By Robbin Laird
When Admiral Samuel Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Bitcoin is “a reality” and “a valuable computer science tool, as a power projection,” he did more than offer an off‑the‑cuff comment on a fashionable technology.
He signaled that at least one major combatant commander now sees the Bitcoin protocol not simply as a financial curiosity or a sanctions‑evasion problem, but as part of the evolving toolkit of American power in the Indo‑Pacific.
In what follows, I want to unpack what he actually said, place it in the broader trajectory of U.S. military thinking about crypto, and raise the questions that now logically follow for strategy, doctrine, and alliance management.
In his April 21, 2026 testimony, Paparo characterized Bitcoin first and foremost in technical terms. He described it as “a peer‑to‑peer, zero‑trust transfer of value” and stressed that “anything that supports all instruments of national power for the United States of America is to the good.” That is classic joint‑doctrine language applied to what, up to now, Washington has mostly treated as a regulatory headache.
More importantly, he pressed beyond the monetary use case. Bitcoin, he argued, “shows incredible potential as a computer science tool that, through the proof‑of‑work protocols, actually imposes more costs than just the algorithmic securing of networks and our ability to operate.” In a subsequent House Armed Services appearance, he elaborated that their “interest in Bitcoin is as a tool of cryptography, a blockchain, and reusable proof of work as an additional tool to secure networks and project power,” adding bluntly: “I think this protocol is here to stay.”
Those are carefully chosen phrases. He is not cheering price action or retail speculation; he is pointing to the structure of the protocol—peer‑to‑peer architecture, zero‑trust assumptions, proof‑of‑work and asking what those primitives mean for cyber defense and, in his words, “projection of power…from the securing of networks.”
We also learned that INDOPACOM is not just theorizing.
Under questioning from Rep. Lance Gooden, Paparo confirmed that the U.S. military is running a live Bitcoin node “to secure and protect networks” and to conduct operational security tests, while emphasizing that they are not engaged in mining. For a community that often insists on “learning by doing,” that is precisely what one would expect if they take the protocol seriously.
It is worth recalling that Paparo and other senior officers have, in previous venues, highlighted the downsides of cryptocurrencies: North Korean theft and laundering for weapons programs, terrorist and criminal finance, and proliferation networks operating on or through crypto rails. That negative framing has dominated Pentagon and interagency discourse: crypto as a vector of risk to be contained, monitored, and regulated.
What we are seeing now is not a U‑turn so much as an evolution into a dual‑use view.
On one side, the risks remain: permissionless, borderless value transfer, pseudonymous identities, and the capacity for adversaries to move funds outside traditional, sanctionable channels. On the other side, Paparo is effectively saying that the same architecture adversaries may exploit can be turned into a tool for us: a way to harden networks, experiment with energy‑anchored cyber defense, and potentially signal capability and resolve in the “digital commons” where much of modern competition plays out.
He is also, in effect, validating a body of work, much of it outside the traditional defense establishment, that has argued for several years that proof‑of‑work can be understood as a new kind of “firmware” for deterrence, imposing real‑world costs on would‑be attackers who seek to rewrite or subvert a ledger. Coming from a four‑star with responsibility for the China fight, that is an uptake moment.
Context matters, and the context here is the Indo‑Pacific competition with the People’s Republic of China.
Paparo’s remarks came in hearings focused on China’s military buildup, gray‑zone tactics, and coercive economic statecraft. When he folds Bitcoin into “all instruments of national power,” he is inserting it into that larger struggle.
Several threads intersect:
- Chinese entities, including the state via seizures, now sit on substantial Bitcoin holdings, and Chinese analysts increasingly treat Bitcoin as a strategic asset and potential hedge against U.S. financial pressure.
- Iran’s experiments with accepting Bitcoin for transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz and broader use of crypto to route around sanctions demonstrate how these networks can underpin a parallel channel of global exchange.
- In Taiwan, there is an ongoing discussion about whether some portion of reserves or critical infrastructure could be shifted into or secured via Bitcoin to reduce vulnerability to Chinese financial or cyber coercion.
Against that backdrop, Paparo’s emphasis that he supports “anything that maintains our own dollar dominance worldwide,” even as he explores Bitcoin’s utility, is telling. He is not suggesting a replacement for the dollar; he is recognizing that, in a world where both state and non‑state actors can deploy parallel monetary and data networks, the United States needs fluency and optionality.
From my perspective, this is less about “Bitcoin maximalism” and more about acknowledging that the battlespace now includes competing ledgers, competing networks, and competing narratives about what constitutes trusted value transfer in crisis.
For INDOPACOM, that naturally ties into questions of alliance resilience, crisis management, and how to operate under sustained Chinese pressure on both physical and digital infrastructure.
Paparo’s most provocative phrase is his use of “power projection” in a Bitcoin context. Traditionally, power projection has referred to the ability to deploy and sustain forces at range.
Here he is clearly borrowing the term to describe something more abstract: the projection of secure, trusted computation and communication into contested digital space.
When he says proof‑of‑work “imposes more costs than just the algorithmic securing of networks,” he is hinting at three ideas.
- Cost‑imposition in cyberspace. Proof‑of‑work forces any actor who wishes to alter the ledger to bear a large, real‑world energy and capital cost; that is what makes Bitcoin resilient to manipulation. In theory, similar mechanisms could be adapted or mirrored to protect elements of military data infrastructure, making attacks more expensive and less deniable.
- Resilient, decentralized infrastructure. A network of nodes, some potentially under U.S. or allied control—offers a degree of redundancy and resilience that a handful of centralized servers cannot match. Running a node “for cybersecurity research” is a small step toward understanding how to leverage such decentralization in real operations.
- Signaling and deterrence. Public participation in a global, energy‑anchored network can itself be a signal. It says: we understand this space, we are present in it, and we can impose or withstand costs here in ways you may not anticipate. That is still conceptual, but it is consistent with broader U.S. efforts to think about cyber capabilities as instruments of signaling, not just covert tools.
None of this means we are about to see Bitcoin‑secured fire‑control networks.
But it does mean that senior commanders are starting to ask how the logic of proof‑of‑work and zero‑trust systems might inform the next generation of command‑and‑control, logistics, and data‑integrity architectures.
Paparo’s intervention opens a set of questions that, in my view, the United States and its allies will now have to confront more explicitly.
What, precisely, is the military use case? Running a node and doing experiments is a start, but the real doctrinal work lies in defining where, if at all, public, permissionless networks are acceptable dependencies in defense systems. Is the goal to borrow concepts (zero‑trust, cost‑imposition) for classified systems, or to use the public network itself as part of resilience planning?
How do we manage visibility and legal exposure? Participation in public networks raises complex issues: attribution, intelligence oversight, civilian harm, and the potential for U.S. military activities to be seen as “manipulating” or “weaponizing” a civilian financial system. Clear policy boundaries will be required if this moves beyond laboratory work.
Where does this live institutionally? Right now, we have a combatant commander speaking publicly, some interest in elements of the cyber community, and outside policy shops pushing ideas. But there is no obvious doctrinal home for “Bitcoin and proof‑of‑work as instruments of power.” Will this be owned by Cyber Command, by a joint digital‑infrastructure office, or dissipated across services?
What does this mean for allies? Indo‑Pacific partners are at very different stages of crypto adoption and regulation. If the United States starts to treat Bitcoin as one element of economic and digital resilience in a China crisis, alliance coordination, legal, technical, and political, will become unavoidable.
How does it intersect with dollar strategy and CBDCs? Paparo’s instinct to protect dollar dominance sits uneasily with a protocol designed to be outside state control. Treasury, the Fed, and DoD will need a coherent story about how Bitcoin, potential central bank digital currencies, and traditional sanctions tools coexist in a contested Indo‑Pacific.
I read Paparo’s remarks as an invitation to get serious about these questions rather than a final answer.
Like it or not, Bitcoin and similar architectures are now part of the strategic environment in which the United States and its allies must deter and, if necessary, fight.
Bibliography
“Indo-Pacific Commander Calls Bitcoin a Tool for U.S. ‘Power Projection’ in Senate Testimony.” PR Newswire, April 21, 2026. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/indo-pacific-commander-calls-bitcoin-a-tool-for-us-power-projection-in-senate-testimony-3010.
“Press Release: Indo-Pacific Commander Calls Bitcoin a Tool for U.S. ‘Power Projection’ in Senate Testimony.” Bitcoin Policy Institute, April 21, 2026. https://www.btcpolicy.org/articles/press-release-indo-pacific-commander-calls-bitcoin-a-tool-for-us-power-projection-in-senate-testimony.
“To Receive Testimony on the Posture of United States Indo-Pacific Command and United States Forces Korea.” U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hearing notice, April 21, 2026. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-posture-of-united-states-indo-pacific-command-and-united-states-forces-korea.
“Gooden Reveals Historic U.S. Military Use of Bitcoin Node.” Office of Congressman Lance Gooden, April 21, 2026. https://gooden.house.gov/2026/4/gooden-reveals-historic-u-s-military-use-of-bitcoin-node.
Rajkumari, Pooja. “U.S. Army Commander Names Bitcoin Among ‘Instruments of Power.’” The Street, April 21, 2026. https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/markets/u-s-army-commander-names-bitcoin-among-instruments-of-power.
“US Admiral Calls Bitcoin a ‘Power Projection’ Tool.” Bitbo, April 21, 2026. https://bitbo.io/news/us-admiral-bitcoin-power-projection/.