Unmanaged decline vs techno-democracy
Getting to Venezuela vs getting to Mars.
Steve Bannon attacked the network state idea by Balaji Srinivasan during an interview with Ross Douthat from the New York Times.
Some things change, some remain the same. Balaji vs NYT fight is eternal, but now he and the network state are being attacked at NYT by Steve Bannon.
Downstream media portrayed JD Vance as being 'weird', and now Bannon smears tech counter-elites as being weird and radical transhumanists.
But, Bannon is for the little guy, Mac Andreesen is for the little tech, and Balaji is for the little network (startup societies, network unions…).
They are all for the median voter's concerns, like secure borders and streets. They are also all opposed to global harmonization of regulation and for increasing the sovereignty of citizens and the US (where the First Amendment was constantly attacked by the Blob via the EU and Five Eyes partners).
We lived through a censorship and debanking era of half-measures in digital authoritarianism, copying China and Russia.
But free speech is the only comparative advantage the West has left. And the antidote to both CCP and NYT is BTC, to paraphrase Balaji. We need free and open AI, Crypto and Social tech - working towards techno-democracy, another balajism. The Network State book is a manual, not a manifesto. It's suitable for anyone who has a moral innovation, including conservatives.
Balaji mentions The Benedict Option as an example of a possible startup society in his book. Network state is about how a small and digitally-native startup society can gradually grow and get some kind of diplomatic recognition. Think Vatican, the Knights of Malta or the Bektashi Order - but started cloud first, land last. Network state is mostly about exit, but it is compatible with reform too.
We saw the State merging with the Network in China, as CCP took over their tech industry and crushed tech founders. We see the Network merging with the State in the US, as tech counter-elites aligned with Donald Trump as an FDR 2.0 figure. A Velvet Revolution 2.0 if you will.
To be generous to Steve Bannon, he is like Moses who choses himself not to enter the promised land.
To be less generous, he is the first disciple of Trump who went to Danbury prison for him, but whose primary skill lies in "flooding the zone with (bull)shit". He isn't a tech founder like Elon Musk who can do "practical miracles" with Neuralink. And he feels resentment, a hurt amour-propre to be a v1 and not a v2.
Bannon is famous for talking about a managed decline in the West. But I think he is too optimistic about the state capacity of broken institutions (see Alana Newhouse’s idea of brokenism vs status-quoism). All they can do today is an unmanaged decline. It's the evil (win-lose) vs stupid (lose-lose) distinction that Balaji talks about.
This can change with Donald Trump as he reins in the little monarchs that proliferate in oligarchies before they destroy them. Think Fauci. See peak predator theory and the story of reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone.
Elites in the West had for decades a Fukuyama-esque end-of-history dream of getting to Denmark. An effective synthesis of a high-trust society, strong institutions, rule of law, social democratic welfare state and globally competitive corporations.
But with our broken and woke institutions and an industrial censorship apparatus that redefined democracy as a consensus of those institutions, the West under blue tribe dominance has a dream of getting to Venezuela.
Tech counter-elites have a dream of getting to Mars. And red tribe today has a dream of getting to Dubai instead of Denmark. A dream of safe streets, pro-tech and pro-entrepreneurship culture and escaping global harmonization of regulation.
We needed to free-up social media to invent flying cars - to paraphrase Peter Thiel. Marc Andreesen explains how FAA prevented US drone startups from flourishing, while allowing Chinese drone industry to get ahead. It is easier to found a new country than to reform FDA, says Balaji. And thus a network state concept is a more accessible way to exit than getting to Mars and it is compatible with getting to Mars - by letting 100 special innovation zones bloom first.
Deng Xiaoping has transformed China and created a $100T wealth unlock with a moral innovation of “entrepreneurship is good”. He got the inspiration from LKY, who transformed Singapore from third world to first. Blue tribe in the US and the foreign policy establishment’s Blob as its core are doing the opposite - taking the West from first world to third. Getting to Venezuela is about unmanaged decline.
What we see with Elon and D.O.G.E. are glimpses of techno-democracy. Using digitally-native tools freed from censorship, like X, to effectively expose the corruption of public servants, who are in fact secret aristocrats, and to effectively organize a pro-reform community.
Balaji’s idea of techno-democracy is more bottom-up and peer-to-peer using decentralized crypto like ethereum and solana and social tech like Farcaster, Curtis Yarvin has a similar idea of automating your vote and delegating your power to empower people like Elon who can fight for your interests.
Elon is doing reform, rather than a more Balaji-like exit, and he is using a centralized social media that he bought - first reforming twitter and reducing its workforce by 80%, and now “twitterifying” the headcount of USAID.
True charity is investment, says Balaji. And so USAID might get reformed around a newly discussed idea of a US sovereign wealth fund. It can provide convertible grants and VC investments all around the world, to incentivize the boom of special innovation zones, new tech startups and startup societies with moral innovations.
The fight against censorship won’t stop with reforming USAID, the deep abstract enemy of free speech is global harmonization of regulation that allows the EU, the Five Eyes countries, OECD and UN to police the speech of Americans. These should be next targets of free speech advocates like Mike Benz.
Balaji says we live in a tripolar world - NYT vs CCP vs BTC. Blue America and China are for centralization and global harmonization according to their own visions, while bitcoin, and the free and open AI, Crypto and Social tech, are for decentralization. This third pole of bitcoin, as the flagship of technology, is at the core of concepts like the network state.
Tech counter-elites and the new Trump administration should extend freedom of speech to the rest of the world and help to establish special innovation zones in partner countries.
We live in a Red Queen world where you have to constantly innovate, to keep your spot. This calls for Red Queen conservativism - an understanding that we cannot go back to the 1950s of peak centralization and that reversal to the mean is a real thing.
Asia has dominated the world trade for centuries and the US needs to out-innovate its adversaries just to keep its current prosperity. MAGA is similar to Build Back Better.
But we might need a definite optimistic vision of the future, to paraphrase Peter Thiel. And I propose - DDD - or drones, dark factories and deurbanization.
Dark Dynamism if you will.