of these keys which may lead to some unique application int he cyber security space. Having hard money you can't fuck with though, would be immensely helpful for a nation state, but don't think that's the DoD's lane.

Additionally, cyber security's biggest challenge is identifying what is a "bad" action compared to allowable actions. Stopping bad actions is pretty trivial, but knowing what to stop is hard. Again, I can't see how involving bitcoin shifts this paradigm at all.

Clearly a smart fella who knows his history and understands systems.

I suspect that what's left unsaid may be more important than what he says. Because all the things he says seem to be logically correct.

I'm writing up some more detailed thoughts.

I need to listen to this podcast tonight. My thoughts on him so far is it's an interesting perspective. However, I hope more of the people get into Bitcoin first. When it comes to governments, I'm not sure I want them to own a lot or create a lot of Bitcoin. If the government of my homeland said they accept Bitcoin as payment for taxes for example, I'll be telling my friends to pay their taxes in Fiat. Why give the government value when they give the people worthless fiat? 🤔👀 I'll look forward to listening to your conversation tonight 🙌

Having listened to Lowery and Saylor speak about similar topics it does sound like there is something here. To me it seems to be a way of dishing out real world consequences in a digital realm, Proof of work being the core. Danny's point about encryption is well taken but encryption costs nothing so spam is still a problem. Maybe best way to put is the best offence is a good defence. If you make an attack sufficiently expensive that the other party would not even launch it. Then you have won the fight before it even begins. With data and cyber security as critical as they are to modern society its the equivalent of a peaceful American navy securing our data sea lanes. Peace breaks out in cyberspace but no one controls it and everyone can use it.

Obviously he’s a hot topic. For good reason. I didn’t listen to your interview yet but I’m hoping to know why he’s so public with his thesis. What’s his ultimate goal, and why is being public in the way he’s doing it the best way to achieve it?

His shit is influencer fuel. Exhibit A

He does not distinguish between defense and offense. Normies will have a very hard time with that.

I think that’s the main challenge in understanding him.

#SoftWar makes sense if you remove the statist jargon from it and look at it from a first principles, as in the fundamental fabric of the universe, point of view.

His thesis strikes me as having been reverse engineered. I think he had his conclusion first and then used all his intellectual capacity to amass analogies and correlative data in its support.

Nonsense.

I really liked your interview with him, so thank you for that. For me, something definitely „clicked“ finally at some point of the interview.

A genius and he should be listened to. He might have an overinflated ego and peculiar approach to marketing because of how young he is, but what he is marketing is not simply a thesis. From his point of view, he is making a desperate attempt to ensure his country does not fall behind in this new age of humanity. My prediction is they won’t listen to him and they will fall behind anyway. The point is every one of us can make use of what he saying to wage our own peaceful battles in cyberspace. Bitcoin is more than just money, it is they key to global succession and will end the tyranny of large government once and for all. All anyone will need to form their own sovereign state will be hash power.

He presents a very different point of view. And that's coming from having a "lense" of a soldier.

If what he says is true (and it probably is, I just don't have enough knowledge about war) - then Bitcoin shouldn't be even discussed with the SEC or whoever is responsible for the monetary system.

It has to be discussed at the security/defense level.

As he said, that would completely overcome all the resistance to adopting BTC and it would be adopted in a completely different way than we, regular plebs, thought it would be.

Saylor also has a similar point of view and he also served in the army. These guys understand something more than us regular plebs don't.

Hope his thesis plays out.

Looking forward to the book. Interview was a good review, interesting to view it as a defensive wepon, goes back to code as weapons grade wepons but i fear inviting military minds to welcome bitcoin into the dark rooms where all our “national interest” are kept under a cloak of secrecy legal moats.

Country music stays at the top off the charts because the people who listen to it don't know how to download it for free

I agree. I am at war with fiat. Bitcoin is liberating people. It's a war of freedom vs control.

It is THE war.

He talked in circles. You pushed him, but not as hard as you could have.

In the words of a friend, "he has only one point, and it's kind of silly"

I think you did a pretty good job trying to challenge him where you could. As with most people, it's sometimes hard to understand the specific question and always reverting back to their original perspective (thinking fast and slow will help understand that).I think the jump to other applications beyond a public ledger that is used to transfer value is still extremely unexplored, which you pushed him very well on. The fundamental difference I think most people have though is that it I think it is the job of the government to ensure that the public can hash and hold Bitcoin, enabling us to prosper, rather than the job of the government to be holding Bitcoin and hashing which I think is more about them accruing power. Even if that power is being accumulated "for good" because it could become another way for them to exploit the people and one that isn't necessary for people to be prosperous.

I did enjoy the book though and intend to reach out to Jaosn to help him sharpen his agrument.

Jason is saying the quiet part out loud. Not everyone will agree but certainly some in power do, meaning it is a de facto definition of Bitcoin. This is just one more network integrity test.

Thanks for pressing hard to clarify the finer points of his case.

Valuable. Our software landscape was initially built for benevolent use. Then hacked. Patched since to questionable degrees. There is only one software that was built with a defense mechanism against 24/7/365 brute force attacks in the design. #Bitcoin. That is the bed rock, that’s where we can start anchoring value.

Not sure. Seems like he glorifies war to some extent, which I don't agree with. Humans have taken control over nature in many aspects - for example we live in houses that shut out rain, snow, cold, heat, etc. - and this is a good thing. Shouldn't violence be on the list of undesirable nature things, that we should try to avoid and circumvent? Not least through mutually consensual trade, enabled by good, hard money? On the other hand, he talks good about Bitcoin to influential people in the language they understand, so he's probably helping Bitcoin.

Seems like a Bitcoin Maxi. I'd like to read his thesis some day.

How is anything he's selling relevant to everyday needs of bitcoin users?

Arrogant