US Military Confirmed Running a Live Bitcoin Node — Admiral Tells Congress It's a Cybersecurity Tool!

Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, confirmed under oath before the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. government is actively operating a node on the Bitcoin network — the first public disclosure of a U.S. combatant command directly participating in Bitcoin's peer-to-peer infrastructure. "We have a node on the Bitcoin network right now," Paparo told the committee. "We're not mining Bitcoin. We're using it to monitor, and we're doing a number of operational tests to secure and protect networks using the Bitcoin protocol."

The distinction matters technically: a node validates transactions, maintains a full blockchain copy, and participates in the network without generating BTC or influencing consensus. For INDOPACOM, the value is unmediated, trustless access to live network data — no exchange intermediary, no third-party feed — useful for monitoring…