Last Sunday’s Remembrance Day marked 100 years since the end of World War One on November 11, 1918. Millions of people gathered to commemorate those who died in the horrors of war in the century that has passed. Even some in the world of blockchain remembered “the truly senseless and tragic destruction of human life” that war has caused. It may seem like only on such a rare occasion could we make links, tenuous ones, between blockchain and war. But, in fact, these two things are deeply connected and these connections naturally raise questions which beg to be answered.

One such question was raised by an audience member during Devcon4’s final main stage event in Prague on November 2. That event featured the legendary Stewart Brand, famous for his campaign to have NASA publish a satellite image of earth from outer space and for his role as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. “How do we create the next nuclear reactor without building the next nuclear bomb?” the questioner asked Brand. Brand replied that working with government to develop preventative regulations against such possibilities is necessary.

There is much to consider in Brand’s response, which I will return to below, but the question itself highlighted the existential relationship between blockchain technology and war. In the preface to his excellent book Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson wrote about how computers were created to help initiate and understand nuclear explosions. “It is no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time,” Dyson wrote.

John von Neumann, who played a central role in creating both computers and nuclear weapons, also formalized the interdisciplinary field of game theory which is central to cryptoeconomics today. He was driven to build a computer. Just as the computer was necessary for understanding nuclear explosions, Dyson’s survey of archival documents likewise shows that the race to build the hydrogen bomb accelerated von Neumann’s vision.