City-States Without Limits – Part 1

New city-states—some being constructed from scratch and others being seeded into existing cities—go by many names. In the US, President Donald Trump has called them “Freedom Cities.” The United Nations refers to them as “human settlements,” the C40 Cities Network calls them “15 minute cities,” The Global Parliament of Mayors sometimes refers to them as “resilient cities,” and the Charter Cities Institute calls them, unsurprisingly, “charter cities.”

But whatever they are called, they have a defined set of common characteristics. All of these emerging city-states are centrally planned and designed to maximise the use of technology. Some are already close to becoming completed “smart cities.” Many of these new city-states, as yet undeclared, have been given independent jurisdiction with varying degrees of autonomy from the nation-states in which they reside. 

Perhaps their most striking shared trait is their universal commitment to implement global governance policy initiatives. To this end, many nascent city-states have already joined city-based global governance networks. 

Their development is being driven by a public-private partnership investment strategy that is encouraged and supported at the global governance level. Some are currently being built in so called “Special Economic Zones” (SEZs). Other announced city-state developments, such as Freedom Cities in the US, bear all the hallmarks of SEZs. The global proliferation of Special Economic Zones, most notably those with “residential spaces,” is rapidly expanding the potential locations for yet more city-state projects. There are already thousands. 

Conspicuous philosophical and political theories, and the city-state landscape forming before our eyes, redefines our concept of global governance. The notion of phasing out the purported “sovereignty” of nation-states is now firmly embedded in the strategies to develop a new kind of intergovernmental structure. One in which the city predominates. The concept of a worldwide network of privatized, corporate city-state “kingdoms” has been embraced and is viewed as the best and most expedient method both for enslaving humanity to a centralised digital surveillance and behavioural control grid, and for establishing firm global governance. 

Gov-Corp Technates

In a previous two-part investigation for Unlimited Hangout—The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate Part 1 and Part 2—we explored the so-called philosophy of the Dark Enlightenment and the sociopolitical theory of Technocracy. We saw how these two concepts overlap and witnessed how they have captured the imaginations of a group of Silicon Valley oligarchs—Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, etc.,—who have effectively seized control of the Trump administration. It is recommended that you read those essays to get a perspective on some of the concepts we will expand on here. 

The Dark Enlightenment was a philosophical treatise first published by British political theorist and philosopher Nick Land in 2012. It incorporated the ideas espoused by US “thinker,” tech entrepreneur and blogger Curtis Yarvin. Publication of the Dark Enlightenment in the UK and Yarvin’s theories, published in the US, combined to lay the alleged intellectual foundations of what has become known as the Neoreactionary movement (NRx).  

In the Dark Enlightenment, Land acknowledged the influence of Peter Thiel on the growth of his own ideas. Specifically, Land referenced Thiel’s 2009 article “The Education of a Libertarian” as formative. Curtis Yarvin describes Thiel as “fully enlightened,” and is a close associate of Thiel’s. Thiel’s Founders Fund financed Yarvin’s tech startup ventures. 

In essence, the Dark Enlightenment proposes that public sector government should be replaced with a form of private sector government. Privatized, corporate realms should be ruled by the CEO “TechnoKings” of “sovereign corporations” (sovcorps) as dictatorships. The realms can then be linked to form what Yarvin termed a “Patchwork” of realms. In 2008, describing his notion of the “Patchwork,” Yarvin wrote: 

The basic idea of Patchwork is that, as the crappy governments we inherited from history are smashed, they should be replaced by a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents’ opinions.

Yarvin was obviously floating the idea of breaking up nations-states into private fiefdoms where the people living in them have no voice, no individual sovereignty, and are powerless. The ideas of the NRx are extremely authoritarian. The NRx model of “government” is disassociated from any notion of politics as we understand it. As Peter Thiel wrote in his influential 2009 article, the objective is “to find an escape from politics in all its forms.” 

It is worth pausing here to emphasise an important point. Neither the NRx nor the technocrats—we’ll cover them shortly—present concepts that fit easily into our comprehension of existing sociopolitical systems. Their intention is to eradicate everything we associate with so-called “representative democracy” and replace it with technological social control systems unlike anything we are currently familiar with, though more of us are starting to grasp what it portends. 

For example, in order to access the realm’s currency, the “customer”—there are no citizens in an NRx technocrat run city-state—will need digital ID. Digital ID linked to digital currency will enable all the assets of every “customer” to be recorded and maintained on the realm’s unified ledger. The unified ledger will use Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to record all customers’ assets. Consequently, those who control access to the ledger effectively have control of every customer’s life. 

Imagining what life was like for oppressed peasants living in the feudal societies of Medieval Europe is probably the best way to visualise the future the darkly enlightened technocrats have in mind for us. Nothing could be further removed from libertarian principles.

The leading NRx technocrats are not the only members of, what we might call, the parasite class who wish to enslave us with digital technology. Nor are they the only oligarchs who want to transform our international polity into a network of city-states overseen by a firm global governance structure. Indeed, the NRx technocrats’ plans have succeeded to this point precisely because they gel with the objectives of the global oligarchy, of which they are a part. 

Unfortunately, because the NRx technocrats propose doing away with government and exiting all political systems, this has led some libertarians to imagine that the NRx technocrat’s model is preferable to existing sociopolitical systems. Indeed, NRx influencers like Thiel are happy to be perceived as libertarian and eager to promote the idea that they are. Presumably, they do so because what they actually advocate is much closer to fascism than to libertarianism. 

Telling people you want them to live in a corporate controlled technological dictatorship is not an easy sales pitch. Cloaking yourself in faux libertarianism and casting yourselves as the opponents of the globalist oligarchy neatly covers the deceit. 

Land posited that gov-corp would operate on the national scale to run “an efficient, attractive, vital, clean, and secure country.” Though the relationship between gov-corp and sovcorps isn’t specified by the NRx (anywhere), given that Yarvin’s notion of sovcorp realms is based upon smashing nation-states to pieces, Land’s idea of a “secure country” run by gov-corp suggests some sort of private ruling body overseeing the “Patchwork” of sovcorp realms. Gov-corp global governance if you like. 

Peter Thiel is a leading proponent of the Dark Enlightenment and an advocate for the ideas of the NRx. His fellow tech-oligarch Elon Musk, who, like Thiel, heavily backs the Trump administration, avidly promotes the implementation of Technocracy. Often described simply as a sociopolitical system controlled by relevant experts, as Musk well knows, Technocracy is much more than that. 

Technocracy is a comprehensive centralised social and behavioural control system which dictates every aspect of what genuine “technocrats,” like Musk, call “the social mechanism.” Human beings are reduced to programmable automatons or “human engines” whose actions can be controlled through the surveillance of the monetary system and the economy, and through the centralised management and allocation of all resources. 

Technocrats assume that there is no problem that technology cannot resolve. Crucially, Technocracy relies upon a redesigned monetary system that maximises the use of technology to monitor and manipulate every transaction. By doing so, the “function” of the human engine in the “social mechanism” can be programmed. All human behavior is regulated, permitted or restricted in a Technocracy. By overseeing the distribution of all resources, combined with firm conditions placed upon all economic activity, the behaviour of every business and every individual across the entire social mechanism—we would say across the whole of “society”—can supposedly be precisely engineered by the technocrats in a Technocracy. 

The original founders of the Technocracy movement in the US envisaged the replacement of all nation-states on a continental scale and the establishment of a North American Technate. A “Technate” would be run by a “Continental Board” who would select a “Continental Director” from within their ranks to rule the entire Technate as a technological dictatorship. 

Musk’s own family history is steeped in the Technocracy tradition and he has openly declared his ambition to establish Technocracy. To give an example, in an October 2024 exchange on Musk’s ‘X’ social media platform (formerly Twitter) between Musk and Guillaume Verdon, Verdon said “The Network State for Mars is being formed before our eyes.” Musk enthusiastically replied, “The Mars Technocracy,” to which Verdon gleefully responded “Count me in.” 

Verdon is the founder of the Effective Accelerationism (e/acc) philosophical wing of the NRx and a tech entrepreneur who established the AI hardware startup Extropic in 2022. Like many members of the NRx, Verdon also desires Technocracy. There are notable similarities between Dark Enlightenment philosophy—if you can call it that—and the sociopolitical and socioeconomic theories inherent in Technocracy. 

Both the NRx and the technocrats believe that technology is the panacea for every problem and that society—whatever they might choose to call it—should be governed through the use of technology. Therefore, in today’s technological age, both the NRx and the modern technocrats advocate a form of government largely administered by artificial intelligence (AI). 

The NRx and the technocrats champion oligarchy—government by a small group of powerful people. The NRx posits that “realms” should be controlled by the CEO “TechnoKings” of a sovcorp, with the CEO of gov-corp apparently ruling the patchwork of realms. Similarly, technocrats think the Technate should be commanded by the “Continental Board” led by the “Continental Director.” Both the NRx and the technocrats want to remove all semblance of democratic oversight and establish technological oligarch-led dictatorships. 

The NRx and the technocrats consider humanity worthless and expendable. For technocrats, we are “human animals” to be trained or controlled like a dog or a vehicle. For the NRx we are the “unthinking demos” whose individual sovereignty should be treated “with derision.” The NRx would like to transform us into cyborgs so that we can be programmed and they want to psychologically imprison whomever they deem “undesirable” as “bee larva” waxed in a virtual cell. Modern technocrats, such as Musk, consider us meatsacks, nothing more than “a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.” 

Verdon, alongside Nick Land and others, is considered among the patron saints of “Techno-Optimism” by leading NRx advocate and Silicon Valley oligarch Marc Andreessen. In 2023, he published the Techno-Optimist Manifesto. In his Manifesto, Andreessen wrote: 

We believe that there is no material problem — whether created by nature or by technology — that cannot be solved with more technology. [. . .] Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine, the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance. [. . .] We believe in accelerationism — the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development. [. . .] We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone.

All NRx devotees, such as Andreessen, consider themselves accelerationists. They believe in the aggressive application of Joseph Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction.” In his 1942 work Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Schumpeter described Creative Destruction as: 

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. [P. 83]

Schumpeter was describing an effect of capitalism: the tendency for technology to revolutionise and destroy old markets by replacing them with new ones. Think how the terrestrial television and radio advertising markets have been replaced by the online digital advertising market.  

Schumpeter realised that this capitalist evolution of markets has wider social implications. As the leaders of large monopolies and dominant industries exert sociopolitical influence, Creative Destruction implies more than just a revolution of commercial activity. It shifts the sociopolitical and socioeconomic order too. Again, consider the waning influence of Television and the increasing influence of social media. 

Accelerationists like Andreessen and Thiel, adopting Land’s Dark Enlightenment, see Creative Destruction not just as an effect of capitalism but as a tool to propel the evolution of capitalism, rendering capitalism itself a controllable revolutionary force. They can achieve this, they assert, by investing in whatever they consider to be a disruptive technology with the potential to change society. In so doing, they believe they can manipulate and control the development of new sociopolitical and socioeconomic systems and bring us closer to being ruled by the corporate monarchy they wish to form. 

The “we” Andreessen refers to in his Techno Optimist Manifesto is a group consisting of Silicon Valley oligarchs—of which Andreessen is one—alongside Thiel, Musk, Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, Larry Ellison, Joe Lonsdale, and David Sacks, etc. Joining them are a gaggle of NRx acolytes and aspiring oligarchs, like Balaji Srinivasan and Guillaume Verdon. Working together to shape the policies and initiatives of the current Trump administration, this core group is applying the Dark Enlightenment and installing Technocracy in the US. But the US isn’t the only nation-state undergoing such oligarch-led “transformation.” 

Though it is a stretch to call Land and Yarvin’s ramblings “philosophy,” we could say that the Dark Enlightenment provides the philosophical underpinning for the move to a system of city-states. Technocracy outlines the social control mechanism—the operating system of the city-state if you like—that will surveil and engineer our behaviour should we find ourselves trapped in one of their corporatised city realms: gov-corp Technates. 

The NRx technocrats’ ideas overlap with the blueprint already being implemented at the intergovernmental level by their senior globalist oligarch brethren—and they are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, men. The global oligarchy wants to install a “Multipolar World Order” (MWO) as the final bureaucratic redesign of global governance prior to instigating firm global government—sometimes referred to as the New World Order—overseeing a patchwork of city-state realms. 

This may all read like very bold claims, but we’ll explore the evidence demonstrating the fact in these two articles. 

The Orbital Authority Sham

Certainly leading NRx “thinker” Curtis Yarvin is fully onboard with a proposed system of global dictatorship ruling a patchwork of city-state realms: the ultimate gov-corp Technate. In his 2024 piece “The Orbital Authority,” Yarvin metaphorically argues, as is his want, that weaponising space will make all forms of terrestrial warfare redundant. He posits that air, sea, and land forces will be rendered “obsolete” by the “Orbital Authority” that controls space weaponry and directs warfare from orbit. 

Bear in mind that NRx technocrats like Yarvin view AI as their “philosopher’s stone”—symbolizing material and spiritual transformation. They disconnect AI from humanity and perceive it as a separate entity, as a “superintelligent” consciousness. In his article, Yarvin wrote: 

Mars, god of war, is the father of all things. Orbit is the ultimate high ground. When we conquer orbit [. . .] we have conquered the Earth. [. . .] The most important task of any weapons system is to defend itself. Not only could a 21st-century [orbital weapons system] defeat a nuclear first strike, it could defeat any attempt to defeat the system itself. It would serve as a launch denial system. It would destroy any previously unannounced launch—rendering orbit a monopoly.

Evidently Yarvin envisages some sort of independent, autonomous, monopolistic AI “Orbital Authority.” Like the “father of all things” this weaponised superintelligence dominates the “ultimate high ground” to effectively conquer the Earth. 

Yarvin’s fellow NRx technocrat Nick Land has long argued that capitalism is a simulacrum for AI, by which he means a distinct “non-human” intelligence. Land came to this conclusion as a result of his unusual interpretation of one of the basic tenets of Austrian Economics. 

Formative Austrian Economist Friedrich Hayek observed that any market economy is an “information, processing system.” Austrian economists emphasise that individual actions and decisions drive markets and therefore, to a great extent, value is subjective (methodological individualism). Thus, for Austrian Economists, prices are the result of a decentralised information exchange at the whole capitalist economy scale. 

In 2011, shortly before he published the Dark Enlightenment, this led Land to conclude: 

What appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely. 

Of course, this is not what Austrian Economists like Hayek argued. In their model, the information system is formed by price signals emanating from the needs and desires of individual human beings. Though the complexity of all signals in a large market economy is beyond the analysis of any one individual or bureaucracy (economic calculation problem), there is nothing “artificial” about it. The price system is not a separate self assembling entity, as Land wants to believe, but rather the product of human interactions. It is a distinctly “organic” system, for want of a better term.  

Sharing Land’s view that AI is, or will become, an independent entity beyond human intervention, in his 2024 article, Yarvin envisioned that “the Orbital Authority dominates, owns and controls the whole planet.” It is not difficult to appreciate that for Yarvin, Land and other NRx technocrats, “Orbital Authority” is a metaphor for ascendant, AI-controlled, automated and well-armed global governance systems. 

Advocates of the Dark Enlightenment have been developing AI weapons technology for decades. Thiel’s Palantir, for example, has seen its 2025 second quarter sales jump by 48% due, in part, to the success of its Lavender, Gospel, and “Where’s Daddy” AI targeting systems. These have been deployed, with Palantir’s assistance, by the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries. 

Because NRx technocrats like Musk, Land and Yarvin imagine AI to be a “superintelligence,” they present theories about the future of humanity that assume AI will inevitably become an independent, conscious entity that we will have no choice but to obey. They are certainly committed to engineering this future if they can. 

Yarvin’s figurative “god of war”—Orbital Authority—is a typical example of the circular reasoning frequently exhibited by NRx technocrats. They imbue AI with abilities it doesn’t possess and then advocate AI as a solution to humanity’s problems based upon their unfounded insistence that AI possesses said abilities.

In truth, before we get to Self-Aware AI—which the NRx technocrats claim is inevitable—AI developers first have to overcome a whole range of tricky problems to achieve Theory of Mind AI. As Theory of Mind AI is currently purely hypothetical, the assumption that Self-Aware or Superintelligent AI is imminent is highly questionable, to say the least. 

Indeed, we might wonder how it is possible for NRx technocrats to program a computer algorithm to be conscious when, as yet, no human being can define consciousness. As highlighted in March 2024 by Professor Arthur T. Johnson: 

[A] sufficient definition of the nature of consciousness has not yet been satisfactorily established. How the brain conjures conscious awareness from the electrical activity of billions of individual nerve cells remains one of the great unanswered questions of life. And what this consciousness actually means is not easy to define. Trying to extend whatever is known about consciousness in living beings to an AGI [artificial generative intelligence] would be difficult, if not unreasonable, at this time.

Ideologically, not rationally, setting AI as their “philosopher’s stone,” the NRx technocrats seek to establish an international “patchwork” of AI-managed “neostates,” though we can accurately refer to them as gov-corp Technates. This dispersed network, they contend, will decentralise and localise authority. 

Yarvin seemingly creates a paradox between decentralised authority and the absolute centralisation of all “Orbital Authority.” Such jarring contradictions are not uncommon for the NRx technocrats. 

Yarvin’s proposed Orbital Authority will ensure the “Patchwork” will flourish because military conflict between the city-states will become impotent, if not impossible, under the Orbital Authority’s watchful eye and its ability to destroy any aggressor. So, in Yarvin’s view, it matters not who controls the Orbital Authority, only that it exists. 

If you posit, as NRx technocrats do, that Orbital Authority—global government—will not be exercised by people but by the dispassionate logic of an AI “superintelligence,” then Orbital Authority is the great saviour protecting us from our own self-destructive urges. It is a “god” allowing us to decentralise into the Patchwork. Thus, sociopolitical decentralisation is enabled by the centralisation of all power and authority beyond humanity’s control. 

The metaphorical Orbital Authority for which Yarvin advocates is a sham concept and he admits as much in his own musings. 

Yarvin asks: 

Where does the Orbital Authority come from? Who creates this force? Who are the people who operate it? [. . .] All good questions. But this is one future I would want to live in.

Yarvin likes the idea of a single, logical dictatorship ruling the Earth for no other reason than it fits with his own ambition to establish a worldwide structure of city-state realms. He essentially argues that a cohesive, overarching AI world order with the power to annihilate humanity will lead humanity to “flourish” in a network of “thousands of independent sovereign states and city-states.” 

Yarvin casually dismisses the “good questions” he asks. The question of “who creates” and thus controls the imagined Orbital Authority ruling the entire patchwork planet is, he insinuates, of secondary importance. Like all NRx technocrats, Yarvin wants us to accept the fundamental principle that dictatorship is good. 

NRx technocrat oligarchs, like Thiel and Musk, say they are opposed to any form of world government. Thiel claims he views world government to be the manifestation of the Antichrist. Nonetheless, the question of who rules is of primary importance to the global cartel of oligarchs who have, for generations, been plotting to establish themselves as unchallenged world rulers. 

If, as NRx technocrats proclaim, they wish to avert world government, it appears their efforts to establish a patchwork of city-state realms is a monumental miscalculation. So much so, that we might suspect the NRx technocrat’s protestations are a ruse. Their globalist oligarch partners have been trying to construct exactly the same city-state network for decades, precisely because it better facilitates global governance and, thereafter, the move to global government—Orbital Authority. 

In reality Thiel, Musk, Andreessen, and Sacks et al. are members of the same global oligarchy. Thiel and Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp, for example, are on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group. Even the mainstream media concedes that the Bilderberg group has the authority to concentrate “control at the top of the Atlantic alliance [NATO].” A private oligarch network controlling NATO is approaching the Orbital Authority Yarvin imagines. Like Yarvin, it seems the mainstream media is only interested in the fact that private sector international authoritarianism exists, accepting its presence without question. 

In all likelihood, Yarvin, Land, Thiel, Musk and Andreessen, etc., know that AI is not a potentially independent, artificial god—though they pretend it is and that its arrival is unavoidable. Yarvin certainly seems to infer that AI is and will always be a technological tool controlled by human beings, some of whom have very specific agendas. 

As Yarvin reluctantly admits, the people who control his conceptualised “Orbital Authority” are not irrelevant. On the contrary, this is the key question that should concern us all. 

The Decentralisation to Recentralisation Trick

NRx technocrat Balaji Srinivasan explained the decentralisation to recentralisation trick in his 2022 book The Network State: How To Start a New Country. The decentralisation of a patchwork of realms enables what he calls the recentralisation of authority. 

Srinivasan outlines how a network archipelago—synonymous with an NRx realm—could initially form as an online community. This networked community, comprising of people who perhaps own property or land (physical assets), would form “physical nodes” that could then be linked together to form “a set of digitally connected physical territories distributed around the world”—the network archipelago.  

Importantly, though the nodes on the network archipelago are linked to physical assets (property or land for example) they form a digital network—via the unified ledger recording all assets—to “seamlessly link the online and offline worlds.” Once the archipelago is established, the community would crowdfund the acquisition of more physical assets and territory, fund construction and finance expansion to form private “enclaves.” 

Srinivasan wrote: 

With the internet, we can digitally sew these disjoint[sic] enclaves together into a new kind of polity that achieves diplomatic recognition: a network state.

The network state, then, appears to be an international, dispersed or decentralised neighborhood of like-minded individuals who want to break free from the traditional state system. This is an intriguing proposition that appeals to libertarians who value decentralisation as a means of tackling the problems caused by the centralised concentration of political authority: wars and genocides, for example. 

Srinivasan says that NRx technocrats like himself aren’t communists imagining a Utopia but rather “technologists that believe in individual initiative subject to practical constraints.” Srinivasan declares that the future he and his cadre of Dark Enlightenment enthusiasts desire is “one where we materialize many startup societies, get a few diplomatically recognized as network states, and rebuild high-trust societies via a recentralized center.” 

The network state is seemingly a decentralised web of “physical territories” that are linked together by digital technology. Every asset held by every customer of the network state, no matter in which country they currently reside, is recorded on the network state’s digital ledger. Srinivasan wrote “nothing officially exists unless it’s on-chain, in the blockchain system of record for that society.” He said that in the network state—gov-corp Technate—he desires, “all value goes digital.” 

On the surface, it would seem that the network-state model offers the kind of decentralisation that could potentially emancipate people from oppressive state control. Egalitarian decentralisation appears at least possible if the network state utilises permissionless Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), such as the permissionless blockchain, as the backbone of its “startup” society. 

Srinivasan declared: 

An integrated cryptocurrency [. . .] is the digital backbone of the Network State. It manages the internal digital assets, the smart contracts, the web3 citizen logins, the birth and marriage certificates, the property registries, the public national statistics, and essentially every other bureaucratic process that a nation-state manages via pieces of paper.  

Though there is no agreed formal definition of the Web 3.0 iteration of the internet, a reasonable description is a world wide web that places “a strong emphasis on decentralized applications and probably make[s] extensive use of blockchain-based technologies.” However, in order for the potential humanitarian benefits of digital decentralisation to be realised, it is essential that the DLT backbone of Web 3.0 is based on permissionless ledger technology. 

Crucially, anonymous, open network access to open source permissionless ledgers would potentially allow people to validate transactions, exchange secure data and engage in the administrative processes necessary for a society to function without being subject to any approving authority. The “high-trust” Srinivasan mentions would be established between individuals and parties via systematic cryptographic verification of digital transactions, such as the exchange of signed contract agreements or payment made using digital currency. Thus, in theory, no third party approbation would be required for people to “trust” the decentralised system and, consequently, each other. 

A permissioned ledger presents us with a very different proposition. Access to the digital ledger is permitted or denied by controlling individuals or parties. Transactions are approved via consensus exercised by those with the appropriate level of permissions. Decentralisation is limited and only extends to the permission holders, whoever they may be. “High-trust” is not achieved systematically, it is granted by the permission holders. 

Srinivasan didn’t specify whether the network state would operate on a permissionless or a permissioned ledger. Instead, he said that the ledger will be “publicly auditable,” “tamper-proof,” “cryptographically verifiable,”, etc. This might suggest he favours a permissionless system. On the other hand, he heavily criticised what he called “Bitcoin Maximalism,” by which he meant that Bitcoins permissionless blockchain “takes many libertarian leanings to their irrational limits.” 

Given the importance of the distinction, the absence of any affirmation from Srinivasan seems like an odd and conspicuous omission. Certainly everything else Srinivasan proposed in The Network State strongly suggests his preference for an authoritarian, permissioned blockchain ledger. 

According to Srinivasan, the NRx technocrats want a “mass exodus of people from [the nation-state] to the recentralized center, to high-trust startup societies and network states.” If, as they claim, centralised authority is something they wish to avoid and decentralisation is a principle they hold to, then what is the “recentralized center” in the network state model? 

For a start, the network state will have “a clear founder to provide direction”: 

The primary goal of [. . .] the tech founder is to build — and for no one to have power over them. [. . .] Today, there are two kinds of revolutionaries: technological and political. And there are two kinds of backers of these revolutionaries: venture capitalists and philanthropists. The backers seek out the founders, the ambitious leaders of new technology companies and new political movements. And that is the market for revolutionaries. [. . .] In short, once we see that a tech founder builds a startup company to effect economic change, and a political activist builds a social movement to effect moral change, we can see how the startup societies we describe [gov-corp Technates] in this work combine aspects of both.

If “no one” has power over the founder, or founders, of the network state then they are individually sovereign. But the founder(s) also provides “direction” in the network state. Thus the founder is also the supreme sovereign of the network state. They effect economic and moral dictatorship thanks to the support they receive from the revolutionary “venture capitalists and philanthropists” that act as their backers and anyone else who agrees with the founder’s vision. Of course, venture capitalists and philanthropists don’t invest anything without expecting some sort of return on their investment (ROI). 

The network state is sold to us as a libertarian concept, but libertarianism is based upon individual sovereignty. Srinivasan outlines how sovereignty will supposedly function in the network state: 

[P]eople from other countries that want to maintain their own sovereignty will need to avail themselves of BTC/web3 for decentralized communication, transaction, and computation.

Remember, in a network state “all value goes digital” and “nothing officially exists unless it’s on-chain.” Consequently, sovereignty only exists if you own assets (digital or physical) on the network state’s ledger. Your sovereignty is directly proportional to your wealth in a network state. 

Should the “customers” of the network state not like the direction decreed by the founder they could “freely leave should they choose.” This assumes that the customer has the means to move elsewhere. If not, they don’t actually have any choice, nor any individual sovereignty, and have no option but to submit to the “directions” issued by the “founder[s].” 

In order to access the network state’s ledger you will need digital ID and Srinivasan uses the acronym ENS (Ethereum Name Service) as a proxy for digital ID. Similarly, rather than call the network state’s victims “customers,” Srinivasan calls them “users”:

[A] user has consented to be governed by a startup society [network state founder] if he has signed a social smart contract that gives a system administrator limited privileges over that user’s digital life in return for admission to the startup society. [. . .] As more physical territories are crowdfunded by a startup society, and more smart devices within those territories are owned by the society, it can exert consensual digital governance within those territories on all who opted in by signing the social smart contract. For example, if someone misbehaves within a given startup society-owned jurisdiction, after [an AI arbitrated] digital trial, their deposits could be frozen and their ENS [digital identity] locked out of all doors for a time period as a punishment.

To reiterate: nothing exists in a network state—gov-corp Technate or city-state—unless its is represented on the ledger. Therefore, your life is represented on the ledger by creating your “digital twin.” It is only your digital twin that is deemed to exist. Companies like the Israeli AU10TIX, which is a subsidiary of the Israeli intelligence-founded ICTS, provides digital ID solutions that are creating your “digital twin” life on platforms like X. 

AU10TIX explains: 

Digital ID functions as a Digital Twin of your identity. [. . .] Digital IDs continuously validate your identity using biometrics, [. . .] your Digital ID evolves with risk signals, fraud prevention insights, and changing credentials—ensuring it remains accurate and trustworthy. [. . .] A true Digital ID isn’t just tied to one institution. It’s reusable across banks, government services, airlines, and online platforms.

The seamless link between “online and offline worlds” means whatever “limits” are placed on the virtual life of your “digital twin” are placed on yours. Agreeing to hand over “limited privileges” to the “system administrators” who control the “digital life” of your “digital twin” in a network state—where your only option is to flee if possible—is voluntary slavery. 

Having your access to funds cut off and being unable to access goods or services, or use any “smart devices”—such as your fridge—if AI judges that you have “misbehave[d]” doesn’t sound very libertarian. But that’s understandable because the Srinivasan is of the view that digital slavery is just something we all need to accept: 

[T]he network state system assumes that states [. . .] will continue centralizing the power of their tech companies into one all-seeing dashboard, capable of surveilling, deplatforming, freezing, and sanctioning millions at once, or anyone at will. [. . .] The network state system assumes that we can’t fully put this genie back in the bottle, but we can constrain it.

We all need to be very clear in this point: the NRx technocrats are currently instrumental in building and deploying the AI-based systems that will “centralize the power” of their “tech companies” within nation-states. The NRx technocrats are also rolling out the state social credit technology that is increasingly “deplatforming, freezing and sanctioning” both organisations and individuals. That is to say, the NRx technocrats are constructing the digital gulag that their representatives, such as Srinivasan, are warning us against. 

Their offered solution is that we all adopt digital ID, sign a “social smart contract” and thereby consent to live our lives subject to the tyranny of the founders in gov-corp Technate city-states. We’ll still be subject to total digital surveillance and control—this is inevitable apparently—but it will be “constrained” if we opt to live in their private fiefdoms. In the time-honoured tradition of the so-called representative democracy they claim to oppose, the NRx technocrats are offering us the lesser of two evils, but it is evil nonetheless.

Bearing this dystopian alleged inevitability in mind, Srinivasan posits that life in western representative democracies is plagued by “woke capital,” permissionless blockchain use represents “anarchic decentralisation,” and subservience to the authoritarian nation-state he describes as “coercive centralisation.” The network state, he contends, offers a better way: volitional recentralization. 

He wrote: 

[T]the whole point is that the new boss [the founder] is not the same as the old boss. [. . .] Recentralization means new leaders, fresh blood. [. . .] Recentralization, done right, is a cycle back to centralization from one vantage point but a step forward from another.

For human beings, there is no “step forward” to be taken within the network state. Quite the opposite in fact. Subjecting yourself to the dictatorial rule of the network state founder is a regression back to feudalism. Srinivasan’s “volitional recentralization” is oligarchy. 

The only sense in which the network state, or city-state realm, neostate, or gov-corp Technate, Freedom City, Charter City, or Special Economic Zone—whatever nomenclature you prefer—could be said to be “decentralised” is that the “patchwork” of realms is designed to decentralise and diminish the sovereign authority asserted by national governments. 

The offer of “decentralised” authority might sound enticing to libertarians, but breaking up nation-states into corporate-controlled “enclaves” run by founding CEO despots doesn’t offer anyone a viable escape route either from corrupt government or state oppression. Yarvin’s “Patchwork” is not a network of decentralised archipelagos, it is a network of recentralized, “founder” controlled city-state fiefdoms.

If anyone chooses to live in one of these networked enclaves, they will have escaped the rule of government and opted for the rule of “venture capitalists and philanthropists” and their designated “founders.” That is to say, they will find themselves living under the direct rule of oligarchs absent any means of redress. 

Unfortunately, there is no “choice” on offer. As we shall see in Part 2, there is instead a “plan” to initially force the dispossessed and the least powerful to live in gov-corp Technates. Privately “owned” city-states are set to be the “human settlements” entrapping billions of people. 

Oligarch Revolutionaries?

According to Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” the NRx identifies a number of ideas as their “enemy.” These include “statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism, [. . .] bureaucracy, [. . .] corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, [and] cartels.” Andreessen also claims the NRx technocrats oppose “social engineering.” 

Clearly, then, the NRx technocrats say they are antagonistic to the centralised bureaucratic state that socially engineers its population and is corrupted by wealth. This apparent opposition is shared by many, if not all libertarians. Regrettably, for libertarians lulled into endorsing the network state, NRx technocrats don’t genuinely harbour any such antagonisms. 

Andreeseen’s Manifesto presents us with numerous paradoxes. Despite identifying ideas like authoritarianism and central planning as their “enemy,” the network state, or gov-corp Technate, is centrally planned and administered, and avowedly authoritarian. Gov-corp Technates are designed to be jurisdictional monopolies that link people’s digital ID to their use of digital currency enabling the “founder[s]”—and other with the necessary permissions—to punish whoever is subjectively judged to have “misbehave[d].” Such a system is obviously intended to maximise the reach and impact of social engineering. 

In a similar vein to Srinivasan’s reluctance to disclose the permission status of the network state’s ledger, Andreessen’s list of enemies is highly suspicious. NRx technocrats may say they are opposed to all these enemy-ideas, but the gov-corp Technates they want to impose are largely based upon those very same concepts. Deception appears to be a consistent NRx technocrat tactic. 

The casting of venture capitalists and philanthropists as “revolutionaries” is both part of NRx technocrat ideology and treachery in equal measure. NRx technocrats automatically consider venture capitalists and philanthropists “revolutionaries” if they are accelerationists. So Peter Thiel—a Bilderberg group Silicon Valley venture capitalist and philanthropic accelerationist oligarch—is a revolutionary, according to NRx technocrat “thinking.” 

If we consider the etymology of the word “revolutionary” to mean one who seeks the “overthrow of an established political or social system,” then NRx technocrat oligarchs like Thiel, Musk, Andreessen, and Sacks could be considered revolutionaries. They seemingly wish to overthrow every established political or social system. 

With one notable exception: oligarchy. 

Despite what most people believe, be it a constitutional federal republic, a constitutional monarchy or a unitary constitutional republic, the democratic nation-state they live in is not what they think it is. From the standpoint of political science, the US, for example, is actually a “functional oligarchy.” 

Referencing the extensive policy research of political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, Professors Archon Fung and Lawrence Lessig reported: 

[Gilens and Page studied] 1,800 policy proposals over 30 years, tracking how they made their way through the political system and whose interests were served by the outcomes. For small-d democrats, the results were devastating. Political outcomes overwhelmingly favored very wealthy people, corporations, and business groups. The influence of ordinary citizens, meanwhile, was at a “non-significant, near-zero level.” America, they concluded, was not a democracy at all, but a functional oligarchy.

Nearly every other economically advanced nation operates the same sociopolitical model: functional oligarchy. That is not to say that all functional oligarchies are the same. 

An oligarch is simply someone who has converted their immense wealth into political authority. In the West, despite the published political science demonstrating that Western democracies are functional oligarchies, the manner in which the oligarchy controls the polity is denied or obfuscated. The situation elsewhere, in China for instance, is somewhat different. 

In China, having vast wealth is seen as a legitimate pathway to political influence. The National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s highest organ of state power, has more than 100 billionaires and is almost certainly the wealthiest legislative body on earth. Reporting this fact in 2018, the New York Times put a typically Western spin on their report: 

In a country where the Communist Party makes all the big decisions, Chinese lawmakers hold very little political power. But they have plenty of money. [. . .]  According to the Hurun Report, a research organization in Shanghai that tracks the wealthy in China, the net worth of the 153 members of China’s Parliament and its advisory body that it deems “super rich” amounts to $650 billion. 

Though it is true that the Communist Party of China (CPC)—often called the CCP in the West—has a grip on power, that does not mean it is all powerful, contrary to how it is often portrayed. Innovation is driven by private sector finance and partnerships in China just as it is nearly everywhere else. Consequently, China is no more immune from oligarch influence than other nations. 

What the NYT didn’t mention is that 97 of the top 100 richest oligarchs were, at the time, members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The internal CPPCC “national committee” is a powerful advisory body within China’s “consultative democracy” model. 

Xi Jinping rose to power thanks due, in no small measure, to the support he received from the Chinese oligarch faction—of which he is one—called the Princelings. Since taking supreme power, Xi Jinping premiership has been marked by his own political power grab and a resultant power struggle between China’s oligarch factions. 

Acknowledging this reality is not to suggest that China’s functional oligarchy is worse than any other. The practical difference between China’s functional oligarchy and functional oligarchies elsewhere is that China’s is more overt and is, to all intents and purposes, formally institutionalised as the public sector. In the West, conversely, we are supposed to believe that the public sector governments we elect are in charge and a buttress against private sector oligarch control. Our propaganda consistently promotes this myth.

The NRx technocrat “revolutionary” has no intention to “overthrow [the] established political or social system.” Their envisaged patchwork of gov-corp Technates enhances the established political system of functional oligarchy. Once we grasp that an international patchwork of gov-corp Technates, under the “Orbital Authority” of all powerful global governance structure, is what the global oligarchy desires, the seeming contradictions presented by Land, Yarvin, Andreessen, Srinivasan and others are decipherable.  

Oligarch’s Private Jurisdictions  

It is within the context of the functional oligarchy-state system that we can start to make sense of what would otherwise seem inexplicable. The influential NRx technocrat’s Balaji Srinivasan supposedly opposes statism. Yet, he simultaneously anticipates diplomatic recognition for his city-state projects from the nation-states they infest. 

Governments often wage wars if anyone tries to seize any part of their claimed national territory. Why would any national government passively allow its territory to be ceded to private individuals to set up their own fiefdoms—with their own jurisdictions—beyond state regulation and control? 

It would be easy to dismiss Srinivasan’s diplomatic recognition objective as ludicrous were it not for the fact that governments across the world serve as functional oligarchies and are currently ceding territory and jurisdiction to private investors. The proliferation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) attests to the fact. 

In October 2022, the Institute for Decentralized Governance (IDG) published a research paper analysing the legal framework for establishing SEZs in more than eighty countries. The IDG noted that there is “a similar pattern” to all “zoning” frameworks. The creation of a “new authority”—referred to in the paper as just “the authority”—is an essential first step, or so we are told.

The Governing Board of the authority is usually a public private partnership between government officials, a representative of the nation’s central bank, and the private sector investors who are the “revolutionary” venture capitalists and philanthropists. Once established, however, the SEZ authority is registered as “a body corporate with its own common seal, which is empowered to enter into contracts in its own name and which can sue and be sued.” The Governing Board, usually in consultation with the government, will appoint the CEO of the SEZ authority. 

If this sounds familiar, it is because this is also the model for the network state—or the gov-corp Technate. The only difference is that, in an SEZ, the sovereign corporation (sovcorp) is a public-private partnership whereas, in the NRx technocrat model, the sovcorp of a realm is an entirely private corporation. But this amounts to little more than semantics because governments, as functional oligarchies, are effectively controlled by the private sector already.  

The SEZ authority determines the “special legal regime” that operates in the SEZ. Typically this will include sweeping corporate tax exemptions and other economic incentives, such as no ownership restrictions, exclusion from national monopolies and merger regulations, and lax—often extremely lax—labour laws. 

The authority—a CEO-run corporation—then licenses the developer and the operator of the SEZ. The role of the developer is to “design, construct, and extend the zones. This can include leasing, renting or selling land or facilities.” The operator may be the same as the developer or a separate body. The operators “run, manage, administer, maintain and promote the zones.” 

In the public model of the SEZ, the developer and the operator are appointed public sector entities. In the public-private partnership model, they might be public limited companies, while in the private SEZ, the developer and operator are private companies, potentially one private company. 

Subsequent expansion of the SEZ territory, also “usually” follows “a similar pattern”:

[T]he proposal to declare a particular territory a zone area comes from the authority, which forwards it to the government. The government then officially declares the area as a zone area and establishes a new zone.

When the SEZ has a public-private partnership or completely private design, this essentially means territorial expansion of the SEZ is a private corporate initiative. Thus, in NRx technocrat terms, the privately owned patchwork of realms can be constructed by exploiting SEZs. 

In 2019, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted that there were 5,400 SEZs already established around the world. UNCTAD described the purpose of an SEZ regime: 

[W]ithin a defined perimeter, [SEZs] provide a regulatory regime for businesses and investors distinct from what normally applies in the broader national or subnational economy where they are established. [. . .] SEZs, as territories with regimes that depart from national rules, are necessarily a public initiative. The development, ownership and management of individual zones, however, can be public, private or a public-private partnership (PPP). Private developers are often engaged to minimize initial public outlays and to access international expertise in zone design, construction and marketing. Zone management and oversight can involve various government levels (local, regional, national), investors and businesses operating in the zone, and numerous other stakeholders, such as financiers, industry associations and representatives from local communities or other interest groups.

Most SEZs are basic Free Trade Zones (FTZs) where businesses merely enjoy lower tariffs and, for example, subsidised warehousing costs. The globalist think tank the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) notes that the SEZs called “freeports” are “the largest type of economic zones, combining work and residential spaces.” Freeports are among the SEZs most suited to the development of potential new gov-corp Technate city-states. 

In 2023, the UK government reported: 

Freeports [. . .] are designated areas within countries that offer a free trade environment with a minimum level of regulation. The number of freeports and FTZs around the world have increased rapidly in recent years: today there are approximately 3,000 in total, located in 135 countries. [. . .] There are currently 12 UK freeports. 

As noted by the IDG, SEZs operate on a stakeholder capitalism model. SEZ “development, ownership and management” are predominantly controlled by the private sector, either directly or through public-private partnerships. In such partnerships the public and private sector stakeholders are united by partnership agreements. Stakeholder agreements favour oligarch interests because the private sector serves its leading shareholders and investors—oligarchs—and the public sector, represented by governments, is a functional oligarchy. 

In November 2024, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his government’s “partnership” with BlackRock to “deliver growth.” Keir Starmer appears to be a current serving member of the globalist think tank the Trilateral Commission and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, is a leading Trilateralist. 

Fink was recently named as the new interim co-chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF) alongside the heir to the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche and Club of Rome stalwart André Hoffmann. In 2023, Starmer infamously said that he would rather debate policy with the WEF than the UK Parliament because the WEF provides him an opportunity to “engage with people who you can see working with in the future.” A little over a year later, Starmer embarked on his official working relationship with Fink who openly states his commitment to stakeholder capitalism:

[T]he need for a platform [the WEF] that brings together business, government, and civil society [stakeholder capitalism] has never been greater. [. . .] The Forum has an opportunity to help drive international collaboration [to] promote open markets and national priorities side by side, while advancing the interests [of] stakeholders globally. We look forward to helping shape a more resilient and prosperous future, and to reinventing and strengthening the Forum as an indispensable institution for public-private cooperation [stakeholder capitalism]. 

BlackRock represents the world wealthiest investors (oligarchs). The Trilateral Commission—which Fink definitely represents and Starmer evidently represents—is an oligarch-led globalist policy think tank as, in effect, is the WEF. 

The UK government’s “partnership” with BlackRock epitomises how the functional oligarchies we call governments operate. The purpose of the partnership is to achieve the objectives of the only true “stakeholders,” namely the oligarchs. The government’s role is merely to create the “enabling environment”—the policy framework and public investment that enriches and empowers the private sector. Improving the working lives or economic prospects of the British people has absolutely nothing to do with the UK-BlackRock partnership. 

Part of the UK government (public) – BlackRock (private) partnership agreement is that BlackRock will take an eighty percent stake in developing three of the twelve privately owned freeport SEZs in the UK. They are currently owned by CK Hutchison which is effectively controlled by Chinese oligarch Li Ka-shing. The UK Government supports BlackRock’s investment strategy because it claims SEZs deliver economic growth which ensures “long-term, durable prosperity.” 

There is no reason to think SEZs provide “durable prosperity” for any community. According to a 2023 report by the UK Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS): 

The Office for Budget Responsibility [OBR] expects the Freeports to generate little additional [economic] activity.[. . .] The government has, to date, not published a full assessment of the effects it expects Freeports to have, which makes it difficult to scrutinise and evaluate these competing claims.

Two years later and there is still nothing, anywhere, that demonstrates any consistent, identifiable socioeconomic SEZ dividends. Though it is much easier to understand why the private sector would relish the SEZ opportunity. 

By May 2025, the UK government, under Starmer, had directed nearly £20 billion ($27 billion) of UK taxpayer money into SEZ freeport development, generating just 5,600 jobs. It seems each job has cost the UK taxpayer about £3.6 million ($4.8 million). Nor is it clear if these are new jobs or simply relocated jobs. At the same time, the UK Labour government has embarked on a series of funding cuts, targetting the most vulnerable, as part of a wider, if politically denied, austerity package that further impoverishes working families in the UK.   

None of this matters to BlackRock’s or CK Hutchison’s oligarch investors. They are happy to take UK tax payer subsidies to develop their interests inside the independent jurisdictions of SEZs. 

To understand why global investors are so enthusiastic about SEZs, consider United Arab Emirates’ SEZs. They provide the private corporate sector a number of clear advantages. 

Foreigners can wholly own UAE SEZ-based businesses without the need for the UAE sponsor that would otherwise be necessary; there are no capital requirements placed on SEZ-founded companies; the SEZ leadership sets its own financial and corporate rules and regulations outside of the jurisdiction of the UAE government; there is no need for a UAE SEZ company to have any offices in either the UAE or the SEZ; ownership and control can be exercised entirely from overseas territories—the Cayman Islands tax haven for example; and UAE SEZs allow “zoned” companies to avoid paying UAE import and export duties, UAE value added tax and UAE corporation tax. 

It is very hard to see what the UAE SEZ-based corporations contributes to the UAE economy. The foreign SEZ-based corporations take advantage of extensive UAE deregulation but don’t have to deliver much, if anything, in return. The same pattern is observable nearly everywhere. Across the thousands of SEZs, in more than 135 countries across the globe, independent jurisdictions are being carved out of nation-states by their governments for no discernable socioeconomic reason. 

As ever, there are always alleged exceptions. The Rwandan Kigali Special Economic Zone (KSEZ), for instance, has reportedly generated 13,000 jobs and attracted $2.3 billion of inward private sector investment. That said, it isn’t at all clear if the KSEZ has contributed to or benefited from Rwanda’s national economic development. Since the horrific 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, economic and political recovery has been marked in Rwanda. The KSEZ is certainly part of the wider Rwandan recovery, but the recovery itself has largely been the result of increased agricultural productivity, improved tourism, and a growing national service sector. 

Probably the best known and most economically successful SEZ is Shenzhen in China’s Guangdong province. Established in 1980, Shenzhen was among China’s first SEZs. Often called China’s Silicon Valley, Shenzhen is a digital technology hub and its economic growth has indeed been remarkable. In 1980, Shenzhen was a fishing community of around 30,000 people with a GDP (adjusted for today) valued at $377 million. In 2025, it is home to more than 17.5 million people and has an estimated GDP of $513 billion. 

Shenzhen is China’s third largest “mega-city,” its population size is eclipsed only by Shanghai and Beijing. As an SEZ, Shenzhen operates its own jurisdiction under license from the national government. 

The Shenzhen government is “empowered to enact regulations on [its] own.” Like nearly all SEZs, Shenzhen was set up to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). It has been granted jurisdictional independence from the central government to create an independent court system that focuses on corporate and property law, and dispute resolution for international investors. 

Perhaps some might be surprised that a supposedly authoritarian and “communist” national government would give a territory within its borders such a high degree of autonomy for the benefit of foreign capitalists. But this is standard for thousands of SEZ jurisdictions globally. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the NEOM SEZ is where the NEOM “green mega-city of the future” is being constructed. Hardly known for its libertarian legal system, the Saudi government has nonetheless enabled the NEOM SEZ to set its “own tax, labor laws, and an autonomous judicial system, distinct from the rest of Saudi Arabia.”

The startup city of Itana, in the Nigerian “Lekki Free Zone,” offers an independent jurisdiction that is designed to allow “tech startups, financial service companies, [and] business service providers,” to operate in any currency and run their businesses online, from anywhere on the globe, without having to abide by the Nigerian government’s regulations or many of its laws. Professor Omolade Adunbi, director of the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan, pointed out that “the moment you are inside the zone, you are outside of the Nigerian state.” 

To date, many SEZs have become islands of corruption and criminality. In 2022, a team of social scientists from Northumbria and Sheffield universities in the UK found that the three types of crimes most prevalent to SEZs were illicit trade, the illegal hiding of wealth and assets, and environmental crimes. At their worst, SEZs are little more then free zones for international crime. 

The UK researchers highlighted the exploitation of the so-called “Golden Triangle” SEZ:

[T]he Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GT SEZ) situated in Laos’ Bokeo Province is run by Kings Romans, a Hong Kong registered casino group [owned by suspected Chinese gangster Zhao Wei]. With the support of the Laos government, Kings Romans control a business empire of casinos, shopping malls, hotels, massage parlours and museums stretching across 3,000 hectares. Reports suggest the enclave has become a ‘lawless playground’ where illicit trade in drugs, humans and wildlife flourishes. [. . .] This type of minimally regulated economic development is also emerging in the vast corridors connecting countries and regions associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. For example, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) includes plans for the establishment of SEZs in Pakistan intended to drive future economic growth despite the historical failure of previous export-oriented economic zoning strategies in the country, which have so far failed to create meaningful employment, exports or ties to the domestic economy.

The academics also highlighted how SEZs often start as relatively small scale projects but tend toward territorial expansion:

Founded in 1980, Shenzhen SEZ was a key part of China’s economic reform. Echoing Las Vegas’ boosterist experiment of an ‘architecture without architects,’ the zone was initially designed to form a bridge with Hong Kong comprised of four districts in the city, but now encompasses the city in its entirety. In cases such as this, where a deregulated liminal space transforms into a SEZ that later grows into a whole city, a ‘hybrid zone/city’ emerges. Bach (2011: 184) terms such places the ‘Ex-City’, which also includes the integration of multiple smaller zones into the cityscape, a kind of urbanism that moves increasingly away from the sense of a public space and administration to one in which corporations and other non-state actors become increasingly important.

The concept of the “hybrid zone/city,” epitomised by Shenzhen, is important to bear in mind as we proceed, as is Institute for Decentralized Governance’s finding that SEZs expand when the corporate SEZ “authority” makes an expansion “proposal.” 

The Ideological City-State 

The Managing Director of the Institute for Decentralized Governance (IDG), which produced the SEZ report referenced above, is Nathalie Mezza-Garcia. She studied “new, alternative and local forms of governance” and “the creation of blockchain based special jurisdictions” at Warwick University where Nick Land first developed his ideas about accelerationism and the Dark Enlightenment. Patri Friedman is an advisor to the IDG. Patri is the grandson of renowned economist Milton Friedman, who Marc Andreessen considers another patron saint of Techno-Optimism.

The IDG recommendations for future SEZ development aren’t surprising. The IDG notes “there is no magic formula for creating an area of prosperity within a country’s territory.” This notion of the SEZ as an area of “prosperity” is a highly questionable assumption, not a demonstrable SEZ effect. The IDG observes:

[T]he natural demand for private governance services (which already exists today) [will] increase considerably over the next few years and the effort to adjust to this is already happening. Bearing in mind that the path to private governance zones is very desirable. [. . .] The [SEZ legal] framework has the function of protecting the investments and interests of the stakeholders, both for the pioneers in the project and for all parties that are interested in the region in the long term. [. . .] [T]he business model can prove to be superior to established state governance.

Again we are faced with a raft of assumptions. Where is the “natural demand for private governance services”? Why are private governance zones “very desirable”? That said, we can probably appreciate that replacing “state governance” with a “business model” is desirable for oligarch “stakeholders,” especially NRx technocrats, though the corresponding public demand is notably absent. 

As most SEZ projects have failed to deliver their touted economic gains, Thibault Serlet, writing for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 2022, observed that many SEZs are “economic development projects that have received massive amounts of government spending, but amount to nothing.” In keeping with the findings of the UK-based OBR and IFS, Serlet highlights how SEZs frequently extract resources from the host nation but provide little or no socioeconomic returns.  

Serlet reported the research of the Adrianople Group, which shows that sixty three percent of the thousands of SEZs around the world are either privately financed or financed by public-private partnerships. As we have already discussed, both public-private partnership financing and, obviously, direct private financing is provided for projects that meet the aims and objectives of the leading international investors. Modern SEZs are predominantly oligarch-led initiatives. 

Thibault Serlet is the Director of Research at the Adrianople Group. He advises Pronomos Capital, as does NRx technocrat and author of The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan. Pronomos Capital is a venture capitalist fund financed by NRx technocrats Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen among others. It is a business intelligence firm that specialises in the analysis of SEZs and startup cities.  

Thibault Serlet’s wife, Katerina Serlet, is the CEO of the Adrianople Group and a Partner and co-founder of Pronomos Capital. The Serlets are part of the NRx technocrat circles that are pushing for more “hybrid zone/city” developments.  

In his piece, Thibault Serlet acknowledged the problems of corruption found in SEZs in the Golden Triangle, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, India, and China, etc. He laid the blame for this squarely at the feet of the governments involved. Of course, this is the kind of corruption we might expect to find in any functional oligarchy where the public sector is, by definition, corrupted by the private sector oligarchy, including its criminal elements. 

But, despite reporting the corruption, Thibault Serlet completely overlooked who corrupts whom, and wrote: 

Mitigating corruption in SEZs is fairly simple: all countries need to do is fully privatize the zones, remove the government money, and let market forces make or break their zone programs. [. . .] In order to both improve the economies of their home countries and advance freedom, SEZs only need to do three things:

1. Be entirely privately funded and managed

2. Be located on land that is purchased on the market rather than seized through eminent domain or privatization of informally owned land

3. Be allowed to fail if market conditions do not favor the development of certain zones

Serlet’s argument, similar to the IDG’s eulogising of “private governance,” is not the product of any practical considerations but rather of NRx technocrat ideology. Instead of tackling private sector manipulation of the public sector, Serlet argues that SEZs will be less corrupt if they are handed over in their entirety to the private sector—NRx technocrats and other oligarchs. The oligarchs will simply buy whatever chunks of national territory they like the look of. 

Private sector financial power consuming the “physical assets” of nation-states is precisely what Srinivasan suggests in The Network State. If the constituent “founders” of a network state are a community of multi-billionaire oligarchs, then their ability to “crowdfund” their “startup society” will quickly overpower the financial resources of the host nation-state.

In a bizarre sense, Thibault Serlet’s view that gov-corp Technate city-states won’t be corrupt is correct. SEZ gov-corp Technates won’t have any public officials to bribe or otherwise coerce. Instead, oligarchs will have their own jurisdictions and rule them as the unchallenged CEO “Kings” of their own private “enclaves.” Thus arriving at the logical end point of unimpeded corruption.

The Adrianople Group provides maps of current global SEZ developments called the Open Zone Map. There are many different types of SEZs categorised by the Adrianople Group. They have decided that the “SEZ” provides opportunities for one industrial sector whereas “Diversified Zones” provide incentives for “a wide variety of industries.” Thus the Adrianople Group suggests a spectrum of SEZs. 

At one end of the spectrum, we have the “Export Processing Zone,” which is «a small zone which exclusively has customs and duties incentives,» and at the other the “Charter City,” which is «a large zone with deep incentives, both a commercial and residential district, and its own school.» 

The Charter City Institute (CCI) says that it is “a nonprofit dedicated to building the ecosystem for charter cities—new cities granted a special jurisdiction to create a new governance system.” The “ecosystem” consists of the “legal, regulatory, and planning frameworks needed for rapid urban growth.” In order to achieve this, the CCI avers it can influence “the global agenda through practical and academic research, engagement, and partnerships” and by “advising and convening key stakeholders like governments, new city developers, and multilateral institutions.”

The Charter City concept was first conceived as a purely public sector initiative by former World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer. He was the originator of the epigram “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” This was later widely attributed to the Obama White House’ Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who paraphrased Romer, saying “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Romer is dubious about the NRx technocrat’s private sector ambitions and accurately describes them as “wannabe monarchs [who] want to be masters of their own domain.”

While the CCI is less than transparent about its funding, Jaan Tallinn is a known individual donor. Tallinn, the developer of Skype, was an accelerationist investor—alongside Peter Thiel and Elon Musk—in the UK-based AI startup DeepMind. Google (Alphabet inc.) purchased DeepMind in 2014. The initial focus of the DeepMind research that Tallin, Thiel and Musk invested in was neural networking—AI simulations of the human brain. It seems Google was enticed when DeepMind developed the concept of the Neural Turing Machine (NTM). 

The CCI was established by Dr Mark Lutter who remains its Executive Director. Named after the Free City in the TV show Game of Thrones, Lutter also runs an international SEZ consultancy firm called Braavos. Explaining the Braavos objective, the company states: 

Braavos Cities is a special economic zone and new city advisory company. We work with governments, special economic zone authorities, and private developers to structure win-win deals. We specialize in large scale urban developments with delegated governance authority to attract investment. [. . .] Mark [Lutter] built a network of stakeholders in special economic zones and new city developments. 

Lutter was the former head economist for NeWAY Capital founded by Erick Brimen and Trey Goff. NeWay Capital’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is Gabriel Delgado who also serves as a NeWay advisory board member. Delgado’s role is “to bring world class investors and occupiers into all NeWay development projects.” 

Fortunately for NeWay and the startup city projects it finances, Delgado is a fellow of the Aspen Institute, a powerful US-based globalist think tank that describes itself as a “convenor of changemakers building a better world.” The Aspen institute is backed by a global public-private partnership that includes the US government, the UN, nearly every major US bank, numerous philanthropic foundations, such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, and a wide range of multinational corporations, such as BlackRock. Safe to say, Delgado’s ability to “bring world class investors” to NeWay Capital is exceptional. 

NeWay Capital and Pronomos Capital are among the few venture capitalists funds dedicated to charter city investments. Pronomos notes that charter cities currently attract investment from a “patchwork of investors,” typically composed of a “a hodge-podge of angel invest[ors].” Such “angel investors” are wealthy individuals who invest in startup ventures in exchange for equity (shares) in the startup. An “angel investor” is an “accelerationist” in NRx technocrat parlance. 

As noted by Startupmag: 

[T]he angel investor gets to become a part-owner of the business. It’s a popular option because it lets the investor and startup avoid haggling over the company’s value when it’s still finding its feet.

If the startup is a city that people live in, owning it is an enticing prospect for any oligarch. To this end, Pronomos explains “[c]harter city investors are individuals and groups that provide the capital necessary to build a charter city.” The kind of opportunities the NRx technocrats like Thiel and Andreessen are ultimately targetting include “many master-planned city projects such as Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Economic City, Egypt’s New Administrative Capital, and Indonesia’s new capital in the East Kalimantan province.” 

In order to secure “regulatory independence” for your startup charter cities, Pronomos stresses the need to build relationships with policymakers. Even for oligarchs, building a city is an extremely expensive endeavour. Therefore, Pronomos advises the angel/accelerationist investment “must be used to finance [. . .] legislation.” Once the correct legislation is bought and paid for, “future fundraising and expansion” can work towards construction and ownership of “the entire city.”

Pronomos Capital’s oligarch investors have reason for optimism. Adrianople Group also provides the New Cities Map, which the CCI commissioned and offers to show the “hundreds of master planned cities have been built in the 20th and 21st centuries, and many more [that] are being planned for the future.” 

That said, Pronomos also observes that funding your own city-state project is a high risk venture. Legal problems and population resistance inevitably occurs, but such issues can be overcome if you are wealthy enough to buy the necessary authority. 

To explain: Patri Friedman, advisor to the Institute for Decentralized Governance (IDG) and co-founder of Pronomos Capital, is a close associate of Peter Thiel. Together they set up The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008. The purpose of TSI was to colonise the oceans, but Friedman and Thiel shifted their focus back to the land with the Future Cities Development (FCD) in 2011. The intention was to build a “free city” in Honduras. However, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled that proposed private fiefdoms were unconstitutional and this led Freidman to supposedly wind down FCD operations in 2012. 

Coincidentally, four of the five Supreme Court judges that ruled against the “free city” project were subsequently ousted by the Honduran congress. The government then created three SEZs called Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDE) in 2013. Thiel, Andreessen, Friedman and other Pronomos “angel investors” were thus able to establish the territory for their startup charter city of Próspera near the village of Crawfish Rock on the island of Roatán in 2017. 

Calling Próspera “a beacon of freedom and prosperity,” the company CEO is Erick A. Brimen, who co-founded NeWay capital. Construction began in 2021 and this led the NGO called the North American Congress in Latin America (NACLA) to report: 

[R]esidents learned that their municipality was ground zero for a new enclave model that has allowed a group of investors from the Washington DC-based firm NeWay Capital to establish an independent governance system as an experiment with privatized jurisdictions. [. . .] The legal framework of the ZEDE caught the attention of libertarian and free-market venture capitalists who sought opportunities to create a global market of private governments. 

This NACLA report was not entirely accurate. The ZEDE had not “caught the attention” of venture capitalists. The same venture capitalists had been trying to establish the ZEDEs in Honduras since 2011. It was true, however, that the NRx technocrats were trying “to create a global market of private governments.” 

The “new enclave model” went down like a lead balloon with the people of Honduras. In the four years since construction began, Crawfish Rock has seen nothing of any benefit to the local community from the project. Venessa Cárdenas, a Crawfish Rock resident and community spokeswoman, explained that the community was not consulted, village land was simply expropriated, the environmental damage has been significant, and local natural resources, including the water supply, have been “enclaved” by multinational corporations without any consideration of the effect on the people of Crawfish Rock.  

Widely perceived in Honduras as little more than corporate colonialism, following years of consistent public objections and protests against “selling off the national territory in pieces,” in September 2024, Honduras’ new Supreme Court judges ruled the ZEDEs and Próspera unconstitutional. 

Unfortunately for the people of Honduras, the “freedom and prosperity” loving NRx technocrats turned to the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)—and employed the legal firepower of the UK multinational Deloitte—to ensure that the decisions of the elected Honduran government, its Supreme Court and the people of Honduras amounted to nothing. 

Using the ICSID, the NRx technocrats threatened to sue the Honduran government for nearly $11 billion and it had no practical option but to capitulate. Deloitte victoriously exclaimed: 

[A] legal stability agreement was subscribed, guaranteeing investments made under the ZEDE regime for up to 50 years [. . .] Therefore, it can be noted that the purpose of the legal stability agreements is to maintain the validity of the Organic Law of the ZEDE in the event of any derogation that may be implemented, thus protecting the investments made under the ZEDE regime.

As we have already discussed, there is nothing remotely libertarian about the “private government” aspirations of the NRx technocrats. The “prosperity” they seek only extends to them and their oligarch partners. If the people try to get in their way, they are more than willing to crush their economies and don’t care what impact impoverishment will have on their lives.

As we progress through the 21st century, as unbelievable as it seems, NRx technocrats like Thiel and Musk are seriously pursuing the goal of creating a patchwork of oligarch-controlled jurisdictions. Governments around the world have been onboard with the concept for decades. What’s more, at the intergovernmental level, an international network of hybrid zone/city-states is the preferred model for more effective global governance. 

New gov-corp Technate city-states will need populations to exploit. Refugees are in the crosshairs of the NRx technocrats and their oligarch partners. A invidious nexus between private capital and those who control immigration is now apparent. Their nauseating plan is to profit from the most vulnerable. 

That, and more, is what we shall discuss in Part 2.