NATO & Pentagon Want Bitcoin Technology
Blockchain technology, the backbone of bitcoin, has a lot of applications. Finance firms want to use to cut down on administrative costs and trade faster. Estonia is using to securely track health records. Now it’s the military’s turn.
Both the US Department of Defense (DoD) and NATO have put out requests for military-related apps built on Blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger system. The ledger is stored in multiple copies across a large group and changes are sent out to all of them immediately, using a mathematical protocol that makes the ledger tamper-proof. That creates an immutable record of the information, and since everyone has a copy of the data, records are still safe even if a few people are hacked.
The two are looking at different implementations. The DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, wants to use Blockchain to create a secure messaging service. The group recently put out a public request for pitches on the project, and wants a web or native messaging app to help secure communications between different departments and even potentially troops in combat. NATO is looking at more traditional uses—using Blockchain to make military logistics, procurement, and finance more efficient.
Blockchain can be faster than traditional messaging and data transfer systems, and more importantly, its decentralized nature makes it less appealing for hackers. If “significant portions of the DoD back office infrastructure can be decentralized,” DARPA writes, “‘smart documents and contracts’ can be instantly and securely sent and received thereby reducing exposure to hackers and reducing needless delays in DoD back office correspondence.”
Blockchain is the new Google
At its core, the Blockchain is a technology that permanently records transactions in a way that cannot be later erased but can only be sequentially updated, in essence keeping a never-ending historical trail. This seemingly simple functional description has gargantuan implications. It is making us rethink the old ways of creating transactions, storing data, and moving assets, and that’s only the beginning.
The Blockchain cannot be described just as a revolution. It is a tsunami-like phenomenon, slowly advancing and gradually enveloping everything along its way by the force of its progression. Plainly, it is the second significant overlay on top of the Internet, just as the Web was that first layer back in 1990. That new layer is mostly about trust, so we could call it the trust layer.
Blockchains are enormous catalysts for change that affect governance, ways of life, traditional corporate models, society and global institutions. Blockchain infiltration will be met with resistance, because it is an extreme change.
The Blockchain is part of the history of the Internet. It is at the same level as the World Wide Web in terms of importance, and arguably might give us back the Internet, in the way it was supposed to be: more decentralized, more open, more secure, more private, more equitable, and more accessible. Ironically, many Blockchain applications also have a shot at replacing legacy Web applications, at the same time as they will replace legacy businesses that cannot loosen their grips on heavy-handed centrally enforced trust functions.
No matter how it unfolds, the Blockchains history will continue to be written for a very long time, just as the history of the Web continued to be written well after its initial invention. But here’s what will make the Blockchains future even more interesting: you are part of it.
