Balaji Srinivasan’s The Network State

3,104 words

Balaji Srinivasan
The Network State
Self-Published, 2022

M.L. Cavanaugh, professional military strategist, defines strategy as “…the purposeful orientation toward success in a complex, competitive conflict.” Regardless of the situation at hand, whether Clausewitz’s “politics by other means” or just plain politics, strategic actions ought to be intelligently and systematically designed to gain control of the contested environment. In this respect, the Right’s current strategic posture can only be described as wanting. While Old Right party politics are demonstrably unsuitable for the demands of the postwar political environment, many still cling to outmoded tactics and symbols with a desperate hope, alienating healthy people and playing directly into the hands of the enemy. New Right metapolitics is a winning strategy on the cultural front, but it takes time to make the gains needed to secure material victories—time we may not have in the face of a problem like civilizational extinction. Some, under the pretext of realizing this, make the foolish mistake of using violence in an attempt to “do something,” only managing to tarnish their cause and needlessly destroy lives—not least their own—in the process.

We can and must do better, and people are waking up. Recent advances in institutional metapolitics, such as the resilience of Eric Orwoll and Peter Csere’s Private Membership Association Return to The Land (RTTL) in the face of lawfare, are cause for praise and further strategic development. The novelty of a project like RTTL lies not primarily in its legal framework for achieving its aims, but in the fact that its physical settlements were born out of a digitally native network. Parallel societies, and even new states emerging from such, are nothing new, but harnessing the disruptive power of the internet and allied technologies to promote the collective interests of white people and build resilient institutions will prove vitally important in a world where obsolete power structures are crumbling and, as the Chinese are fond of saying, “the backwards will be beaten.”

This is the conclusion I reached after finishing Balaji Srinivasan’s manifesto The Network State. At 262 pages of quasi-technical writing on pet theories of history as physics, impending robot war, and a tripolar power split between the New York Times, the Chinese Communist Party, and Bitcoin, it was an interesting but often frustrating read. Srinivasan’s grandiose predictions didn’t seem wrong, exactly, but were at once overly ambitious and reductive, all but eclipsing the question that drew me to the book in the first place: What is the network state, and how does one build it?

These questions were answered most clearly in chapters one “Quickstart” and five “From Nation States to Network States.” In the former, definitions of the network state were presented in the forms of one sentence, one image, 1,000 words, and one essay. To quote the most succinct, “A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”

Does this remind you of anything? Deleting the word “online” and replacing “around” with “across” yields a concise retelling of the birth of the Israeli state. Indeed, as is plainly stated in chapter five, “[Theodore] Herzl’s work [The Jewish State] is a major inspiration for this book.” This is also a good time to address the Indian elephant in the room: Srinivasan is a Tamil Brahmin, of the same stock as Vivek Ramaswamy and Kamala Harris, and of similar stock to Usha Vance, a Telugu Brahmin. Just five years older than Ramaswamy, he graduated from Stanford and got a similar, more successful start to his career, helping to found a biotechnology company that produced an affordable genetic counseling test (acquired by Myriad for $375 million) before moving on to cryptocurrency.

Srinivasan is similarly transparent about his place in an emerging diasporic elite, declaring himself “…moderately bullish on India, but extremely bullish on Indians.” While the influence of Israelis on American politics may be (and that’s a big maybe) waning, the Tam-Brahms and gang are just getting started. The reader may wonder why White Nationalists should even consider taking a page out of the playbook of ethnic diasporas while those outsiders act like they’re now in charge of our countries. It’s a fair question, and one that I will return to later in this essay. But for now, suffice it to say that our survival is at stake, and this strategy has clearly proven successful for other groups in a similar position.

In chapter five, Srinivasan lays the theoretical groundwork for his project, explaining what exactly modern countries are in order to promote their digital successor. His precise discussion of the nature of the modern nation state in the chapter’s first section may seem tired to the seasoned ethnopluralist, but will act as an excellent primer to those unfamiliar with the nation/state distinction. The next section, “On Network States” is the most valuable part of the book. Another, longer one-sentence definition of the network state from chapter one is reiterated:

A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.

In this section, Srinivasan expands upon each clause of this longer definition in detail and depicts intermediate steps on the way to “the final form of a diplomatically recognized network state,” which are the startup society, the network union, and the network archipelago. The first is the political version of a startup company: “A startup society is a new community built internet-first, usually for the purpose of solving a specific social problem in an opt-in way. The implication is that this society is still pretty small in population.” The network union is “[a] wholly digital entity, organized in a social tree structure, that engages in collective action on behalf of its members.”

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here

The most applicable example of a network union offered in the book is chapter two’s “Cancel-Proof Society,” a hypothetical “combination of a guild and cancellation insurance” where “…99% of the time this startup society is just doing ‘peacetime’ activities, like helping people find jobs…or just hanging out at meetups”, but “…1% of the time someone in the guild is under social attack…the guild can choose to publicly respond as one or…can quietly support the affected party with a new job after the uproar has died down.” We already see something analogous happening with grassroots efforts to help Shiloh Hendrix and Crystal Wilsey on Give Send Go, but such efforts are reactive: intentionally creating an organization to protect our people before they run into trouble will not only help to lessen the sting of cowardly tactics like doxing, but may also attract newcomers looking for protection and willing to contribute their time, energy, and money to build a robust group.

A network archipelago is “[a] network union that begins acquiring and networking properties in the physical world. The physical interaction is key for building trust.” RTTL is an ideal example, since they need a physical presence and a community-focused culture to accomplish their mission. Finally, a fully formed network state is “[a] network archipelago that gains diplomatic recognition from at least one legacy state. The diplomatic recognition is key for attaining sovereignty.” This is the ethnostate everyone keeps talking about—or at least one way to get there.

A few clauses of this definition are worth expanding upon here. The first is the idea of a moral innovation and the closely related concept of a one commandment. In the final section of chapter two “History As Trajectory,” Srinivasan writes “Every new startup society needs to have a moral premise at its core…it’s a huge endeavor to go and build an entire moral edifice on par with a religion, and work out all the practical details..[b]ut we do think you can come up with one commandment…[j]ust one specific issue where the history and science has convinced you that the establishment is wanting.” What is a suitable one commandment for an upstart New Right network state? It might be something like, in the language reminiscent of the pre-X Grok meme in which Srinivasan suggests formulating one commandments for the sake of punchy simplicity, “white flourishing good.” We can at least all agree on that despite our worthy disagreements about the centrality or irrelevance of religion to our cause, the civilizational significance of a certain geopolitical conflict, and eclectic philosophical movements.

Two clauses ought to be read with a critical eye: “a recognized founder” and “a capacity for collective action.” While a clear and centralized leadership structure may offer advantages for decision-making and group unity given truly competent and selfless leaders, we are historically more likely to get a Richard Spencer than an Eric Orwoll if we stress this point. Besides the risk of attracting toxic and defective people, a key disadvantage of a centralized, hierarchical leadership structure is that it creates high-value targets for the media and other adversaries to attack, as unfortunately happened to Mr. Orwoll. A cancel-proof network union, for example, might be able to operate with greater impunity were it comprised of many low value targets and lacked public leadership figures, although this would of course pose its own challenges.

As far as collective action goes, Srinivasan’s cheekily named public displays of alignment, which he sees as vital for displaying group unity and strength to outsiders, include things like “…orchestras, parades, the good kind of flash mobs, basketball games, and the types of gymnastic enterprises common to college football halftime shows wherein cheerleaders form tall human pyramids that require complete trust in the people at the base.” This is all sounding delightfully Riefenstahlesqe, at least to my ear—do I contradict myself in agreeing with Srinivasan that such Old Right style demonstrations are a good idea, even for the New Right? I don’t think so, but I do have a few caveats to share.

First, most New Right groups are not yet strong or established enough to where demonstrations of strength make much sense. We should focus on cultivating resilience and unity of purpose before we even think about bragging about these traits, especially to skeptical or hostile outsiders. Second, being optical doesn’t mean optics cucking. It means creating things so beautiful and good that only truly evil people would oppose them, without also intentionally burdening ourselves with unpopular branding—in a word, being wholesome. I believe that this can and should include, when the time is right, things that will readily be accused as being too reminiscent of Old Right movements when explicitly carried out by New Right groups, such as hiking trips with guitar songs, mass calisthenics and group workouts, community gardening, trash and graffiti cleanup events, cultural and artistic performances, and so on.

When the media inevitably smears those engaging in such positive actions as “racists” and “Nazis,” the appropriate response will not be to deny or apologize, but, in the immortal words of Johnathan Bowden, to “step over it!” Wholesome optics will attract people to our cause, and the media’s reflexively negative response to them will highlight the irrational hatred inherent in mainstream propaganda. Greater and greater success and displays of such will eventually convince at least some late adopters that we’re onto something—and we won’t need the rest anyways. However, firm organizational foundations and the ability to protect group members against well-equipped adversaries are required before attempting such public displays of alignment will be productive.

In the final clauses of this definition, we at last encounter the technologies that, in Srinivasan’s mind, will make all this possible. Recall that a fully realized network state will have “an integrated cryptocurrency…and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.” Like many cryptocurrency advocates, Srinivasan overlooks the primary function of money as a means of exchange in favor of promoting a feature of cryptocurrencies that is not exclusive to them: blockchain technology. According to Investopedia, “A blockchain is a distributed database or ledger shared across a computer network’s nodes. While it is best known for its crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions, blockchains are not limited to cryptocurrency uses.”

Srinivasan’s vision is for an integrated cryptocurrency to serve as the “digital backbone of the network state. It manages the internal digital assets, the smart contracts, the web3 citizen logins, the birth and marriage certificates, the property registries, the public national statistics, and essentially every other bureaucratic process that a nation state manages via pieces of paper.” However, using blockchain in this manner does not necessarily require integration with cryptocurrency, and could itself pose significant security challenges to overcome.

While cryptographic encryption may be well-nigh impossible to break, breaking bones to get private keys is easy, despite Srinivasan’s assurances that “rubber hoses don’t scale.” This is not a trivial matter when all that stands between your startup society’s conveniently intertwined economy and digital historiography and the full force of an embarrassed legacy state are the individuals holding these private keys, even if they are somewhat difficult to identify at first. On the other hand, if antifa and other nonstate actors rather than state governments comprise the primary threat to a given group, cryptographic encryption would admittedly be a massive improvement in security, and there are presumably ways to mitigate the risks posed even by well-resourced and determined state actors.

For example, to avoid the seizure of assets in the form of cash and widely-adopted cryptocurrencies, it might be helpful to create a spendcoin, either integrated with or distinct from blockchain-based community records, if we choose to use them at all—a non-inflationary, user-friendly form of money that is used (if possible, exclusively) among members of a given startup society as an alternative to state currencies rather than a speculative asset for purchasing outside fiat currencies such as the U.S. Dollar. A spendcoin could still of course be seized or have its use criminalized by one method or another, but it would still be a much less attractive target for seizure than other currencies. The success of the new economy would serve as proof of concept for the network state’s ideas, and the resulting social and political ties would bind the new society together while attracting newcomers. Srinivasan’s intention for promoting the integration of crypto with network state records, which has real advantages for ease of record-keeping and warding off memory-holing, is probably entirely innocent, but I find his preference for a theory of technological truth as driving force of history rather than that of power to be incomplete (though not strictly incorrect).

Even a small startup society has the significant potential to be perceived as a threat to a legacy state’s sovereignty, particularly if it represents the interests of those who define themselves primarily (even if implicitly) in terms of ethnicity rather than nationality. Considering this, conflict between network states and legacy states (on a continuum from deplatforming to lawfare to deadly federal raids) seems inevitable and must be guarded against, but probably not via military means—see Ruby Ridge and Waco. Srinivasan suggests contracting with existing military powers for security, but I find this solution unrealistic for groups like ours who must contend with significant opposition from well-armed legacy states. He also hints at creating robot armies elsewhere in the book, which might not be totally ridiculous given the current state of drone technology, but again, the phrase “poking the bear” comes to mind.

To his credit, Srinivasan at least admits that “…answering these kinds of questions [about defense] presents an embedded Catch-22. Either someone thinking about starting new countries must want to create a powerful new military (dangerous!) or else they don’t have any guns and will get crushed by those that do (dangerously naive)…but for a fundamentally digital entity with physical decentralization around the world, the primary mode will be nonviolent digital defense through secrecy, pseudonymity, decentralization, and encryption.” I don’t have any better physical domain defense solutions than he does at the moment, but I do know that taking measures to comply with the letter of the law to the fullest extent possible and litigating in favor of the freedom of association where the operation of the law runs in direct contravention to that principle is the best way forward we have right now. This strategy probably won’t stop the lawfare machine from attempting to destroy us, but it will at least give us a fighting chance in contexts where certain rhetorically indispensable rights are still respected on paper.

All this risk-adverse talk of secrecy and avoiding the wrath of the state from both myself and Srinivasan brings us back to the nagging question from earlier in the paper: why on earth should we start acting like cryptic diasporas in our own countries? If we succeed in creating our own successful institutions rather than solely embarking on agonizingly long marches through mainstream ones, this may be a moot question. We can make secrecy less attractive than openness by decreasing the social and security risks of public White Nationalism through the creation of functional organizations that offer a financial and employment safety net, a positive real-world social atmosphere, and wholesome optics. In the meantime, we must also remember that the mainstream definition of “acceptable behavior” (which for whites currently means aiding in or at least not meaningfully interfering with our dispossession, and for non-whites used to mean adhering to white norms) changes depending on who is in power—this is what is meant by the phrase “nice until we’re not.” So long as we are intentional about preserving the best aspects of white culture in the face of necessary adaptations to change, we need not fear a fundamental break from the honor and forthrightness that lie at its root.

Srinivasan suggests that we “…think of this work as a toolbox, not a manifesto…there’s enough flexibility in the idea of the network state that you can customize it and make it your own.” For all the book’s flaws, the strategy outlined therein could drastically change the game for White Nationalism. I particularly urge readers with expertise in the areas of cryptocurrency, law, economics and finance, cybersecurity, and defense technology to read chapters one and five, get to the drawing board, and correct any mistaken notions you see in this article and in the book.