We didn’t just hunt alpha; we rewired the game.
Let me tell you about a fighter jet—the F-35. It’s the most expensive weapons system in history, a joint strike fighter built on a network of trust among thirty-two nations. But last week, a headline crossed my desk: Trump moves to restore Turkey’s F-35 access. And I stopped scrolling. Because this isn’t about a plane. It’s about the same battle we fight every day in crypto: centralized trust, and what happens when it breaks.
Here’s the specific event: in early 2025, the Trump administration signaled a willingness to let Turkey back into the F-35 program. Ankara was kicked out after buying Russia’s S-400 missile system—a move that violated CAATSA sanctions and exposed a fatal contradiction: you can’t hold hands with NATO while sharing a beer with the Kremlin. Now, Washington wants to rebuild that handshake. But Congress is ready with a veto—legislation that still bans any transfer to Turkey without proof the S-400 is gone. The result is a geopolitical standoff, a “trust” emergency that has everything to do with our own industry.
Education is the new mining rig for the mind. I’ve spent twenty-nine years watching this space, from auditing Solidity contracts in 2017 to building BlockJakarta in Jakarta’s humid co-working spaces. And I’ve learned one thing: every system—whether a fighter jet consortium or a DeFi protocol—runs on a layer of trust. When that layer is centralized, someone can pull the plug. Turkey’s F-35 story? That’s a textbook example of a permissioned network where the administrator (the US Congress) can freeze your assets (your air force). Sound familiar?
From core dev trenches to community heartbeat. Let me break down why this matters, technically. The F-35 isn’t just a jet—it’s a data network. The plane’s software, the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), tracks every flight, every part, every maintenance cycle. It’s a private blockchain in all but name. Access to ALIS is gated by political trust. When Turkey was ejected, it lost visibility into its own fleet. The data, the maintenance, the operational readiness—all were revoked. Compare that to a self-custodial wallet: your keys, your assets. Turkey was placed in a custodian model, and the custodian (the U.S. government) had a conflict of interest. This is the exact failure mode we try to engineer out of smart contracts.
Now, I’ve been skeptical of the Lightning Network for years—routing failure rates and channel management complexity have kept it niche. But even Lightning doesn’t have the centralized choke point that the F-35 program has. The comparison highlights a deeper truth: cryptographic trust, when done right, can’t be weaponized by a single nation. The S-400 incident is analogous to a protocol exploit—a competing system (Russia) found a way to compromise the trust model. The response was a “hard fork” of the alliance, ejecting the malicious actor. But the problem is that the fork was decided by a few hands, not by code.
When the market sleeps, the architects wake up. So where’s the contrarian angle? You might argue: “Geopolitics is too messy for blockchain solutions. This is a state-level issue, not a protocol one.” I respect that skepticism, but I’d counter by saying that’s precisely why crypto matters. The F-35 dilemma illustrates that even the most advanced military alliances have a central point of failure—political will. The US Congress can block a deal because of a S-400 purchase that happened years ago. In a world where sovereign states increasingly hold digital assets, the ability to freeze or exclude is a weapon. Blockchain doesn’t solve geopolitics, but it offers a neutral trust layer—a way for nations to interact without handing over the keys to one arbiter.
Think about Turkey’s alternative. After being cut off, Ankara accelerated its domestic fighter program, TF-X (now called KAAN). It’s a classic crypto story: when a centralized gatekeeper denies access, the community forks. Turkey is effectively building its own layer 1—a sovereign fighter jet. But here’s the kicker: KAAN’s avionics and software will take years to mature. In the meantime, Turkey might still buy F-35s if the door reopens. That’s a governance dilemma—should you trust the new chain (KAAN) or the established one (F-35)? In crypto, we see this with rollups and L2s: the modular approach often wins. But the decision isn’t technical; it’s political. And that’s where the value of a permissionless system shines—it removes the politics from the trust.
I saw this play out in 2020 when I launched UniBarter in Jakarta. It was a local AMM that grew to 500 users in two weeks. Then the infrastructure—the centralized exchange integrations, the liquidity pools—choked. I spent nights trying to patch the system, realizing that innovation outpaces infrastructure when the trust layer is fragile. The F-35 program is the same: a beautiful, complex piece of engineering undermined by a brittle governance model. The solution isn’t to fix the governance; it’s to distribute the trust. That’s what Bitcoin did. That’s what Ethereum is doing. And that’s what the next generation of L2s will perfect—data availability (DA) that doesn’t rely on a single sequencer or nation-state.
Speaking of DA, I’ve been vocal that the Data Availability layer is overhyped. Ninety-nine percent of rollups don’t generate enough data to need a dedicated layer. But in this geopolitical context, DA becomes a metaphor: the “data” here is the F-35’s operational secrets, the maintenance logs, the sensor fusion outputs. Turkey doesn’t need a dedicated “DA” layer—it needs a system where it can read and write its own data without permission. That is the promise of blockchain: self-sovereign data, not just assets.
Art is the interface; blockchain is the canvas. So what’s the takeaway? The F-35 Turkey saga isn’t just a news cycle. It’s a case study in why we build decentralized systems. Every centralized gate—whether it’s a plane, a bank, or a social media platform—carries the risk of political capture. The move to restore access is a temporary patch, a transaction that might close but won’t fix the underlying fault line. The long-term trend is that nations, like individuals, will seek technological sovereignty. They will want systems where trust is not a favor granted by a Congress but a property enforced by code.
We didn’t just hunt alpha; we rewired the game. The architects of the F-35 world don’t see it yet, but the game is changing. The question is: will you wait for the next geopolitical crack to realize the value of a trustless system?
Let me leave you with this thought. In Jakarta, I train developers who are building the next generation of decentralized identity and reputation protocols. They laugh when I tell them about the F-35—a plane that needs political approval to fly. They understand that the future isn’t about asking permission. It’s about proving worth on a neutral ledger. The F-35 is a relic of a world where trust is central. The blockchain is the canvas where that trust becomes programmable, permissionless, and unstoppable. And that, my friends, is the rewiring we’re all part of.
