A Mysterious School for the Network State Crowd Is Now in Session

Last month, task capitalist Balaji Srinivasan announced the Network School, a three-month learning retreat marketed to radical funny successful “network nations,” a benignant of utopia for the anarchocapitalist set. The inaugural people is 150 people. It starts today.

Details astir the schoolhouse person been shrouded successful secrecy, adjacent for the applicants. Aspiring Network School participants enactment down deposits of up to $2,000 without adjacent knowing the Network School’s location. Srinivasan has inactive not disclosed it publicly, though societal media posts and WIRED reporting bespeak that it’s Forest City, Malaysia.

The Network School is 1 of the astir ambitious projects yet for radical funny successful creating what Srinivasan calls a “decentralized country.” The extremity is for radical dissatisfied with their ain nine to set unneurotic and make a question spawning “parallel” societies, peculiar economical zones that person alternate acquisition systems, media institutions, and currency—as good arsenic wealth-friendly taxation laws. A important measurement is having carnal territory, and the Network School clears that bar. On Sunday, Srinivasan said helium is moving to “build retired the existent estate” with the extremity of “scaling the school.”

While Srinivasan has inactive not publically disclosed the Network School’s location, he’s been much wide astir its values, to which helium says students should conform. According to his Substack post introducing the Network School, these requirements see an admiration of “Western values,” seeing Bitcoin arsenic the successor to the US Federal Reserve, and trusting AI implicit quality courts and judges.

“It is for those who judge successful technology, harmony, internationalism, and capitalism,” Srinivasan’s Substack station reads. “It’s for those who privation Silicon Valley without San Francisco.”

Srinivasan added that the schoolhouse is unfastened to artists, athletes, and technologists from immoderate country.

On the exertion for the school, radical are asked to complaint a bid of things successful antithetic categories connected a standard from antagonistic 10 (not favorable) to affirmative 10 (favorable). The topics see “protocols” specified arsenic Solana and Bitcoin maximalism, “politics” specified arsenic Karl Marx and Jordan Peterson, “technology” specified arsenic AI accelerationism and subject tech, “places” specified arsenic Dubai and Israel, “culture” specified arsenic tattoos and accepted masculinity and femininity, “policies” specified arsenic Drag Queen Story Hour and c credits, and “progress” specified arsenic artificial wide quality and abstraction exploration.

On X and Reddit, respective radical said they were accepted to the Network School and had to wage for the archetypal month’s rent upfront wrong 2 concern days of being accepted oregon hazard losing their place. The clip crunch, and not knowing wherever precisely they would beryllium staying, caused accent for immoderate people.

One tech idiosyncratic who was accepted to the Network School tells WIRED that he’s precise connected committee with the school’s premise, but that sending wealth without knowing cardinal details was a span excessively far.

“I chatted astir it with immoderate friends, and they were like, ‘Wow, that sounds truthful dodgy’—and past I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re right,’” says the applicant, who asked for anonymity, citing privateness concerns.

In presumption of day-to-day beingness astatine the Network School, Srinivasan says successful his Substack post that students volition implicit regular problems successful mini classrooms. These volition impact a operation of coding and posting connected societal media, and earning “proof-of-learn” NFTs upon completion. Srinivasan says students tin besides vie for regular “crypto prizes” worthy $1,000 “for unfastened root projects, AI contented creation, and microtasks.”