One of my unit officer's son applied and got a patent. In my opinion, the invention is a big deal. I tried to understand the full import of the patent with the help of OpenAI.
First, the wording of the Patent granted:
'...for an
invention entitled artificially intelligent multi-chain based secured
token-passing system in static or mobile platforms as disclosed…'
Here is my conversation with OpenAI on the said patent:
Me:
This conversation is about a patent and my request to you to make me understand what exactly does the invention do. Here is the conversation I had with OpenAI;
The patent is as follows:
'...for an
invention entitled artificially intelligent multi-chain based secured
token-passing system in static or mobile platforms as disclosed…'
More about
the patent:
The Patent
talks about secure multiple block chains working together but maintaining
secrecy and security with AI to detect intruder or to select authorised
entities to use network.
It will
work with multiple types of communication devices and can work when breakage in
communication network is there.
The system
can be designed to work with communication devices connected to manned and
unmanned systems as well as defence communication equipment.
OpenAI:
Got it. Let’s re-enter that lost conversation gently
and rebuild the understanding from scratch — no patent-speak fog, just what
this thing actually does.
I’ll first give you the one-paragraph plain-English
version, then unpack it layer by layer.
The invention — in plain English
This invention describes a secure communication system
where multiple blockchains cooperate to pass permissions or messages
(called tokens) among devices.
An AI layer constantly watches the network, deciding who is allowed
in, who is suspicious, and how to reroute communication if parts
of the network break — especially in mobile, military, or unmanned
systems.
Think of it as a self-guarding, self-healing digital
convoy.
Now let’s unpack the key phrases
1. “Multi-chain based”
This is crucial.
Instead of one blockchain, the system uses many
blockchains, each possibly serving a role:
- One
chain for identity
- One
for authorization
- One
for message logging
- One
for device health or location
Why?
- If
one chain is compromised or goes offline → the system still works
- Sensitive
information can be partitioned, not globally visible
This is not
cryptocurrency-first thinking.
It’s distributed trust architecture.
2. “Secured token-passing system”
A token here is not money.
It is more like:
- A permission
slip
- A right
to speak
- A right
to access a subsystem
Example:
A drone wants to send sensor data → it must hold a valid
token
The token proves it is authorized, uncompromised, and current
Tokens:
- Expire
- Can
be revoked
- Can
be rerouted
- Can
be reassigned dynamically
This is far stronger than passwords or static keys.
3. “AI-based intrusion detection and authorization”
This is where the invention tries to be clever.
The AI:
- Watches
patterns, not just signatures
- Learns
what normal looks like
- Flags
or isolates nodes behaving oddly
Examples:
- A
device communicating too frequently
- A
sudden location change
- Timing
anomalies
- Message
structure drift
Instead of asking:
“Is this device on the whitelist?”
The system asks:
“Is this device behaving like itself?”
That’s a big conceptual shift.
4. “Static or mobile platforms”
This means:
- Fixed
infrastructure (bases, data centers)
- Moving
systems (vehicles, ships, aircraft, drones, soldiers)
The system assumes:
- Nodes
move
- Links
break
- Environments
are hostile
So it is not a fragile cloud-style network.
5. “Works even when communication breaks”
This implies:
- Local
decision-making
- Cached
authorization
- Partial
consensus
- Eventual
synchronization
In other words:
The system does not panic when disconnected.
Very important for:
- Battlefields
- Disaster
zones
- Space
/ underwater / remote operations
6. “Manned and unmanned systems”
This tells you the intended domain:
- Human
operators
- Autonomous
or semi-autonomous machines
- Mixed
trust environments
Think:
- Soldier
+ drone + satellite
- Ship
+ UAV + ground robot
- Command
center + mobile units
What problem is this invention really trying to
solve?
At its core, this patent is addressing:
How do you maintain secure, trustworthy coordination
among many autonomous entities when:
- There
is no guaranteed connectivity
- Some
nodes may be compromised
- Central
authority is dangerous or impossible
- Decisions
must be made locally and fast
Blockchain gives distributed trust
AI gives adaptive judgment
Token-passing gives fine-grained control
What this invention is not
Just as important:
❌ Not just “blockchain + AI
buzzwords”
❌
Not primarily about cryptocurrency
❌
Not a simple IDS (intrusion detection system)
❌
Not cloud-dependent
It’s about resilient authority, not data storage.
A useful mental metaphor
Imagine a convoy of vehicles in enemy territory:
- Each
vehicle carries sealed orders
- Orders
can be checked by others
- If
a vehicle behaves strangely, others stop trusting it
- If
the radio goes silent, vehicles still know what to do
- Orders
can be updated when contact resumes
That’s this invention — digitally.
Me:
Yes. The answer given at that time was almost on the above
lines. And then I asked: isn't blockchain about securing against spurious data
insertion? Is multiple block chains about redundancy? I want your answers to
these questions again please. I had also asked if this invention had LLM/SLM as
background data. You had however said it is more likely ML and not LLM. I asked
on what data was AI in this scenario getting trained. In the fog of war, there
is no SOP.
OpenAI:
Ah — this is a good place to resume. You’re asking
exactly the right “pull-the-curtain” questions. Let me answer them cleanly,
without buzzwords, and then address the fog-of-war problem, which is the
real crux.
I’ll go in the same order you asked.
1. “Isn’t blockchain about securing against spurious
data insertion?”
Yes — but only partially.
Blockchain does not decide whether data is true.
It only guarantees that:
- Once
data is accepted, it cannot be altered silently
- Everyone
can agree what was recorded and when
- There
is accountability, not correctness
So blockchain protects against:
- After-the-fact
tampering
- Forged
history
- Unauthorized
rewriting
But it does not protect against:
- Garbage
being inserted honestly
- A
compromised but authorized node lying
- Sensor
spoofing
- Subtle
semantic corruption
In short:
Blockchain secures integrity of recording, not truth
of content.
That’s why this patent needs AI on top of blockchain.
2. “Is multiple blockchains just redundancy?”
This is the subtle part — no, not just redundancy.
Redundancy = “same thing copied multiple times”
Multi-chain = functional separation + controlled visibility
Here’s what multiple chains actually buy you:
a) Compartmentalization
Different blockchains can hold:
- Identity
& credentials
- Command
authority
- Telemetry
logs
- Mission
state
A drone might:
- Read
chain A
- Write
to chain B
- Never
see chain C
This mirrors military compartmentalization, not
backup.
b) Different consensus assumptions
One chain may:
- Require
strict consensus (slow, secure)
Another may: - Be
local, fast, and provisional
So:
- Tactical
decisions ≠ Strategic records
- Local
survival ≠ Global audit
c) Fault and compromise isolation
If one chain is:
- Jammed
- Poisoned
- Partially
compromised
Other chains continue functioning.
This is blast-radius reduction, not redundancy.
d) Selective trust
Nodes don’t need to trust everything — only:
- The
chain relevant to their role
- The
tokens they must validate
This aligns with Zero Trust architecture.
3. “Does this invention involve LLMs / SLMs?”
Almost certainly: no.
And here’s why, not just “because military”.
Why LLMs are a poor fit here:
- Non-deterministic
outputs
- Hard
to certify
- Opaque
reasoning
- Large
memory footprint
- Vulnerable
to prompt manipulation
- Latency
and power cost
In safety-critical systems:
“Explainability beats eloquence.”
What kind of AI is likely used?
Much more likely:
- Anomaly
detection
- Behavioural
modeling
- Pattern
deviation analysis
- Bayesian
or probabilistic models
- Graph-based
trust scoring
- Online
/ incremental learning
In other words:
ML that watches behaviour, not language.
4. “On what data is the AI trained?”
This is the heart of your question.
There are three layers of training, not one.
Layer 1: Pre-training (before deployment)
Using:
- Simulated
environments
- Historical
mission data
- Network
traffic patterns
- Known
attack scenarios
- Red-team
exercises
This gives the AI a prior, not rules.
Think:
“This is what normal often looks like.”
Layer 2: Online adaptation (during operation)
This is critical.
The AI:
- Learns
this network’s rhythm
- Establishes
local baselines
- Tracks
individual node behaviour
This is not SOP-driven.
It is self-referential:
“Is this node behaving like it usually does?”
Layer 3: Cross-chain feedback
AI decisions affect:
- Token
issuance
- Token
revocation
- Chain
access
Those decisions then create new data, which the AI
observes.
So the system is:
Self-observing, self-correcting
5. “But in the fog of war, there is no SOP”
Exactly.
And the patent quietly acknowledges this.
This system does not encode SOPs.
It encodes expectations of consistency.
Instead of:
“This action is forbidden.”
It asks:
“Is this action coherent with recent history, context, and
role?”
That’s a fundamentally different philosophy.
How the system survives without SOPs
- Local
autonomy: nodes decide locally
- Probabilistic
trust, not binary trust
- Graceful
degradation, not failure
- Delayed
finality: decisions can be revised later
- Human
override remains possible
This mirrors how humans operate in chaos.
6. The deep insight (this is the “aha”)
This invention is not about security.
It is about:
Maintaining meaningful coordination when certainty
collapses.
Blockchain provides:
- Memory
- Accountability
AI provides:
- Judgment
under uncertainty
Tokens provide:
- Temporary
authority
Together, they create something close to:
A distributed nervous system, not a rulebook.
If you want, next we can:
- Examine whether this patent is technically
thin or genuinely deep
- Map
it to existing systems (swarm robotics, military C2, Zero Trust)
- Analyze
where it could fail catastrophically
- Or
reframe it philosophically (which I suspect you’ll enjoy)
Me:
- Map it to existing systems (swarm
robotics, military C2, Zero Trust)
OpenAI:
Got it — you want that paragraph unpacked. Let’s do
exactly that, clean and concrete.
“Map it to existing systems (swarm robotics, military C2,
Zero Trust)”
I’ll show you where this invention already exists in
spirit, and where it is trying to glue things together.
1. Swarm robotics — closest conceptual cousin
Swarm systems already assume:
- No
central controller
- Local
decision-making
- Partial
information
- Node
loss is normal
What swarms already do
- Each
agent follows simple local rules
- Behaviour
emerges statistically
- Trust
is implicit, not explicit
- Failure
is tolerated, not prevented
What this patent adds
- Explicit
trust tokens instead of implicit trust
- Recorded
history (blockchains) instead of memoryless agents
- AI-based
suspicion, not just rule-following
Think of it as:
Swarm robotics with memory, identity, and revocable
authority
This is a real upgrade for armed or safety-critical
swarms, where “just emergent behaviour” is not enough.
2. Military C2 (Command & Control) — philosophical
alignment
Modern military doctrine already moved away from rigid
command.
You’ll recognize these ideas:
- Mission
command
- Commander’s
intent
- Decentralized
execution
- Loss
of comms is expected
Traditional C2 problem
- Central
authority is fragile
- Comms
disruption breaks hierarchy
- Authentication
assumes connectivity
- Insider
compromise is catastrophic
What this invention mirrors
- Authority
floats, not fixed
- Tokens
act like temporary orders
- AI
replaces rigid SOP enforcement
- Multiple
chains reflect command layers
Strategic command ≠ tactical command ≠ execution
Each lives on a different trust plane.
👉 This system is
essentially:
Digitized mission command under adversarial conditions
3. Zero Trust Architecture — the security backbone
Zero Trust says:
“Never trust, always verify.”
But in practice, Zero Trust is:
- Static
- Network-centric
- Cloud-oriented
- Policy-heavy
Where Zero Trust breaks down
- Mobile
nodes
- Intermittent
connectivity
- Autonomous
agents
- Adversarial
environments
What this patent extends
- Trust
becomes behavioural, not just credential-based
- Verification
is continuous
- Authorization
is temporary and revocable
- Identity
≠ permission
Tokens are:
- Short-lived
- Contextual
- Behaviour-dependent
👉 This is:
Zero Trust adapted for chaos, not datacenters
4. How the three merge in this invention
|
Domain |
Contributes |
|
Swarm robotics |
Decentralization, resilience |
|
Military C2 |
Authority without micromanagement |
|
Zero Trust |
Continuous verification |
What the patent tries to do is fuse them:
- Swarm-like
autonomy
- C2-like
intent and hierarchy
- Zero-Trust-like
paranoia
All without assuming:
- Stable
networks
- Central
control
- Predefined
SOPs
5. The quiet but important implication
This system treats trust as a physical quantity:
- It
flows
- It
decays
- It
can be rerouted
- It
can be cut off locally
That’s very different from traditional cybersecurity, which
treats trust as a binary state.
6. A reality check (important)
Nothing here is individually new.
What is new is the composition:
- Blockchain
for memory
- AI
for judgment
- Tokens
for authority
- Multi-chain
for compartmentalization
Whether the patent is deep or shallow depends on:
- How
precisely the AI is defined
- Whether
consensus mechanisms are realistic
- How
failure modes are handled
That’s where patents often get hand-wavy.
If you want, next we can:
- Stress-test
this architecture (“what fails first?”)
- Judge
patent novelty vs buzzword stacking
- Map
it to Bayesian thinking under uncertainty (ties nicely to fog of
war)
- Or
reduce it to a single governing principle
Me:
- Map
it to Bayesian thinking under uncertainty (ties nicely to fog of
war)
OpenAI:
Perfect. This is where everything you’ve been circling
around clicks into one coherent picture.
Let’s map this invention explicitly to Bayesian
thinking under uncertainty, and then back to the fog of war. No
jargon for its own sake — just the underlying logic.
1. Fog of war = Bayesian world, not rule-based world
In the fog of war:
- Information
is incomplete
- Information
is delayed
- Information
may be false
- Sources
may be compromised
- There
is no stable SOP
This is exactly the world Bayesian reasoning was made
for.
Bayesian thinking does not ask:
“Is this true or false?”
It asks:
“Given what I knew before, how much should I now believe
this?”
That’s the mindset this invention quietly assumes.
2. Trust as a probability, not a label
Traditional security:
- Trusted
/ Untrusted
- Authorized
/ Unauthorized
Bayesian view:
- Trust
= degree of belief
So instead of:
“Node X is authorized”
The system internally holds something like:
“P(X is behaving as expected | recent evidence) = 0.93”
This probability:
- Decays
over time
- Jumps
with new evidence
- Is
context-sensitive
That’s not marketing — it’s mathematically inevitable in
uncertain environments.
3. What is the “prior” in this system?
A Bayesian system always starts with a prior belief.
Here, the prior comes from:
- Pre-deployment
training
- Simulated
missions
- Historical
behaviour patterns
- Role
expectations (drone ≠ human ≠ satellite)
Example:
“A reconnaissance drone usually sends small packets every 5
seconds.”
That’s a prior — not a rule.
4. Evidence = behaviour, not declarations
In fog-of-war conditions, claims are cheap.
So the AI doesn’t primarily listen to:
- Identity
claims
- Credentials
- Certificates
It listens to:
- Timing
- Frequency
- Correlation
- Spatial
consistency
- Network
graph position
Each observation nudges belief up or down.
This is textbook Bayesian updating.
5. Tokens = posterior beliefs made operational
Here’s the elegant part.
The system does not store probabilities everywhere.
That would be fragile.
Instead:
- AI
computes posterior belief internally
- The
outcome is materialized as a token
Token properties encode belief:
- Scope
- Duration
- Power
- Revocability
So a token is:
“This is what we currently believe you’re allowed to do.”
That’s Bayesian reasoning turned into engineering.
6. Multiple blockchains = conditional independence
Bayesian systems love conditional independence.
It prevents cascading failure.
Multiple chains mean:
- Evidence
from one domain doesn’t contaminate all others
- Beliefs
can diverge safely
- Later
reconciliation is possible
Example:
- Tactical
chain says: “Probably OK”
- Strategic
chain says: “Still uncertain”
Both can be true — simultaneously.
This is very Bayesian and very non-classical.
7. What happens when communication breaks?
Bayesian answer:
“Freeze priors and continue local updating.”
Each node:
- Carries
its last belief state
- Updates
locally
- Avoids
global conclusions
- Defers
irreversible decisions
When comms resume:
- Beliefs
are merged
- Not
overwritten
That is belief fusion, not synchronization.
8. No SOP? That’s fine.
SOPs are deterministic.
Bayesian systems are not.
Instead of:
“If A happens, do B”
You get:
“Given A, B is now more likely than C”
Humans fight wars this way intuitively.
This system tries to formalize that intuition.
9. Why LLMs don’t belong here (now it’s obvious)
LLMs:
- Don’t
maintain calibrated uncertainty
- Don’t
update beliefs cleanly
- Don’t
expose probabilistic confidence reliably
- Are
narrative machines, not belief machines
This system needs:
- Numbers,
not words
- Confidence
bounds, not explanations
- Stability
under partial evidence
That’s why this is Bayesian ML, not language
modeling.
10. The single governing principle (the core insight)
If I had to compress the invention into one sentence:
Authority flows from continuously updated belief, not
from static rules.
Blockchain remembers
AI believes
Tokens act
That triangle is the architecture.
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