Reviewing SoftWar
Updated.
Reviewing Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection and the National Strategic Significance of Bitcoin – a thesis by MAJ J.P. Lowery.
Current political climates necessitate opportunities for peace and economic prosperity. Bitcoin offers solutions that facilitate both. This review has been revised, deleted, rewritten and revised again - because it is important. There is a massive vacancy for publications that have the information and guidance needed for nation-state Bitcoin security strategies. Softwar claimed to be a resource for federal and Military leadership, but failed to deliver.
It is not enough to produce content “for national strategic interests.” The content has to be of actionable value. The content of Softwar did not offer actionable value at the level of national strategic interest. There is still an urgent need for this work. I hope that this review will stop people from putting all their eggs in one person’s basket for the sake of social media likes, and I hope to encourage everyone to collaborate on nation-state systems that provide actionable Bitcoin adoption strategies.
From two years of social media and podcast appearances discussing his thesis, I expected the author to publish a comprehensive text with guidance for Military leadership to better understand Bitcoin as a national security tool. Instead, Jason Lowery (JPL) published his thesis focused on an abstract perception of conflict through a behavioral science lens with no immediately applicable, tangible, functional guidance for national Bitcoin adoption or national security ways, means, costs, or analysis. There was a brief section (6.3) on policy guidelines that lacked specificity and practical systems-level Bitcoin adoption and use strategies.
Perhaps I misinterpreted the discussions on social media for two straight years? Either way, I was disappointed to read what felt like a very long facebook philosophy rant with nice artwork. Softwar’s author listed over a decade of top tier credentials, to include being a DoD sponsored MIT fellow. The quality of the work published is not what I expected to come from what is considered “scholarly” or “academic.”
Avoiding opinions as much as possible, this review will outline negatives/positives and issues with formatting and other errors found throughout the book. Social media is crowded with glowing recommendations and positive comments about Softwar, none of which focus on anything more than supporting the author and the intent of the theory - where real critique of the work has been necessary.
It is important to understand that there are limited resources for the public to access educational materials about Bitcoin, let alone informative “strategic significance to national security” books. Softwar provided a unique perspective and a lot of content to wander around on. I believe all books, good and bad, have something to teach us. There are lessons in everything we read, so I will absolutely recommend Softwar - but I also suggest taking notes on your thoughts while reading it and publishing an honest review.
Objective, thorough, honest reviews of JPL’s thesis do not seem to exist – as most social media posts seem to be focused on being supportive of the author and Softwar’s main theme. Although I agree his theme is valid and generates a diversity of opinion and discussion, the book was poorly organized and badly written. I enjoyed section 5.11.2 (a lot) and 6.3 (the only real policy part in the entire text was still lacking!), and the verbiage from the bottom of pages 309 and 355.
It was difficult to digest the immense amount of bolding, italics, and underlining. Academic work uses italics to emphasize words, phrases, works, and scientific nomenclature, while bold and underlining is used sparingly to communicate a section header, label or other important information.
JPL italicized, bolded, and underlined entire paragraphs on almost EVERY page. Additional formatting issues such as inconsistent page/paragraph spacing and image and graph sizes, a lack of works cited, and paragraphs throughout consistently starting with “the, their, there, for arguments sake, this, I, as, if, in, it, a, throughout…” also made it difficult to digest as “academic work.”
This is not to say that one should never start paragraphs with those words. This is to say that those words should rarely be used at the beginning of a paragraph, and never when introducing a topic or discussing an undefined subject matter.
The acknowledgements began with a paragraph starting with “First, I would like…” Followed by a paragraph that began with the words “I would also like.”
Followed by another paragraph starting with “I would like.”
Followed by another paragraph starting with “It’s impossible for me to…”
Followed by a final paragraph, starting again with “I would also like…”
All on the same page.
This was difficult to read, as it was followed by a list of over a decade of top tier credentials in the author’s biography. It set the tone of the authors work throughout the book: self-focused, wordy, redundant, opinionated, and casual.
The list of acronyms was missing a definition of “LARP.” JPL’s work assumes a certain level of prerequisite Bitcoin and tech culture slang understanding by the readership. The author has spent a great deal of time on social media promoting his work to leadership across federal and Military agencies. It is important to have produced work that is easily understood by anyone reading from any level of understanding. I am a firm believer that if you have to explain the book, the book did not do its job of explaining itself - an authorship fail. This thesis lacked a basic introduction to Bitcoin and used slang terminology throughout. A diversity of readership requires academic work to introduce its topic and define subject matter in a clear and concise manner. This was not evident.
The Executive Summary began with a figure caption while the thesis itself was only introduced in one line on the second paragraph of the abstract that was printed in the book before the acknowledgements. Brief references to the original thesis changed throughout the text.
At the top of page 16, the author insults readership capacity for understanding complex concepts. And still, so far, almost 20 pages in, no explanation of Bitcoin. This was an important definition/explanation left out for beginners, laymen, older people, and the digitally incompetent. It should have been included in the introduction.
It gave me hope to see the author state how ignorance was a threat to national security. This is true.
It was aggravating to see giant, paragraph-sized quotes italicized at the beginning of, and throughout every section.
98% of Softwar is the same examples of power projection, rhetoric, opinions and declarations with verbiage rearranged. The second paragraph on page 21 seemed to make ¾ of the book irrelevant.
Academic writing should not have paragraphs starting with “a first,” and then, “a second thing,” followed by “a third thing,” and then “a fourth thing.” There are ways to start paragraphs and still introduce a procession of paragraphs of a list of topics in numerical order without literally saying “and the second thing, and the third thing,” and so on.
The bottom of page 25 discussed cognitive dissonance and was a lost opportunity to cite sources and avoid excessive opinions.
Section titles and headers were entire paragraphs and the formatting to separate sections was indistinguishable from the general text.
Overall, text and imagery were redundantly repetitive. Repetition was superfluously rampant. Redundancies repeated repeatedly.
Figure 3 on page 24 was 3 images later split up and found in figure 30 on page 115, and again in figure 8 on page 65.
Images that do not add clarity or information should not be included in academic work. Although it was nice to see original artwork (once), the art faded into redundancy when used multiple times. Noticing an illustration being repeated in several sections is a great opportunity to edit and fix all the ways text can be as recurrent as imagery.
Another example of redundancy is highlighted in one sentence at the bottom of page 34.
It reads: “Watts are watts regardless of whether they’re generated kinetically or electronically.”
To eliminate redundant verbiage, it should read:
“Watts are watts, regardless of kinetic origin.”
Why? Because “regardless of whether” is a redundant statement and electricity is kinetic. That would be like saying a watt is either kinetic or kinetic. Electricity is literally kinetic energy. That was two redundancies in one sentence. Authors can avoid this by reading their work out loud and asking objective third parties to provide honest line-by-line reviews before publishing. This redundancy example happens throughout JPL’s work and is something I expected the author would have had assistance with through an editor or reviewer before publishing as academic work.
Side note: I have used the word redundant, redundantly and redundancies a lot. Re-reading my work, I can find a few different ways to have presented the material using different vocabulary. This a helpful practice. To avoid redundancies :)
Side note again: I realize this is both an opinion and a personal problem, but I feel it is important to explain how I got distracted repeatedly stopping and re-reading entire sections after revising them in my head. It was a terrible experience. I expected academic work from an MIT fellow to be concise, informative, and clear. This thesis was not that.
Section 1.5.1 belongs up front and center. JPL’s organizational structure was out of sync with the flow of information. Throughout the text, redundant topic discussions were mixed into different sections that reinforced repetition. Circles upon circles of repetitious repeatery.
The word “incontrovertibly” is used a billion and ten times (don’t trust, verify actual number, read the book and count them). Instead of using the same word over and over again, an author can revise sentence structures or reorganize paragraphs with help from a thesaurus to better utilize a range of impactful vocabulary.
JPL’s discussion about “primordial economics” was interesting and useful.
Page 128 states “non-human species can’t perceive symbols and abstract meaning.” This is not true. You can read something about this here: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep0371
Academic work presents information with citations. JPL made a lot of general statements and presented information without citations or references where they were needed. Non-human species can and have been studied perceiving symbols and abstract meaning.
Pages 165 and 166 discuss the “capitol insurrection.” This section needs to be revised after having seen recent public information, videos, and new coverage.
On page 209, the author expresses his support for war as a normal part of culture and society by stating: “We must be willing to entertain an uncomfortable but potentially valid hypothesis that wars provide an irreplaceable social and technical benefit to society.”
This is a very controversial perspective and opinion. Reading academic work about a strategic national security tool by an author that believes in facilitating war as a culture – makes it difficult to interpret subject matter objectively.
With a topic as peaceful and technical as Bitcoin, operational systems and educational guidance is necessary without the opinion and rhetoric for personal pro-war ideology.
On page 217 JPL states that “oppression happens when people refuse to fight for what they value.” This is incorrect. Oppression can happen incrementally, in a population of distracted citizenry who have no idea they are in a fight for their very existence. An abundance of opinions and rhetoric can be found throughout the thesis. It was advertised by the author as a “technical engineering thesis from MIT,” and “textbook.” It was neither.
https://twitter.com/JasonPLowery/status/1639276421553045506?t=0p1iFSleSxjtyKARjc0IXQ&s=19
JPL’s book had an opportunity to educate Military leadership on how Bitcoin facilitates peace and economic prosperity as a strategic national security asset. I do not believe this thesis did that. This topic is too important for one person’s coursework-turned internet-influence talking-points opportunity. It is a matter of Humanity and Freedom, forever. We really need to get this right.
https://twitter.com/BTCResearch01/status/1646479204932808706?t=hrs0AFmEmiqfPIaJjMOtlg&s=19
There is not enough peer-reviewed academic work available to guide federal and Military leadership on:
the national security advantages of Bitcoin,
systemic operational changes and practical adoption strategies,
tax-free systems for self-sufficient security protocols and community resiliency,
budgeting and funding structure changes on a Bitcoin standard
…and the myriad of other creative ways in which Bitcoin offers multidisciplinary national security solutions across industries, nations, ideologies, and perspectives. As a society, we have run out of time to float around ideas and unproductive discussions of theory and rhetoric for social media engagement and profitability schemes. Current financial systems and events are providing an opportunity for wealthy profiteers to execute a hostile corporate takeover of global Human sovereignty. The world has an immediate need and Human right to understand Bitcoin.
People in positions of authority, policy, public safety, and education all have a need to understand the only incorruptible tool for transparency and economic prosperity – as Bitcoin is forever, and will only increase in scarcity over time.
There is a collective of work by individuals and organizations all around the world of published websites, books, and amazing content of all kinds about Bitcoin. I expected this thesis to offer practical use applications. It did not, and it needed to. My hope is for the author to better understand technical manuscript publishing at a scholarly level and republish accordingly in the near future. I hope JPL reviews his work from a new perspective and produces constructive, immediately adoptable guidance for federal and Military leadership with a heavily revised proposal that includes actionable systems.