On Visiting The Network School

January 11, 2025

Aggregating Dark Talent, Cultural Schelling Points, and Extending Western Culture Eastward

Spearheaded by Balaji Srinivasan, the Network School (NS) team is building a city. This academic community transforms his extensively documented Network State philosophy from an abstract concept into physical reality.

So-called “startup” or “pop-up cities” are becoming increasingly popular around the world (Zuzalu, Prospera, Praxis), especially amongst a subset of crypto and nomadic types. Nominally, they aim to provide a physical, non-territorial state-like community around ideas.

Experimentation at the city/state level is undergoing a resurgence in the zeitgeist and reminds us that this is not a new phenomenon; Singapore and Utah are recent reminders that demonstrate what can occur when people with aligned ideologies cohabitate with each other. Armed with a differentiated capital network and promoting its vision through accessible digital channels – including free PDFs, podcasts, and social media – NS is a tangible destination for aligned individuals who seek to chart a new life path.

I recently was in Singapore and visited NS for a few days. Not much has been written publicly about the people, culture, or mechanics of Network States. From the outside, it’s difficult to accurately describe what it is – is it a Discord group, loosely connected Twitter people staying in the same hotel for a month, or something else? What is the common thread of people who are participating in the cohort? What motivates them to be there?

In this piece, I attempt to answer some of these questions. This post is broken down into the following sections:

Logistics and Mechanics
People, Culture, and Norms
A Model of The Network School
Beyond Crypto: The Balajian View of the Evolving Liberal Order
Looking Ahead

1. Logistics and Mechanics

The Network School is located just outside of Singapore on a nearby island. Initially built as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the NS campus is part of a centrally planned city built on a manmade landfill reserve. Because the city originally planned to serve Chinese residents, most present stores have Chinese signage and their owners speak Mandarin. Like many other globalized cities throughout Asia, American music can be heard through the speakers of public spaces and corridors.

View from NS - you can see Singapore on the horizon

Waterfront-adjacent facilities

Real estate is extremely path-dependent; the initial plans for the original Chinese-built city did not pan out due to exogenous factors including state politics, macroeconomic conditions, and COVID-19. While the city is currently sparsely populated and runs in minimal maintenance mode, this presents a new opportunity for a greenfield experiment in developing a sustainable culture and presence, leveraging the city’s existing underutilized infrastructure.

The first cohort of NS residents was curated largely on value alignment and is currently in the third and final month. Three months was chosen as the cohort length in part due to regulation constraints around visa durations. People come and go based on their schedules, but typically 80 to 120 people are living on campus at any given time. Scheduled programming is minimal, with all-hands meetings occurring 2-3 times per week. This incentivizes close connections among peers and is reminiscent of a college setting.

Like a college dorm, there are people tasked with providing tours and volunteering to ensure people are situated correctly. When I arrived, my welcome tour guide was a former US military officer previously deployed to the Middle East.

Unlike a college dorm, people of all ages are represented at NS. While the median age likely falls in the late 20s/early 30s, there are young kids as well as older people present on campus. While some have criticized The Network State book for not adequately describing the practicalities of having kids in such a society, there is certainly a concerted effort here to incorporate children and families.

Being located near Singapore, a major talent hub and an increasing cultural powerhouse, means NS is well-positioned to attract many people from neighboring countries. Singapore, NYC, and Dubai are emerging as the leading crypto hubs around the world and it is logical to envision a world where this NS campus is an extension of Singapore's crypto (and more broadly tech) community.

Singapore is a ~5-6 hour flight from India, and a shorter flight to many other Tier 1 East Asian cities. While there was representation from over 50 countries around the world, there appears to be an outsized presence from countries including the Middle East, India, and East Asia.

2. People, Culture, and Norms

The overarching question I tried to answer while visiting was what is the common thread of the people participating in this first cohort? The willingness to uproot one's life for three months to live in Southeast Asia based on just a Twitter post and website offers one of the few early signals of NS.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one common thread of participants is their combination of a libertarian-leaning ideology and being dissatisfied with the status quo, whether that be on a macro-level (particularly the cultural debt that pervades many Western institutions), or a personal level.

While some worked a remote full-time job, many were hacking on their own projects. A sense of meritocracy emanates through the air, as the environment and incentives are set up for people to work very hard, should they choose. People undoubtedly exhibited high-openness and cordiality towards different viewpoints to a degree that feels very rare.

Unlike most college campuses in close proximity to metropolitan cities, there are very few things to distract you. This isn’t to say that people will be willing to spend the rest of their lives here, as colleges and cities offer a bundled set of services that extend beyond work that is not an emphasis at NS. In the same way that people cite Waterloo and CMU for being boring, it is this boringness that enables people to focus on achieving their objectives for sustained periods of time.

Everyone at NS is nominally crypto and longevity-sympathetic, though not all are full-time practitioners. To be sure, one participant cited the deciding factor to their participation in NS as its controlled environment to lose weight and become healthier (“to see a gym for the first time in my life”). While I (and others) remain skeptical that “keto-kosher” and “longevity”-focused societies are sufficient founding stories to drive and retain overall demand, I would argue that most would agree that it is still a good filtering mechanism for other characteristics and priorities of people that participants and looking to co-live with.

Blueprint-inspired lunch

The custom NS gym, one of the largest infrastructure investments for participants to date

While blockchains are cited as a key mechanism to enable Network States, as of now, it’s more of a Schelling Point growth mechanism than part of the greater founding story.

The crypto Schelling Point creates a monoculture reminiscent of some SF circles. There are not many places in the world where people cite Bryan Caplan when discussing the morality and moral imperative of having kids. There are very few places where you would hear those debate arguments outside of the US. The combination of self-selection and lack of institutional debt creates a unique intellectual environment.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t any organization or cultural guardrails. I’ve heard from multiple people who have participated in other similar programs that NS is much more organizationally top-down, with a set of written principles that provide a scaffolding for cultural expectations. The North Star is defined by the team but the methodology is typically left up to the community. The community is still encouraged and empowered to have a say and run their community-generated events, but much of the messaging comes from the core leadership team.

In many ways, NS culture is reminiscent of Solana, as compared to other bottom-up pop-up cities – notably Vitalik’s Zuzalu – which naturally embody more of the Ethereum ethos. One of Vitalik's criticisms of The Network State book was its lack of description and adherence towards a return to community plan, while Balaji is seemingly more sympathetic to the Solana/Singapore style of governance, at least in the short-to-medium term.

3. A Model of The Network School

One of the critiques of The Network State book I’m more sympathetic to is that the ideology is not persuasive or powerful enough to resist being swallowed by the increasingly dominant liberal culture. Historically, a much stronger doctrine was required to rally millions behind a shared ideology:

“Liberia was founded by former American slaves who sought to “colonize” Africa to escape from racial oppression; Utah was settled by Mormons with markedly different lifestyles fleeing persecution; Israel was the “hope of 2000 years” of Jewish history.” - Network Societies

However, this is one of the core misconceptions of the book and The Network School’s mission; NS does not need to go after the long tail to achieve participation levels in the millions, at least in the short term. Described as an “academic community”, NS is not intended to be a perpetual nation-state vehicle (i.e. a Network State). Though not a perfect analogy, it might be useful to think about NS as a venture fund (discrete vehicles with a set deployment timeframe), while nation-states can be thought of as hedge funds (open-ended vehicles with updated mark-to-market prices). Like a16z and other venture capital firms, they are sending a “bat signal” to attract the most talented individuals they can find around the world.

Under the backdrop of an exitocracy system, NS is one of the few places that represents an egalitarian opportunity that will enable people around the world to exit their current situation. From the undiscovered teenager from a village in rural India to the floundering American high school student who feels oppressed by school, all will be welcome to NS, provided value alignment and minimum raw intellectual horsepower. This is furthered by a distinct and differentiated founding location where people can relate to like-minded peers. You have to be two standard deviations from the norm in many metrics to uproot your life and move to NS.

If NS works in the long term, it is tapping into a differentiated talent pool that is largely yet to be integrated into the broader Western establishment (“dark talent”).

Modern institutions and grant programs

Unlike most other modern institutions listed, NS is a semi-permanent institution for all (as long as you can acquire the necessary visitor visa). The semi-permanence of NS is a feature, not a bug. Institutions like the University of Austin compete for a credentialed set of top-tier students. There are currently very few if any that would choose to go to the University of Austin over Stanford, and this is very likely to remain true for many years to come. But NS serves a different purpose - offering cohort-based opportunities to individuals who may never have access to elite Western institutions, yet possess raw intellectual potential. Guided by administrators with extensive networks in Western institutions, NS operates on the principle that technical and social skills can be taught to anyone with sufficient intellectual capacity. Under a single roof, this approach enables a curriculum focused on frontier skills, and ambitions are lifted.

Anecdotally, people are thankful but not dogmatic about programs that enabled them to have a more successful career (Thiel Fellowship, YC, etc.). On the other hand, first-generation immigrants who were able to find their footing in America are generally much more patriotic. They are very proud to call themselves an American. The hook into dark talent means that they have the potential to identify much closer with the broader NS ideology.

The successful students of NS years down the line will likely feel much more allegiance to NS. This is the hook into the beginnings of a capital-N Network State. Combined with a uniquely pro-natalist worldview not present in many Western countries, a pro-cyclical NS future is viable. Just look at Taiwan, where 1 out of every 50 newborns is a TSMC baby:

Focus Taiwan

If not for NS, these talented individuals, who might otherwise have gone unrecognized in their homelands, are given the opportunity to find distinction. This is a much more unique proposition than what more established institutions like YC today offer – these people would likely be in some FAANG-adjacent role regardless. This isn’t to say anything about the cultural homogeneity that we’ll likely see with India being a strong, still under-tapped faucet of talent with alignment with Western values, but a desire to pave their own path.

Perhaps that’s the most underrated and interesting part of NS. It feels like a foray and leading indicator of an alternative Western-inspired future. It learns from but transcends the limitations of Asian meritocratic systems like the Gaokao and JEE, which despite earning respect for their respective cultures have shown their constraints. A change that aligns with the evolving cultural vibe shift in the US with all the benefits and shortcomings of a blank slate with an unapologetically metric-driven top-down culture. A culture that elevates cryptoeconomic ideals of objective attribution with rationalist undertones to create a utility-maximizing future, offering an alternative to the ever-increasing institutional and multicultural debt of the West.

4. Beyond Crypto: The Balajian View of the Evolving Liberal Order

To buy into NS, you likely embrace classical liberalism while being skeptical of traditional Western institutions’ ability to preserve these values in their current form. As Vitalik notes:

“To show that network states are the only way to protect freedom and capitalism, one must show why the US cannot**.** If the US, or the "democratic liberal order", is just fine, then there is no need for alternatives; we should just double down on global coordination and rule of law. But if the US is in an irreversible decline, and its rivals are ascending, then things look quite different. Network states can "maintain liberal values in an illiberal world"; hegemony thinking that assumes "the good guys are in charge" cannot.”

If meaningful change requires building new communities – or at least external pressure forcing adaptation – then technology (particularly crypto) offers powerful new coordination tools. Just as companies like Uber and Airbnb created efficient marketplaces for underutilized resources (driving capacity and housing, respectively), NS aims to create a marketplace for underutilized human capital. Similarly, LLMs are strengthening Western culture’s digital presence by entrenching English and Western thought patterns online. NS could serve an analogous function offline, particularly in regions where Western institutions have historically had less influence.

While crypto is often presented as the practical substrate for enabling NS, its value is as a coordination Schelling Point mechanism – providing scaffolding for people with shared ideologies to find each other across geographies. The precedent for such ideologically aligned communities already exists in the crypto ecosystem, though only recently have we seen strong evidence of their ability to achieve stated missions. Bitcoin has created a dedicated community around non-sovereign money; Ethereum around the vision of a credibly neutral decentralized computer; and more recently, Solana’s North Star has crystallized around a decentralized Nasdaq.

New communities require both ideological alignment and significant resources to sustain themselves. While physical co-location creates strong bonds, the historical record for small, ethnically heterogeneous communities remains sparse. While crypto is a powerful tool to programmatically align incentives for these small, spiritually aligned individuals, creating lasting communities through shared values alone remains unsolved.

5. Looking Ahead

I can think of many instances at different points in my life where people I know would have found NS particularly enticing, myself included. More things like NS should exist on a macro-level to unlock talent and create outlier outcomes. At the same time, I have reservations that these same outlets that allow individuals to opt out and significantly increase the variance of one’s life is necessarily a good thing en masse or a stable long-term equilibrium.

While starting well-functioning communities (companies, schools, protocols, etc.) is extremely difficult, it’s not hard to envision a future where NS succeeds in specific facets of its mission. There are numerous pathways that NS can become a hub for talent in a similar manner that EA sniped college students for a long time. The physical barriers create a much more powerful signal for association beyond the typical Twitter name update. While it’s difficult to extrapolate for many generations to assess the viability of NS as the foundational building block on a perpetual state, it certainly lies on a differentiated point on the institutional frontier.

Thanks to Alexey Guzey and Akshay for feedback and review.