Has Congress quietly forced the Department of War to use Bitcoin to bankrupt Chinese hackers?
Congress mandated a Pentagon study on using cost-imposition methods, aligning with 'SoftWar' concepts like proof-of-work, against state-backed cyber threats.Summary
The House fiscal 2026 defense bill includes Section 1543, which directs the Pentagon to study how military capabilities can impose costs on state-backed hackers targeting defense infrastructure, with a report due by December 1, 2026. While the directive does not explicitly name Bitcoin, it formalizes a cost-imposition framework consistent with Jason Lowery's 'SoftWar' thesis, which posits that proof-of-work (PoW) can act as a power-projection system in cyberspace by making certain cyberattacks uneconomical at scale. The study must evaluate offensive cyber operations combined with non-cyber measures to raise adversary costs and reduce attack incentives. The article suggests that PoW mechanisms, such as client puzzles or pricing bulk API access, could be applied at critical choke points to convert cheap spam into measurable resource burn, effectively bankrupting automated campaigns. This approach is framed as an evolution of existing rate limits, offering non-spoofable resource burn. The mandate also ties into related reporting requirements concerning critical infrastructure risk and tabletop exercises, creating avenues for piloting PoW-priced access against traditional limits.
(Source：CryptoSlate)