Malaysia has shut down Network School, the techno-utopian project founded by tech investor Balaji Srinivasan, over licensing issues, according to a Wall Street Journal report surfaced by Techmeme.
Srinivasan left Silicon Valley to build what the Journal describes as an incubator for new countries, setting it up in an Asian ghost city. The idea sat at the center of his long-running argument that communities can form online first and then acquire physical territory — a "network state" rather than a nation state defined by borders it inherited.
The shutdown, per the Journal, came down to licensing. That is a mundane-sounding reason, and that is exactly the point: an experiment premised on routing around traditional governments still needed permission from one to operate a campus on its soil.
Srinivasan says he is opening a new campus in Kazakhstan, according to the same report. No further details about the timing, scale, or terms of that move are available in the source material.
Beyond those points — the closure, the licensing rationale, and the stated plan to relocate — the sourcing here is thin. The Journal's account is the origin of the reporting, and Techmeme's summary is the version circulating widely. Details on how many people were enrolled, what happens to them, or how Malaysian regulators framed their decision are not established in the available material.
Why it matters: the network state movement has attracted serious money and attention from tech figures who believe governance is a product that can be rebuilt from scratch, and Malaysia's decision is a reminder that these projects still run on land that existing states control and license.