U.S. President Trump Signs Defence Bill on Blockchain Research

In the past, there have been several talks among US government officials, relating to a new defence bill, which also includes a blockchain research mandate. Now, recent reports indicate that US President Donald Trump has just signed the defence bill in question, therefore the government will soon be conducting a thorough research on the cyber applications associated with blockchain technology.

It is important to keep in mind the fact that the defence bill worth $700 billion was approved by the US Senate back in September. Now, thanks to the bill that has been signed, the Secretary of Defence will soon have to submit the report in question. Blockchain enthusiasts are now excited to see what the results will be, given the fact that the technology was not employed for military purposes until now.

The bill mentions that: “Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defence, in consultation with the heads of such other agencies and departments as the Secretary considers appropriate, shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report on the potential offensive and defensive cyber applications of blockchain technology and other distributed database technologies and an assessment of efforts by foreign powers, extremist organizations, and criminal networks to utilize these technologies.”

So far, it is believed that the study will help assess whether blockchain technology should be implemented by the US Defence Department, or other infrastructure networks of the government.

A report published in August mentioned that the U.S. Department of Defence was already carrying out a blockchain study, as they were trialling the technology, in order to determine its efficiency for guarding against various forms of cyber-attacks. Apart from this, in May, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as the DARPA awarded ITAMCO a grant, in order to develop a highly-secure transaction and messaging platform for the country’s military. So far, it is not clear whether the system has already been developed.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, once the study ends, we will likely see the U.S. Government implementing blockchain technology. So far, many countries are in the process of testing out and implementing blockchain for administrative purposes, meant to reduce bureaucracy, while also increasing efficiency and lowering costs.