Who is Balaji Srinivasan?

An entrepreneur who, in his 2022 book *The Network State*, set out the "network state": a community formed online acquires land and is eventually recognized as a country. The book *Plurality* names him as one of the leading voices of libertarianism.

When you are unhappy with how your country works, besides changing it from the inside through elections, there is also the path of leaving and building something new yourselves. This person has thought the second path through all the way to "founding a country". His name also appears in the book Plurality, as someone whose thinking differs greatly from the book's.

In short

Balaji Srinivasan is the author of the 2022 book The Network State [1]. He advocates a new way of founding a country: like-minded people first form a tight-knit community online, pool money to acquire land in places around the world, and eventually win recognition as a state from existing countries [1]. In 2024 he also started a school, the "Network School", near Singapore [2].

Connection to Plurality

As the author of a leading libertarian book. Chapter 2-0 of the book writes that libertarianism, one of the outlooks it sets against Plurality (a position that values individual liberty above all and seeks to shrink the role of the state), "has a much clearer intellectual canon and set of leaders". As part of that canon it lists The Network State, alongside The Sovereign Individual and others [3]. → Three paths

In a question in the conclusion. Chapter 7-1 asks: "Should we, as Libertarians like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen, and Balaji Srinivasan would have us do, liberate individuals to be atomistic agents, free of constraints or responsibilities?" [4] The book poses this question, together with the path of leaving the future to technologists, as a path it does not choose. → Monist atomism, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen

In the discussion of institutional experiments. Chapter 5-5 writes that people attracted to new practices have proposed "network states", "charter cities", "seasteads" and other forms of escape from existing legal jurisdictions. The book points out that such forms run into tensions with preserving broader public goods and social order, and suggests a path of experimenting while being integrated into existing legal structures [5]. → Network state

Weyl's placement. In a 2022 essay, Glen Weyl named "corporate libertarianism" as one of the political ideologies of the twenty-first century. As its foundational texts he listed Srinivasan's talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit", and as its representative figures he named Srinivasan alongside Thiel and Andreessen [6].

Main ideas

From here on, this section draws on Srinivasan's own writings.

Exit. In his 2013 talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit", Srinivasan likened the United States to "the Microsoft of nations". Besides "voice", fixing a system from the inside, he argued, there is the option of "exit", like forking open-source software. If voting corresponds to voice, migration corresponds to exit. In the talk he also mentions his father, who grew up in a hut with a dirt floor in India and left the country, seeing no prospect of changing it by voting within his lifetime [7].

The network state. The book's short definition runs roughly like this: a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action, which crowdfunds (raises money widely online for) territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from existing states. Srinivasan explains that whereas an ordinary nation-state starts from a map, a network state starts from people's hearts, drawing each person into one or more networks [1]. → Network state

The internet first, land last. In his 2021 piece "How to Start a New Country", Srinivasan advocated starting not from physical land but first from a digital community: gathering people online and growing the seed of a country like an open-source project [8].

Network School. In August 2024, Srinivasan announced that he would start a school near Singapore for the world's hidden talent (which he calls "dark talent", after dark matter). As his motivation he cited his father, who was born in a poor country and made something of himself once given opportunity, and wrote of wanting to extend equality of opportunity around the world [2].

AI is "polytheistic". In a 2025 piece, Srinivasan argued that what we actually observe is not a single all-powerful AI (monotheistic AI) but many strong AIs standing side by side (polytheistic AI). In this view, artificial general intelligence (AGI) is not one but many [9].

What is debated

Network societies, not network states. In May 2024, Divya Siddarth, Weyl and Anne-Marie Slaughter set Srinivasan's vision against their own in a jointly signed piece. In their reading, at the center of Srinivasan's network state are alignment to a single set of rules, exit and a founder. At the center of what they call a "network society", by contrast, are plurality, coordination between communities, flexible reconfiguration and participatory governance. It starts from the premise that people belong to many communities at once, such as their country, their workplace and their religion [10]. → ⿻ Publics, intersectional identity
Buterin's review. In July 2022, Vitalik Buterin wrote a review of The Network State. He examined its definition, Srinivasan's reading of world affairs and its relationship to cryptocurrency, discussing separately what he liked in Srinivasan's vision and what he questioned. He then considered whether there could be a network state that is not in Srinivasan's style [11].
Buterin's comparison of the two. In his 2024 piece on Plurality, Buterin again starts from Srinivasan. He sums up Srinivasan's vision as centered on creating new institutions and communities and giving them a safe space to grow. Tang and Weyl's method, by contrast, is typified by the "fork-and-merge" approach of Taiwan's digital government, in which improvements made on a branch are merged back into the mainline [12].

Sources

Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, 1.2 "The Network State in One Sentence" (2022-07-04) — https://thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-sentence
Balaji Srinivasan, "The Network School" (2024-08-16) — https://balajis.com/p/network-school
Plurality, 2-0 "Information Technology and Democracy: A Widening Gulf" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 7-1 "Conclusion" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/7-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-5 "Adaptive Administration" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-5/eng/ ［CC0］
E. Glen Weyl, "Political Ideologies for the 21st Century" (2022-02-17) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/political-ideologies-for-the-21st-century/
Balaji Srinivasan, "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" (Y Combinator Startup School 2013, volunteer transcript) — https://genius.com/Balaji-srinivasan-silicon-valleys-ultimate-exit-annotated
Balaji Srinivasan, "How to Start a New Country" (2021-04-09) — https://balajis.com/p/how-to-start-a-new-country
Balaji Srinivasan, "AI is polytheistic, not monotheistic" (2025-08-03) — https://balajis.com/p/ai-is-polytheistic-not-monotheistic
Divya Siddarth, Glen Weyl and Anne-Marie Slaughter, "We need network societies, not network states" (2024-05-20) — https://www.cip.org/blog/network-societies
Vitalik Buterin, "What do I think about network states?" (2022-07-13) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell" (2024-08-21) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html

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