{"id":14021,"date":"2021-10-05T15:40:06","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T15:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci028ef2b630002419"},"modified":"2025-10-01T14:52:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:52:58","slug":"bitcoin-and-teslas-peaceful-energy-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/bitcoin-and-teslas-peaceful-energy-vision","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin Embodies Nikola Tesla’s Vision For Peace And Energy Abundance"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Many attempts to bring about the permanent end state of war can be found throughout history. \u201cThe war to end war<\/a>,\u201d mutual assured destruction<\/a>, dynamite<\/a> and machine guns<\/a> \u2014 each of these failed to end wars, despite optimistic theories that they might. <\/p>\n

In 1900, Nikola Tesla proposed revolutionary first principles to end war of his own. His idea was to remove humans from the battlefield altogether. He envisioned intelligent machines, with minds, competing against each other with a “maximum rate of energy-delivery” which would end wars and bloodshed, and bring about global peace. <\/p>\n

Today, we have these first principles in Bitcoin mining \u2014 expressed by Tesla, in his own words:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBut now, what is the next phase in this evolution? Not peace as yet, by any means. The next change which should naturally follow from modern developments should be the continuous diminution of the number of individuals engaged in battle. The apparatus will be one of specifically great power, but only a few individuals will be required to operate it. This evolution will bring more and more into prominence a machine or mechanism with the fewest individuals as an element of warfare, and the absolutely unavoidable consequence of this will be the abandonment of large, clumsy, slowly moving, and unmanageable units. Greatest possible speed and maximum rate of energy-delivery by the war apparatus will be the main object. The loss of life will become smaller and smaller, and finally, the number of the individuals continuously diminishing, merely machines will meet in a contest without blood-shed, the nations being simply interested, ambitious spectators. When this happy condition is realized, peace will be assured. But, no matter to what degree of perfection rapid-fire guns, high-power cannon, explosive projectiles, torpedo-boats, or other implements of war may be brought, no matter how destructive they may be made, that condition can never be reached through any such development. All such implements require men for their operation; men are indispensable parts of the machinery. Their object is to kill and to destroy. Their power resides in their capacity for doing evil. So long as men meet in battle, there will be bloodshed. Bloodshed will ever keep up barbarous passion. To break this fierce spirit, a radical departure must be made, an entirely new principle must be introduced, something that never existed before in warfare \u2014 a principle which will forcibly, unavoidably, turn the battle into a mere spectacle, a play, a contest without loss of blood. To bring on this result men must be dispensed with: machine must fight machine. But how accomplish that which seems impossible? The answer is simple enough: produce a machine capable of acting as though it were part of a human being \u2014 no mere mechanical contrivance, comprising levers, screws, wheels, clutches, and nothing more, but a machine embodying a higher principle, which will enable it to perform its duties as though it had intelligence, experience, judgment, a mind! This conclusion is the result of my thoughts and observations which have extended through virtually my whole life, and I shall now briefly describe how I came to accomplish that which at first seemed an unrealizable dream.\u201d \u2013Nikola Tesla, \u201cThe Problem Of Increasing Human Energy<\/a>,\u201d The Century Magazine<\/em>, 1900<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While those first principles aptly describe Bitcoin mining, Tesla didn\u2019t have Bitcoin in mind, of course. He imagined what now reads like a post-steampunk fantasy of massive wireless energy towers that would harness free energy from the Earth and wirelessly power the entire world and power death rays<\/a> (or \u201cpeace rays\u201d) that were so destructive, no army would approach the borders of other countries. It was a mutually-assured destruction no man\u2019s land where Tesla conceptualized \u201ctelautomatic<\/a>\u201d drones that would fight each other, instead of humans. This was how he envisioned a lasting peace.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Tesla envisioned machines of “maximum \u2026 energy-delivery,” that were “embodying a higher principle.” Bitcoin can be described similarly. As Robert Breedlove has tweeted<\/a>, “As a claim on human productivity, money is the highest form of energy mankind can channel.”<\/p>\n

In 1919, having seen the ravages of a World War, and his own dreams for world peace dashed, Tesla clarified his prediction:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWar can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only thru annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong\u2026 Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment and merging of races, and we are still far from this blissful realization.\u201d \u2013Nikola Tesla, \u201cMy Inventions<\/a>,\u201d Electrical Experimenter<\/em>, 1919<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Had Tesla lived to see Bitcoin, he would have seen that it embodied these principles. The internet itself was an idea Tesla had predicted in his 1926 Colliers<\/em> interview<\/a>, where he described a wireless web in great detail. He gave details of smartphones that could fit in a vest pocket and allowed communication using voice and video. Tesla predicted wireless newspapers, live streaming and video conferencing. He described the ability to send documents, music and video around the world. He predicted the Internet of Things, self-driving cars, autonomous drones and robots. Interestingly, the U.S. Department of Defense and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped develop the early stages of the internet in the 1960s, as a decentralized network for defense.<\/p>\n

Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Buckminster Fuller each believed it was possible for an energy-backed currency to facilitate the war end state<\/a> and replace gold. Today, thanks to the efforts of Satoshi Nakamoto and countless others, that ideal is realized in Bitcoin. It’s intriguing to think these inventors were perhaps somewhat inspired by Tesla’s predictions.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that Tesla propelled humanity forward with his inventions. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and he developed AC generation and transmission technology, which is still the global standard for power transmission. He invented electric oscillators, meters and the Tesla coil, a high-voltage transformer. He demonstrated radio communication two years before Marconi. He also partnered with General Electric to build the first modern power station by installing AC generators at Niagara Falls.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

In 1917, he conceived of a device that would emit exploratory energy waves, enabling operators to establish the precise location of distant enemy craft. The War Department rejected Tesla’s “exploring ray” as unfeasible and a joke. Years later, a new invention using similar technology, helped the Allies win World War II. That technology was radar.<\/p>\n

When Tesla died, in 1943, the FBI ordered<\/a> his belongings to be seized by the Office of Alien Property. John G. Trump (the uncle of Donald J. Trump), who was an MIT professor, electrical engineer and technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, analyzed all of Tesla’s papers which were retained and remain classified. It\u2019s believed that the government was interested in Tesla\u2019s energy weapons, or at least the theories behind them.<\/p>\n

A New Hope: Re-Evaluating Tesla\u2019s Principles<\/h2>\n

About one month ago, Jason Lowery<\/a>, a commissioned officer in the U.S. Space Force and a U.S. National Defense fellow enrolled in MIT, proposed a thesis on Bitcoin as the end state of war<\/a>. He posited that proof-of-work miners are functionally identical to the role of militaries and could be adopted as a surrogate to war with respect to achieving global consensus on the current state and chain of liberty and property.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Lowery joined Twitter<\/a> and has invited the Bitcoin community to debate and refine his thesis<\/a>. It more recently became apparent that Lowery\u2019s thesis was based on the same principles that Tesla described of a worldwide competition of “energy-delivery” machines as a peaceful and bloodless surrogate to war. While Tesla was imagining drones and death rays instead of bitcoin miners, the underlying principles of their theses are strikingly similar. No doubt, it will be a fascinating topic of exploration.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s Funding Woes<\/h2>\n

Tesla\u2019s military ambitions made him somewhat of a Tony Stark<\/a> of the Progressive Era. Though unlike the fictional Stark, Tesla lacked funding to bring his ideas to fruition. Tesla\u2019s grand vision was to bring wireless \u201cfree energy<\/a>\u201d to the entire planet as part of his World Wireless System<\/a>, which would pull energy from the surrounding environment and make it available to all electronic devices, without the need for wires or fossil fuels.<\/p>\n