Bitcoin 's strategic positioning is officially shifting from a financial asset on Wall Street to the Pentagon's front line of defense.
On April 21, 2026, U.S. time, Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, attended a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In response to Senator Tommy Tuberville's question regarding "the role of Bitcoin in the U.S.-China geopolitical competition," he gave a response that shocked the entire cryptocurrency community and the national security community.
Shock Bomb: US Military Personally Runs Bitcoin Nodes
General Paparo publicly confirmed for the first time at the hearing that the U.S. military had direct involvement in the Bitcoin network:
"We have a node on the Bitcoin network... We are conducting a series of operational tests to leverage the Bitcoin protocol to secure and enhance network security."
He described Bitcoin as "a reality" and highly praised its unique attribute as a "peer-to-peer, trustless value transfer system".
Unlike most financial institutions that focus on price fluctuations, the US military values Bitcoin's underlying cryptography and blockchain technology. Paparo points out that Bitcoin's core— the Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism —is an "extremely valuable computer science tool." He believes that PoW can not only be used for "power projection" but also play a role in cybersecurity defense by significantly increasing the cost to attackers, and its future applications can be broadly extended to both offensive and defensive cyber operations.
Why does the US military need to run key nodes? Intelligence gathering and great power competition.
Why would the U.S. military need to run a full Bitcoin node itself? National security experts and on-chain analysts point out that this is more like part of the U.S. intelligence and defense infrastructure strategy, with profound strategic implications:
- First-hand intelligence gathering: Running a full Bitcoin node allows the U.S. military to directly monitor network traffic, analyze mempools, and observe transaction patterns. This is crucial for tracking how adversaries use cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions or for investigating the flow of funds for ransomware.
- The "cost imposition" mechanism of cyber warfare: Paparo's viewpoint highly echoes the "Softwar" theory previously proposed by U.S. Space Force Major Jason Lowery, which utilizes the characteristic of PoW consuming a large amount of physical energy as a physical defense mechanism against cyber threats.
- A New Battleground for Great Power Competition: As commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, responsible for competing with China, Paparo included Bitcoin in the category of "tools of state power," suggesting that the United States is seriously studying how to seize dominance in decentralized networks in future technology wars.
The statements made at this hearing are seen by outsiders as the "first" time that senior U.S. military officials have publicly defined Bitcoin as a strategic asset highly relevant to national security in the halls of Congress. This not only overturns the past stereotype that the government simply regards cryptocurrencies as money laundering tools, but also signifies that Bitcoin has been formally incorporated into the U.S. military strategic blueprint for dealing with geopolitical conflicts.
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