Softwar by Jason Lowery: The Planetary Computer, Part 4/5
The last summary you need about the 400-page thesis the U.S. Department of Defense didn’t want you to read
Throughout Part 3, we saw how cyberspace has rapidly evolved into a new, exploitable belief system — one where technocratic god-kings can harvest, manipulate, and weaponise information to engineer human behavior through experimentation at unimaginable scale. We also saw how using logical constraints to restrict the exploitation of logic is fundamentally flawed thinking, as it relies on the same abstract power hierarchies — rank-based permission structures — that cause the very vulnerabilities they are meant to prevent.
As a response, Lowery outlined how a reverse-optimised state mechanism could help raise the CA of subjects by anchoring control signals to real-world energy expenditure through the requirement of receipts that such a mechanism was used to generate a given control signal (using proof-of-work). Doing so, in Lowery’s words, would constitute physical power projection through cyberspace in the form of electricity.
Part 4 picks up this thread: if such a state mechanism is the key to securing cyberspace, what might it actually look like in practice — and could it have broader physical implications outside cyberspace, too?
This is the final part that summarises Lowery’s thesis, as Part 5 will feature my own reflections and thoughts.
A planetary computer
Imagine watching a microchip from above — its intricate grid of etched circuits, connection points, and pulsing activity. We’ve all seen the close-up images: a maze-like architecture designed to move energy and information in precise, predictable patterns.
Now, zoom out. Replace that imagery with aerial footage of Earth at night, its cities glowing like nodes, connected by a vast, web-like electricity grid spanning the globe.
Are there similarities?
Lowery believes so — and not just metaphorically. He argues that this resemblance could become literal: the planet itself evolving into a reverse-optimised state mechanism akin to a “macrochip”, where the global electric power grid functions as the motherboard of a planetary-scale computer, Bitcoin serves as the operating system, and the electrical expenditures incurred by the network represent its state changes — the physical 1s and 0s of a global computer.
Bitcoin runs on proof-of-work, which means that in order to create new units of Bitcoin (or “coins”), miners must perform energy-intensive computations that incur real physical cost. This means that any amount of Bitcoin — no matter how small, as it can be divided into 100 million sats — while functioning as money from a monetary perspective, simultaneously serves as the exact type of receipt we’ve already been describing.
Additionally, it operates on open-source software, making it verifiable by anyone and immune to unilateral changes by any privileged party. This last point is critical as anchoring receipt generation to a rank-based abstract power hierarchy would defeat the entire purpose. In fact, the code the protocol is built on actively requires its users to validate it: every ten minutes, as each new block is created, all participants are asked to verify that the protocol (the code) is operating correctly.
“It’s theoretically possible that Bitcoin could be emerging as the base-layer operating system for a planetary-scale computer. This would mean that Bitcoin (the system) doesn’t just represent a new type of software protocol, it represents a new type of computer — a new type of computer called a planetary scale computer. If this theory is valid, then global adoption of Bitcoin simultaneously represents the global-adoption of a planetary-scale computer” (Softwar, p. 305)
By requiring a given amount of Bitcoin to accompany control signals, a given piece of software — designed to function this way — could verify that those signals were indeed generated through the expenditure of real-world energy — via the reverse-optimised state mechanism that proof-of-work represents.
To be clear, Lowery doesn’t just view the innovation of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work as merely a representation of energy in some arbitrary sense in cyberspace. He goes much further — positioning it at the very intersection of cyberspace and objective physical reality. By linking these two otherwise disconnected realms, he argues, it wouldn’t just bring physical constraints into cyberspace — cyberspace would also be able to bring “materially-consequential state changes in the surrounding physical environment outside of our computers.” (Softwar, p. 310)
Lowery writes:
“From a metacognitive perspective, turning the environment into a programmable computer would be a repeat form of bi-directional abstract thinking and symbolism discussed in the previous chapter. The symbolic meaning (Boolean logic) that sapiens apply to physical changes in shared objective physical reality would influence their shared abstract reality, and vice versa. By utilizing a planetary-scale computer that converts our global civilian infrastructure into a shared state-changing mechanism, the emergent behavior of the software running on that planetary-scale computer wouldn’t be strictly virtual. The effects of planetary scale computer software would correspond to real, meaningful physical changes of the observable universe in front of our eyes, in addition to changes in the imaginary world behind our eyes in the virtual domain of cyberspace. Once again, our abstract belief systems — our virtual reality — would change our behavior in physical reality.” (Softwar, p. 315)
“By turning the surrounding environment outside of our ordinary computers into a state-changing mechanism and then applying machine-readable logic to those state changes, a computer network like cyberspace would be able to send bits of information and control signals into its surrounding environment (i.e. the planet itself) and receive control signals back from its surrounding environment. This technique would make it possible to convert the planet itself into a massive-scale and globally decentralized planetary computer by utilizing (1) the planet’s energy resources as the state-changing mechanism and (2) the global electric power grid as its motherboard. This would qualify as a planetary-scale computer that could be plugged into the existing internet, effectively adding the state of the planet’s globally decentralized and thermodynamically restricted energy resources to the state space of cyberspace through the existing infrastructure of our global electric power grid.” (Softwar, p. 306)
He demonstrates with the following visualisation:
So what is Lowery really saying here? In his analogy of the planetary computer, he hovers between metaphor and literal interpretation — but it would be a mistake to dismiss the deeper point. One of the most important emergent properties of this vision, as I interpret it, is that any individual’s or entity’s ability to shape cyberspace would become directly tethered to the energy abundance of their physical environment.
This bears repeating: Lowery is effectively saying that, by designing software in cyberspace based on proof-of-work, humanity would quite literally turn the planet into a computer, as the energy required to perform proof-of-work leaves a verifiable footprint in objective physical reality, meaning that the underlying state mechanism of this setup is the very distribution of pools or deficits of energy (1s or 0s) across the planet.
In this architecture:
- Operating system: Bitcoin protocol (proof-of-work)
- Motherboard: Global electric power grid
- State mechanism: Pools or deficits of energy (1s or 0s)
In practical terms, this means energy becomes the currency the internet runs on — and that, for the first time, physical reality would be able to influence cyberspace just as much as cyberspace influences physical reality. An incorruptible (bi-directional) feedback loop between the two domains would emerge.
Energy as an “arm” into cyberspace
But why should it be energy, specifically? Because energy is the currency of the Universe. It can’t be faked, it obeys natural laws, and it’s one of the most inherently decentralised resources on Earth — both in its sources and in its potential for production. By grounding cyberspace in energy, Lowery suggests we’re anchoring our digital future to the same trustless substrate that governs the physical world.
We’re effectively invoking a kind of physical sensory input into cyberspace — the ability to “pinch” or “poke” — to determine what is objectively physically real. It’s the validation mechanism cyberspace has always lacked.
“When someone reaches out to touch an object to verify if it’s a real thing rather than an imaginary thing, they are technically searching for a power signal; they’re looking for the presence of watts. To poke something is to use energy to apply a force to displace mass across space and time. When someone pokes an object, they project power (a.k.a. watts). If the thing they’re trying to poke moves or exerts an equal and opposite amount of force back at its observer, then the observer gains a cross-referenceable sensory input (a.k.a. synaptic feedback) needed to tighten their consensus that the thing they see does indeed physically exist and is not just a figment of their imagination (hence why companies are working on synaptic feedback systems to make virtual reality experiences “feel” more real)
Why is a power signal so important for making online experiences “feel” more real? Because power is comprised of the core components of physically objective reality: time, space, matter, and energy. If a person can verify that power is present, then they can be much more confident that what they see is from the domain of physically objective reality, because they have verified to the best of their ability that the core components of objective reality are verifiably present. The object moved when it was poked, or the object pushed back. Therefore, the object must be real.” (Softwar, p. 316)
“Cyberspace is a virtual reality; virtual reality is, by definition, imaginary reality. When sapiens currently operate in cyberspace, everything they see represents nothing more than abstract meaning assigned to the state space of all the state machines connected across the internet. Connect billions of state machines together, and you get an incalculable number of states and state changes. Sum together the abstract meaning of that incalculable number of state changes and you get the infinitely-expanding imaginary reality of cyberspace. This domain is getting infinitely larger, faster, and cheaper to build. As this happens, cyberspace becomes infinitely more marginalized.
When people operate online, their neocortices are deprived of cross-referenceable physical sensory inputs needed to verify realness. They have no way to generate a proof-of-power signal on their own [such as “pinching” or “poking”], thus no way to produce a cross-referenceable sensory input to use as a proof-of-real signal [to determine if something is objectively physically real].
[…] Without being able to manually generate a proof-of-power signal by users on their own in a zero-trust way that can be independently validated, nothing in cyberspace is capable of being validated as physically real or consequential. Cyberspace becomes strictly an imaginary dream state, nothing but abstract meaning applied to bits of information stored as inconsequential state changes inside an infinitely-expanding state space. The abstractions pile on top of each other to the point where nothing observable in cyberspace can be unique or special — they are just programmed to present the illusion of being unique or special.” (Softwar, p. 316–317)
In case you’re not following along completely — Lowery is effectively trying to get the reader to understand that, in a very real sense, we’re already living in the Matrix whenever we’re operating in cyberspace. More importantly, he’s trying to point to the exit.
One of the many emergent properties Lowery believes could follow from introducing physical cost into cyberspace — beyond transforming the internet into being based on Physical-Power-Based Resource Control (PBS), which we’ve already explored — is that it could “unlock Moore’s Law for the global electric power grid”.
He writes:
“By turning the globally-distributed power grid into a planetary-scale computer, society would theoretically be able to unlock Moore’s law for the global electric power grid. Society would continually compete for incremental advantages by increasing the power projection efficiency and capacity of their portion of the global electric power grid (i.e. the portion of the planetary computer circuitry under their direct control). As a result, society could see exponential growth in both the efficiency and capacity of their power grids, just like they already do for their ordinary computers.” (Softwar, p. 363)
This, he believes, is a competitive “power race” we shouldn’t fear, as — unlike previous forms of physical power projection — it doesn’t escalate toward mutually assured destruction, but instead drives improvements in energy innovation that is mutually beneficial to everyone.
“No matter how competitive an electro-cyber power competition gets, it seems unlikely that it could lead to a state of mutually assured destruction because there’s nothing inherently destructive about developing increasingly efficient forms of electric power projection technology. In fact, society could potentially benefit from this power competition. It would motivate society to search for increasingly more clever technologies to generate more power more efficiently, as well as develop faster and more efficient hashing computers.” (Softwar, p. 363)
To grasp how profound this could be, if Lowery’s thesis is correct, we should be able to take a short tangent — not explicitly drawn from his words — and speculate on the broader implications this might have for the feedback loops that guide entrepreneurship, human migration, and patterns of human settlement.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the dominant trend has been to concentrate geographically into ever-denser megacities and industrial hubs. This made sense historically: costs could be cut, infrastructure shared, and living standards improved through economies of scale.
However, this has meant that energy must be generated elsewhere, transported over long distances, and delivered reliably — a process that is often dirty and always thermodynamically expensive.
With the ability to monetise cheap energy directly at the source, this long-standing trend could now be disrupted. Previously, even if cheap energy was available in remote locations, it made little economic sense to decentralise geographically. Unless you could connect that energy to a centralised power grid, or build a viable local industry to consume it, it remained economically stranded.
Now, with proof-of-work mining (aka a “planetary computer”), we have a situation where cheap, stranded, or surplus energy can be monetised directly at its source — without needing connection to a centralised grid, and without needing proximity to dense urban demand. Energy no longer has to move to people. People and capital can move to energy.
This cloud flip the historical pattern on its head. Whereas before, energy followed human concentration (cities, factories, industrial hubs), now human activity can follow thermodynamic abundance wherever it naturally arises. The planetary computer incentivises this behavior, through its operating system Bitcoin, by a simple but powerful dynamic: the cheaper the energy input costs, the higher the margins from mining.
In effect, it creates a global “corrective mechanism”: those who can harness abundant, low-cost energy are rewarded, while those who rely on expensive, inefficient energy are naturally priced out.
While this wouldn’t be a unique insight of Lowery’s work, it demonstrates what he supposedly means when he writes stuff like: “[…] Cyberspace would be able to send bits of information and control signals into its surrounding environment (i.e. the planet itself) and receive control signals back from its surrounding environment.” (Softwar, p. 306)
The result, as Lowery envisions, is a constant optimisation of the global electric power grid — regardless of whether it’s interconnected or self-contained — driven by the same evolutionary dynamics that explain Moore’s Law.
It bears emphasising that this “communication line” between the planet and cyberspace — which, in a very real sense, would directly influence economic outcomes — is as incorruptible as proof-of-work itself. No abstract power hierarchy could sustainably “block” a state change generated by the external environment. The feedback loop between physical reality and cyberspace would remain fundamentally honest, enforced not by law or by what anyone “thinks” is true, but by physics.
Why the Tech Stack Matters
One of Lowery’s most important and recurring insights that he makes throughout his thesis is that proof-of-work–based computing (based on physical-power-based resource control, or PPB) cannot be meaningfully compared to traditional software programs running on conventional chips (based on abstract-power-based resource control, or ABP). The difference lies deep in the “tech stack” — a term that refers not just to the software layer we interact with, but all the way down to the base layer state mechanism.
At the surface, two software objects might look the same — both might be labeled a “coin”. But if they emerge from entirely different substrates, they are fundamentally different in nature, as one has withstood the constraints of physical reality to come into being, while the other was conjured from pure imagination, at no cost and with no anchor to objective physical reality.
To make this crystal clear: equating a table carved from real wood — grown in a forest and built by human hands — with a digital image of that table simply because they share superficial traits is to commit a false correlation. Yet this is exactly what we do when we confuse something forged through physical costs with something that was created at virtually no cost as an abstraction. For all their apparent similarity, they could not be more different.
“Since the physical differences at the bottom of the tech stack are often ignored, many software engineers keep assert they can replicate the complex emergent properties (namely systemic security) of Bitcoin using regular programs running on ordinary computer hardware. Additionally, the general public commonly claims that the Bitcoin computing network is energy inefficient and that it should be replaced by something more “environmentally friendly.” The author believes these assertions are being made because people are missing the point that making a physically costly computer for the purpose of producing physically constrained and thermodynamically restricted bits of information is the primary value-delivered-function of proof-of-work protocols.” (Softwar, p. 327)
Take Bitcoin as the prime example: its “coins” emerge from a stack rooted in thermodynamic reality. They are scarce, path-dependent, and unforgeable. A Bitcoin is not just an abstract entry — it’s the crystallisation of real-world energy expenditure, with a verifiable trace in the physical domain.
Contrast this with some other “coin” (such as Ethereum) created by ordinary software through “proof-of-stake”. These are instantiated on state mechanisms that are unconstrained, malleable, and costless to replicate. They may appear similar on the surface, but the underlying systems are radically different. One is rooted in physical power, the other on abstract power.
“For the same reason it’s not possible to claim that something which doesn’t exist is equal to something which does exist, it’s not possible to claim that proof-of-stake is equal to proof-of-work.” (Softwar, p. 327)
With this understanding in mind, we can begin to distinguish Bitcoin from the rest of the “crypto field” entirely. It’s not the metaphor that matters — it’s the substrate. Is it secured by proof-of-work or by proof-of-stake? Once this distinction is made clear, Bitcoin’s dominance become immediately self-evident. The vast majority of crypto initiatives that bear similarity in name simply don’t play in the same league — literally speaking.
I can’t help but connect this overarching concept with many of the observations made outside the domain of cyberspace as well.
Just like software abstractions built on unconstrained state machines, many companies and institutions in the fiat world emerge not from grounded economic fundamentals (PBS), but from artificially cheap capital (ABS). They look like businesses. They behave like businesses. But they’ve emerged from a substrate saturated with thermodynamically unsound money — meaning they are not the same.
We see the same pattern in art. When there’s no real cost to creation — when AI floods the market, when subsidised pipelines remove friction, or when cultural gatekeeping replaces merit — do we actually get outcomes that are comparable in depth or meaning? Or do we simply get more output, increasingly disconnected and of lesser quality? And what does it do to human discernment when even scarcity becomes a simulation?
When there’s no physical cost to build or create something — does the result retain the same value?
These examples all follow the same logic Lowery outlines: you can’t replicate emergent properties by copying appearances at the surface layer. The credibility of a thing — be it a coin, a company, a cultural artefact, or even the character of a person — depends on what it had to endure to come into being.
These questions cut across layers. They speak to how different substrates yield different outcomes — and how those outcomes are not just marginally different, but fundamentally so in nearly every conceivable way, even when they appear similar on the surface.
Lowery’s core insight is that proof-of-work doesn’t just change the economics of digital systems. It changes their physics. It plants the seed for a new kind of internet — a new kind of world — one whose emergent order is so fundamentally different that I dare to say it amounts to nothing less than a hard-fork of human civilisation. And for Lowery, embracing this shift isn’t a matter of ideological preference — it’s a question of existential gravity.
Mutual assured preservation
The innovation of Bitcoin by the anonymous figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto solved one of the most persistent challenges in computer science: the double-spend problem — how to maintain a decentralised ledger without relying on special permission structures (abstract power hierarchies). In so doing, he constructed a proof-of-work receipts generating machine that can’t be cheated.
The implications of this are not to be understated. Satoshi effectively discovered a way for actors who don’t trust each other — who may hold completely opposing worldviews — to still reach consensus around a shared monetary ledger. He introduced a universal denominator: a mechanism that enables cooperation and exchange even in the most extreme trustless environments.
By introducing proof-of-work (PoW) as the basis for consensus, Satoshi essentially made it possible to validate truth in a trustless way using raw physical power — electricity. Bitcoin itself stands as the living proof that it works: no one has ever successfully rewritten its ledger by cheating it.
But while Satoshi explicitly solved how to build the first truly decentralised monetary protocol, Lowery argues that the achievement may run even deeper: it may also represent the first method by which individuals, companies, and even nation-states can project physical power in cyberspace — not with kinetic force, but with electricity. In doing so, they may have laid the groundwork for the first-ever non-lethal form of physical power projection — which have the same emerging properties as physical-power-based resource control (PBS) without causing the harm.
But before we get to the final implication of this, it bears repeating: why would anyone want to project physical power in cyberspace?
“The digital-age ruling class is the technocratic group of people who control our computers through the software they write. It’s the people who administer our software, including but not limited to governments. […] Society’s lack of ability or inclination to project physical power (in any domain) to reduce their BCRA is a well-known systemic security hazard that can be independently and empirically validated. The exact same systemic security hazard exists for cyberspace. Without the capacity or inclination to project physical power and impose physical costs in, from, and through cyberspace, a technocratic ruling class of neo god-kings have an opportunity to domesticate and systemically exploit human populations at a massive and unprecedented scale — simply by having physically unconstrained control authority over their computer networks.” (Softwar, p. 348)
Lower goes on:
“A network of computers connected together creates a state space which transfers, receives, and stores bits of information. Some call this state space an intranet or internet. Others call it cyberspace. Because these are abstract names, it would be just as accurate to call cyberspace an ocean. This “ocean” created by a network of computers functions as a new domain through which nations exchange a vitally important new type of good — bits of information. Over the span of a single human lifetime, this cyberspace ocean has become a very important domain upon which nations rely for the exchange of vital bits of information. Many different bits of information have value, but among the most valuable bits of information that nations like to exchange are bits of financial information which facilitate international trade and settlement.” (Softwar, p. 358)
The internet today resembles a global ocean dominated by a few superpowers who control nearly all trade routes. Anyone wishing to navigate these waters must pass through chokepoints — controlled either directly or indirectly by the “god-kings” of cyberspace. And because control signals cost virtually nothing to send, even a lone “pirate” can cause outsized disruption.
“Bitcoin represents the emergence of a new internet tech stack which disrupts our perception of cyberspace from the bottom up. It’s also a non-lethal form of freedom fighting that could empower people to physically resist tyranny and oppression in, from, and through cyberspace.” (Softwar, p. 349)
Again, what Lowery envisions is a fundamentally different internet — one where participants can secure their own trade routes in cyberspace, enforced not by rank or through bloodshed but by physics. Just like in the physical world where nations protect trade lanes with ships and missiles, individuals and organisations could use electricity — via PoW — to defend their right for passage.
The reason this hasn’t been possible until now, Lowery hypothesis, is because there was no choice. If one power controls the sea, everyone must still attempt to sail it.
“With this new internet architecture, people are capable of physically securing themselves against hackers as well as physically securing themselves against systemic exploitation from of an emerging, technocratic ruling class — and they can do it all without spilling a single drop of blood.” (Softwar, p. 349)
But unlike kinetic physical power — which is inherently destructive and increases entropy when used — projecting power through electricity in cyberspace has a very different long-term consequence. The race to defend cyberspace with physical power creates a planetary incentive to harness energy more efficiently. It’s creative, thus countervailing entropy.
“Whereas the byproduct of a kinetic war is destruction of infrastructure and more expensive energy, the byproduct of softwar appears to be the creation of more infrastructure and cheaper energy. […] Society would continually compete for incremental advantages by increasing the power projection efficiency and capacity of their portion of the global electric power grid (i.e. the portion of the planetary computer circuitry under their direct control). As a result, society could see exponential growth in both the efficiency and capacity of their power grids, just like they already do for their ordinary computers.” (Softwar, p. 363)
With this insight, we now build toward the final point Lowery makes in his thesis — one that deserves to speak for itself. He walks the reader through it step by step, and it’s crucial to follow closely.
“With physical cost function protocols like Bitcoin, anyone who contributes physical power to the system (as measured by hash rate) automatically increases the mutual CA and decreases the mutual BCRA of all users, including adversaries. The author hypothesizes this is because Bitcoin users technically utilize the same planetary-scale state mechanism. By turning the global electric power grid into a planetary-scale computer, two adversarial users living on opposite sides of the world “stick together” in a symbiotic relationship because they are technically utilizing two sides of the same machine. Because they’re both using the same planetary-scale computer, if both sides were to attempt to marginalize the permissions of the other side by building larger and more powerful hash forces, they would increase the CA and lower the BCRA the same machine upon which they mutually rely.
So long as no single hash force is allowed to gain and maintain majority hash rate (which is easy to prevent when all users have the freedom to add theoretically unlimited amounts of physical power/hash rate to the system from their side of the planet), then the addition of more physical power/hash to the system serves to increase the total physical cost required to gain and maintain systemically exploitable control over the system. In other words, as more physical power is added to the Bitcoin network by hash forces, the total physical cost required to achieve centralized control authority over the network increases, making it harder for any one entity to gain and maintain centralized control over the ledger. This creates an emergent behavior of the Bitcoin protocol where the physical costs required to exploit the ledger can grow ad infinitum.” (Softwar, p. 366)
It seems, based on Lowery’s own framing, that a kind of “clustering” effect is taking place — where any actor increasing their own CA inevitably reinforces the collective CA of the entire network, including that of their adversaries. In other words, what strengthens one actor also appears to strengthen the group.
Escalating kinetic vs electric physical power projection
So what does this actually mean? To fully understand this, we must return to the conceptual idea of the “Prosperity Trap” that was outlined at the end of Part 1. It captures the dead end we find ourselves in — where the global balance of power rests on the threat of nuclear mutual assured destruction.
“Ironically, the most efficient kinetic power projection technology ever created (nuclear warheads) appears to have created the most inefficient way to settle international policy disputes.”
In this state, resorting to kinetic physical power projection, as we already outlined, is unthinkable. As a result, doubling down on abstract power hierarchies based on trust — while stripping away any realistic avenue for physical power projection when that trust is violated — becomes the only pragmatic path forward. But as Lowery points out, this isn’t a true solution; it merely kicks the can down the road and delays the inevitable collapse — when all trust has eroded and the unthinkable happens anyway.
Lowery points out the following:
“Since the discovery of nuclear power, [the] strategy of deliberately using less efficient non-nuclear power projection technologies [less-lethal kinetic weapons such as drones] has only succeeded at settling minor disputes between asymmetric powers. It’s still not clear whether it’s actually possible for two nuclear-armed nations to settle major disputes using non-nuclear power projection technology. This would require one nation to be willing to surrender to another despite having the capacity to mutually assure the destruction of the nation to which they’re surrendering, and that doesn’t seem like a realistic scenario.” (Softwar, p. 362)
So what we can take from this is that as kinetic physical power projection between nations escalates, our ability to decentralise power diminishes in practical terms — because actually using kinetic power eventually becomes unthinkable. This leaves us increasingly dependent on abstract power hierarchies, which are fertile breeding grounds for corruption and dysfunction, especially as trust inevitably dissipates at some point and it’s unimaginable to fallback to physical power. This means that as legacy warfare (kinetic) — i.e., weapons technology of this sort — continues to escalate, so does our inability to cooperate in a very real sense. And this, in turn, makes clear the underlying logic of the Prosperity Trap Lowery is outlining: a world so tightly bound by the threat of mutual destruction that it must eliminate accountability to avoid catastrophe — yet, in doing so, guarantees catastrophe anyway.
To understand this in a very real sense, let’s imagine an alternate history where Hitler had achieved nuclear capability before the Allied powers. Had that been the case, the rest of the world might have been forced to tolerate the continued existence of the nazi belief system, albeit in a contained form — no matter how destructive or deranged — simply because invoking kinetic power to dismantle it would have risked mutual annihilation. Once that sinks in, the next logical step is to ask: how much dysfunction are we tolerating today as a consequence of the very same dynamic? More importantly, is there any way out?
“Something remarkable about the disembodied and transnational form of Bitcoin’s security infrastructure is that it appears to be highly resistant to kinetic strikes, including strategic nuclear strikes. Bitcoin’s infrastructure is spread across the world and is comprised of the globally-distributed internet, power grid, and all the people running these systems. Because it’s a decentralized network, the only way to destroy it is to destroy the whole network. […] While this is theoretically feasible, it’s not practically feasible because of the kinetic power projection paradox [using it becomes irrational, as it doesn’t achieve stated objective].” […] [Therefore], nations which adopt Bitcoin gain access to a global scale physical defense infrastructure that can empower them to stand up to nuclear-armed superpowers [because it can’t be nuked].” (Softwar, p. 361)
As opposed to kinetic warfare, physical power projection through electricity has no “ceiling” — there is no threshold beyond which its use would trigger mutual assured destruction, because it is non-lethal by nature. Instead, what would happen is that as electrical power projection escalates, humanity in aggregate would become less prone to the centralisation of power (as it would be more difficult to achieve) and lead to dual-purpose technology innovation. Because, unlike missiles and tanks, the tools required for electrical power projection — like energy infrastructure — directly contribute to growing prosperity. This is because energy is the ultimate constraint on progress, and as it becomes more abundant and efficiently harnessed, prosperity scales with it.
The self-reinforcing dynamic, then, is: the more we compete via non-lethal physical power in the form of electricity, the more we protect ourselves against the centralisation of power while simultaneously incentivising energy innovation, which expands Resource Abundance for all. Unlike kinetic physical power projection, this path follows a positive-sum logic — one that ought to also reduce the very root causes of war by removing scarcity as a central driver.
It’s at this point that the logic of energy-based money — like Bitcoin — also starts to make intuitive sense on a deeper and more meaningful level. We can easily understand that one of the most direct ways to build physical power projection capabilities in cyberspace is by participating in Bitcoin mining — by contributing electricity in exchange for proof-of-work receipts (Bitcoin).
But the brilliance of the “planetary computer” isn’t that it “blindly” rewards energy expenditure in a race to the bottom where the only rational move is to throw all electricity at mining. It’s that it operates under natural law. Through its connection to objective physical reality, the cost to produce one Bitcoin generally trends toward the global average cost of the energy required to mine it. This isn’t theoretical — it’s already observable in the real world. And it might be the most intuitive way to grasp what Lowery means when he talks about cyberspace and the physical world “communicating” with one another.
Unless you have access to energy priced below that global average, participating in Bitcoin mining becomes financially irrational. We can think of this dynamic as the “planetary computer” in action — where Bitcoin is the operating system, and the pools and deficits of energy as the state change — telling you: unless your energy is cheaper than average, you’re better off using your electricity to build, create, or produce something else of value — and then trading that for Bitcoin on the open market.
Put the opposite way: if your electricity can’t be used to meaningfully transform something in the physical world — something others find valuable — then don’t waste it trying to fabricate value out of thin air. Send it upward instead. Let it reinforce the security of the ledger. Let it contribute to the planetary computer’s ongoing integrity by broadcasting a verifiable signal — a thermodynamic state change — to every other participant. And it doesn’t just tell you; it compensates you for doing so. This signal doesn’t just record activity; it provides real-time feedback to the entire world, rooted in natural law, that is valuable to everyone running software on top of that tech stack. It’s an incorruptible data point, grounded in physics. As Lowery has pointed out multiple times, the emergent order of a planetary computer — like the one described here — cannot be replicated through simulation.
Infinitely prosperous organism
So, given how the escalation of kinetic versus electrical physical power projection appears to lead to completely different endpoints, we’re now on the cusp — in fact, we already have everything in place — of understanding how we may escape the Prosperity Trap that Lowery has defined for us. Because, as we already understand, while escalating kinetic power projection leads to mutual assured destruction and total dysfunction, the competition of electrical power projection appears to do the opposite: the more we project it into the planetary computer, the more we seem to collectively reduce entropy and increase abundance.
“It is difficult to understate how big a deal it would be if it were true that Nakamoto did indeed discover a way for global society to achieve zero-trust, egalitarian, and permissionless control over bits of information passed across the internet, because that would mean he figured out a way for global society to establish zero-trust, egalitarian, and permissionless control authority over many of digital-age society’s most precious resources without requiring kinetic warfare.” (Softwar, p. 355)
And here comes the final piece of the puzzle:
“Returning back to a core concept in Power Projection Theory introduced in Chapter 3 [end of Part 1 in this article series], Cyanobacteria were able to escape from the fiery hellscape of the Great Oxidation Event by evolving several new power projection tactics, to include learning how to stick together using multicellular cooperation. Both types of early multicellular cooperation represented zero-trust cooperation tactics. Cells didn’t stick together because they trusted each other; they stuck together because they were literally stuck together either through colonization or clustering. As a result of their zero-trust cooperation tactic, they were able to sum their combined physical power and escape their bounded prosperity trap together.”
“Herein lies what the author believes to be the most compelling feature of the Bitcoin protocol: it could create an infinitely prosperous organism [as discussed earlier, and seen below]. By competing against each other for permissionless access to the Bitcoin network, adversaries serve each other by increasing the physical cost required to attack the network. Their competing power projection capacity is summed together to increase the overall CA of the network. As a result of this ongoing power competition, network BCRA perpetually decreases. As usersscale their hash rates ad infinitum, the network’s CA increases ad infinitum and BCRA decreases ad infinitum, thus giving all users an infinitely expandable prosperity margin. So long as no single user can gain and maintain majority hash, everyone using this computer network benefits from the battle over control authority over it.” (Softwar, p. 367)
As if by magic, the Bitcoin protocol turns adversarial physical power competition into a single, cohesive, infinitely prosperous organism chasing after the same mutually beneficial end goal of improving security and preserving freedom of information exchange across cyberspace. Enemies become frenemies. Adversarial nations become de facto collaborators working together on the same planetary-scale computer, despite not trusting each other. Unlike the dynamics of kinetic power projection competitions shown in Figure 54 [seen below], the end state of this global-scale electro-cyber power projection competition is not mutually assured destruction, it’s mutually assured preservation.”
The diagrams below visualise two radically different evolutionary trajectories of physical power projection: one rooted in kinetic, the other in electricity. They represent not just two strategies — but two civilisational paths — one leading to mutually assured destruction and the other to mutually assured preservation.
In the first row (below), we see the classical logic of kinetic power projection, or what Lowery calls “Hard War”. Here, survival hinges on:
- Securing mass-based resources by threatening or imposing severe kinetic physical costs (lethal) on adversaries.
- Fragmentation into independent organisms (and organisations), each weighing the potential BA against the CA in kinetic terms like blood or territory.
- As physical power accumulates and centralises — particularly through nuclear weapons — nations enter a strategic stalemate. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) emerges as a stabilising logic — actors avoid total war not out of trust but out of the shared understanding that nuclear war yields infinite cost for finite gain.
- When kinetic power projection can no longer scale (due to destructiveness), this dynamic locks the world into a Bounded Prosperity Trap, where the CA becomes fixed while the BA continues to rise. When BA > CA, systemic exploitation becomes rational, and trust-based systems — being unprotected — gradually erode to the point where kinetic power projection becomes unavoidable anyway.
In the second row (above), instead of centralising power for deterrence, competing participants project electrical power into the Bitcoin network, each contributing to a collective defense architecture. Here, the adversarial efforts strengthen the system itself:
- Securing mass-less resources (bits) by imposing severe electric physical costs (non-lethal) on those who try to impede access — shifting the “battleground” from kinetic to electric.
- Independent actors engage in adversarial competition via hash rate, where each participant’s attempt to dominate the network paradoxically strengthens it.
- Mutually Assured Preservation (MAP) emerges as a stabilising logic — as adversaries co-produce defense, aligning incentives by raising the CA for all participants, thereby expanding the Prosperity Margin.
- An infinitely prosperous organism begins to take shape, driven by the clustering effect of rising CA. Because CA scales with non-lethal electricity rather than lethal kinetic power, the system becomes infinitely scalable as BCRA trends toward zero.
What the author calls “Softwar” — a new form of non-lethal, electricity-based physical power projection tactic — is, in other words, the evolutionary emergence of human antlers.
Epilogue
A diagram from Lowery’s Softwar thesis has been circulating around social media — first as a hand-drawn sketch, later rendered into a more polished graphic. The original appears on page 52 in Chapter 2, though without accompanying commentary. My sense is that it was included intuitively but that Lowery choose not to expand on it — perhaps because it didn’t neatly fit within the formal constraints of the thesis or simply was too speculative.
Still, using what Lowery has outlined, we can at least speculate on the significance of what he was getting at here.
From an economic perspective, we know that in a world where money is not scarce and continuously loses monetary value, individuals, corporations, and nation-states seek to store it elsewhere — namely in mass-based, physical assets. What makes a particular asset suitable for storing value is the extent to which it remains scarce and desirable over time. This explains why land, gold, oil (which, although not that scarce, remains indispensable to industrial civilisation and thus persistent strategic value), and equities are common candidates. Another way to frame it is that these assets, in different ways, are able to “resist entropy” (or dilution) relatively well.
Simply put, if your goal is to preserve value over time, you should avoid assets that degrade quickly, like an apple, and instead choose something that holds its form, like a plot of land, for as long as possible.
This explains why the wealthy often buy real estate not to live in, but to park capital. It also explains why certain states insist that global trade — especially in oil — must be settled in U.S. dollars. On the surface, these may appear to be about housing, gold, or oil as resources, but a deeper look reveals they’re being used as substitutes to money. This also means they absorb what is known as monetary premium, which simply refers to the added value an asset carries not because of its utility, but because it functions as a store of value.
But because these are mass-based, physical assets — rooted in objective physical reality — they are exposed to physical risks. Their ownership must be enforced and defended by lethal kinetic power projection — military, police, and walls. There’s simply no way around it: physical assets must be protected by kinetic physical power.
Using the framework Lowery develops throughout Softwar, we can understand the supposed implications of this through the lens of Primordial Economics.
As more monetary premium accumulates in these physical assets, their density of value and vulnerability to physical seizure drives up their BA, making them increasingly attractive targets. Meanwhile, the CA cannot scale indefinitely — constrained by the previously discussed “kinetic ceiling” — leaving CA bounded while BA trends toward infinity. The result is an unstable dynamic that arguably has laid the foundations for many conflicts, foreign and domestic: as the rewards for taking grow, the costs of defending can no longer keep pace.
Bitcoin offers a new path. Instead of binding monetary premium to a mass-based resource protected by kinetic power, it binds it to a mass-less resource protected by electricity.
All money is, at its core, is just shared monetary ledger — a record of who owns what at any given point in time. And because Satoshi set out in his white paper to solve precisely how to maintain such a ledger in a way that everyone can agree on — without requiring trust — he effectively created something we’ve never had before: perfect money with absolute scarcity.
This means that if you’re currently storing monetary premium in a physical asset vulnerable to kinetic attack, it ought to be in your best interest — and that of both allies and adversaries — to migrate to an asset where CA can scale indefinitely. In doing so, you don’t just make hostile action less viable through mutual assured preservation; you also transform the cost of security from human blood to electricity.
What Lowery set out to show in his nearly 400-page thesis is that viewing Bitcoin merely as perfect money — as groundbreaking as that achievement may be — still understates its true significance. Because what’s being preserved here isn’t just some arbitrary sense of wealth; it’s potentially human lives.
“The author asserts that Bitcoin is not monetary technology — at least, money doesn’t appear to be its primary value-delivered function. Instead, Bitcoin appears to be an electro-cyber freedom fighting technology.” (Softwar, p. 349)
And so, if Lowery’s thesis is correct — if physical power projection can occur through cyberspace — then this shift isn’t merely technological or monetary. It’s civilisational.
Lowery closes the thesis with an implied answer to a question he never explicitly states — perhaps something like, what would such a technology be worth? by stating:
“If these theories are valid, then Bitcoin would not be a waste of energy; Bitcoin would be worth every watt.” (Softwar, p. 385)
In the final part of this series, I shift into full reflection mode. You can read Part 5 here.
