Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week that the United States military is running a node on the Bitcoin network. The four-star admiral confirmed during a FY2027 defense authorization hearing that his command is conducting operational tests to secure and protect networks using the Bitcoin protocol.
“We have a node on the Bitcoin network right now,” Paparo said during questioning from Sen. Tommy Tuberville on whether US Bitcoin leadership strengthens deterrence against China in the Indo-Pacific. “We’re doing a number of operational tests to secure and protect networks using the Bitcoin protocol.”
This marks the first time a combatant commander has publicly characterized Bitcoin as a national security asset in congressional testimony. Paparo didn’t stop at confirming the node. He described Bitcoin as “a peer-to-peer, zero-trust transfer of value” and called it “a valuable computer science tool as a power projection.”
Proof-of-Work as Cybersecurity Infrastructure
Paparo’s comments frame Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism not as a monetary innovation but as a defensive tool. He told the committee that Bitcoin’s protocols “impose more cost” on attackers and have “really important computer science applications for cybersecurity.” The admiral added that Bitcoin “shows incredible potential as a computer science tool,” a pointed departure from the skepticism that has defined official Washington’s stance on digital assets for most of the past decade.
The node isn’t being used for mining or treasury accumulation. It’s research infrastructure. Paparo said he’d prefer to go deeper on specifics in a classified setting, which suggests the operational tests involve threat modeling, attack surface analysis, or network resilience experiments that the military doesn’t want broadcast.
Nation-State Shift
This isn’t institutional adoption. It’s a signal that the largest military in the world is treating Bitcoin as a tool in the cyber domain, not a financial instrument. The same proof-of-work that secures transaction ordering is, in Paparo’s framing, a zero-trust architecture that forces adversaries to spend resources to compromise. That reframes the entire conversation around Bitcoin’s energy use: the cost isn’t a bug, it’s the security model.
Paparo’s testimony lands at a moment when the US and China are positioning around digital infrastructure, from semiconductor supply chains to satellite networks. If INDOPACOM is running a Bitcoin node for operational security tests, other combatant commands and allied militaries are either doing the same or watching closely. The protocol’s open-source, permissionless structure means any state actor can spin up a node, audit the code, and test the security assumptions without asking permission. That’s the point.
The hearing wasn’t about Bitcoin policy or regulation. It was about deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Paparo tied Bitcoin directly to that mission, calling it a tool of American power projection. That language matters. Power projection is what the US does with carrier strike groups and forward-deployed forces. Now, according to a four-star admiral, it’s also what the US does with a Bitcoin node.
