Balaji Srinivasan spent two years trying to prove that a country could be launched the way a startup is—community first, territory later. Last week, a local council in southern Malaysia ended the experiment with a piece of paperwork. The Network School, the Indian-American founder’s live-in campus set inside a half-empty Chinese-built development a bridge away from Singapore, was ordered to cease operations over licensing irregularities, The Wall Street Journal reported on August 1.The shutdown arrived after weeks of scrutiny over something unrelated to licences: the nationality of some residents. An Instagram post by a pro-Palestine group claimed the school had admitted Israeli citizens, including one travelling on a second passport. Malaysia does not officially recognise Israel and requires Israeli nationals to secure special permission before entering. Immigration officers arrived on campus to inspect passports. Authorities later said no wrongdoing had been established and the investigation was continuing. Srinivasan called the post a hoax, compared it to swatting, and demanded a meeting with the prime minister’s office.Within hours of the closure order, he posted a video of himself signing an agreement with a Kazakh deputy prime minister—a former Binance executive—to open a campus there instead.
Who Balaji Srinivasan is, and why he left America behind
Srinivasan, 46, grew up on Long Island, the son of Indian immigrant physicians. He has described being bullied as the only brown child in a school of hundreds, then being punished for defending himself—an early lesson, he has said, that the state is not on your side. Stanford engineering degrees followed, then a genetic screening company, a stint at Andreessen Horowitz, and a brief run as Coinbase’s chief technology officer. Coinbase boss Brian Armstrong later called him brilliant, and also “kind of unmanageable”. Federal records show Srinivasan and his wife renounced American citizenship in 2023. He says he is now Singaporean.
How Balaji Srinivasan’s 2022 book on startup societies became a real campus in Malaysia
His 2022 book The Network State laid out the method. People with shared beliefs gather online. They help each other make money. They pool funds, buy land, and eventually seek recognition as a state. Seven stages in all. Srinivasan has argued that most countries predating the internet will not survive, and that American polarisation is heading somewhere ugly. He is also a vocal pronatalist, partly on the logic that settling new frontiers requires a much larger supply of humans.
The $100 billion Chinese ghost city that housed Balaji Srinivasan’s experiment
The testing ground was Forest City in Johor, a $100 billion Chinese-built luxury project that emptied out into a symbol of China’s property bust. Srinivasan rented hotel space in 2024 and opened the Network School at $1,500 a month for room, board, classes and a beach. The first cohort ran 128 people; the second, in 2025, offered 256 places. There was a gym, meals designed by longevity entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, and a cafe stocking creatine and collagen peptides.Residents told the Journal the camaraderie was real and the convenience unbeatable. Pranit Garg, a 29-year-old digital nomad who arrived in March, said the vision brought him in and the protein kept him there. Priyansha Dhoot, a 26-year-old programme manager from India, joined in April and liked the community but found the nightlife nonexistent; the duty-free liquor shops entertained her for roughly a day. Others complained of mould and a lopsided gender ratio. Srinivasan said mildew is a regional inevitability his team handles, and that the school serves tech parents and children, not only tech bros.
Why Malaysia shut the Srinivasan’s Network School down, and why Kazakhstan said yes
He is not the only one attempting this. Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman, moved from floating city-states to funding startup cities, backed by Srinivasan, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. Their portfolio includes Próspera in Honduras, which sued the state after lawmakers moved to scrap its special economic zone.Kazakhstan, meanwhile, has been courting foreign firms with zero corporate tax zones and easy visas. Srinivasan has floated building an artificial island off a willing coast, or following Elon Musk to Mars.Two years in, the experiment has established one thing clearly. Recruiting believers turned out to be the easy part. Every square metre on Earth already answers to somebody’s licensing department.
