Implications of the Change from Nation States to Network States: Why You Need a Private Military Company on Call

You have to be blind not to see the slow grinding and painful collapse of competence in almost every Nation-State around us. China, Russia, USA, Canada and pretty much most of the Western world looks like a complete mess. It’s almost inevitable as it has been over 200 years of this concept. 

The only places that seem to be thriving or stable are small nationstates, almost city states like UAE, Singapore, Uruguay, even El Salvador. Every other place just seems like a growing disaster zone. 

Hence we see people looking for new sanctuaries as the world goes from a centralized one to a more decentralized one. From unipolar to more multipolar world. 

For those unfamiliar with the term Network State, this comes straight out of the book by Balaji Srinavasan.

“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.

When we think of a nation state, we immediately think of the lands, but when we think of a network state, we should instantly think of the minds. That is, if the nation state system starts with the map of the globe and assigns each patch of land to a single state, the network state system starts with the 7+ billion humans of the world and attracts each mind to one or more networks.

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.”

We are kind of living in this Network State right now. I live in San Francisco, run a small VC fund investing in immigrant and European founders targeting the American market. I also have a Holding Co based in the MENA region with my Saudi business partner and invest all over the world. My business interests are global. 

I have much of my family in Taiwan, other parts of the USA and Canada. My extended friendships and tech family is also very global as well. We are starting to see more people live a Digital Slow-mad, where we live in different cities or countries during the year for extended periods of time. Starlink/Broadband, smartphones and the nature of advanced white collar work have made the world even more flat. 

Whatever happens though, in this new decentralized world, there will be a continuing need for self defense & projecting force and violence, something Nation-states used to hold monopoly over. Enforcing law and order, something we take for granted in most of the West growing up but now seems to be decaying dramatically over the last half decade. Reasons range from stupid Leftist decriminalization policies and Defund the police garbage, to rampant uncontrolled immigration at the borders. And as we learned throughout human history, things can get ugly on the streets very quickly. 

The brilliant Radigan Carter wrote about this during a stint in Haiti: 

“This is what a lot of Americans don't get about Wagner: Talking with a waitress after the firefight subsided this morning, she's telling us how she lives in the suburbs and a year ago gangs came into her son's school looking for someone's kid to kidnap. 

Gangs ran rampant, people that stayed in their houses slept on the floor to minimize being hit by stray rounds, a lot of people left the nicer neighborhoods since that is where the gangs came to loot and steal and moved away. The government and their politicians did nothing to protect them. 

She then says how some of the wealthy in the community finally had enough, and they pooled together $3 million USD and hired a six-man team from Wagner to secure the neighborhood. She is now talking with relief and gratitude in her voice as she tells us how in four weeks her neighborhood went from totally unsafe to completely safe. 

That these six white men, with ski masks rolled down who didn't speak any english and wagner patches on started "cleaning up the neighborhood" She said it was obvious they when they started, saying where gang members would empty mags terrorizing people, the first day Wagner started cleaning up, you would hear rapid fire from a gang member, followed by 1-2 shots. 

She laughs in relief, saying it went like this for four weeks. Only on the first day did anyone in the neighborhood see the result of the clean up, with fifteen gang members piled in the back of a hilux with bullet holes in all their heads. You live by the sword and terrorize people, no one cares when you die by the sword, they just want to live someplace that is safe. 

After the first day, she said no one in the neighborhood saw the result of the clean up, she laughs and says they all went to the train station (A Yellowstone reference, it turns out her father, a retired colonel loves Yellowstone) 

She says the first week, you could hear Wagner working day and night, the second week, it was less, the third week even less, and the fourth week only a few shots, and then after that, the neighborhood was safe. 

In total these six men cleaned up between 1,500-2,000 gang members in a month, paid for by the wealthy in the neighborhood. 

Reminded me of Noblesse Oblige, or nobility obliges, the unwritten obligation of people from a noble ancestry (substitute people of means today) to act honorably and generously towards others. Nobility extends beyond mere entitlement, requiring people who hold such status to fulfill social responsibilities. 

How do you think this mother, who now doesn't worry about her son being shot by gangs entering his school feels about those Wagner mercenaries? People who live in the land of wolves don't care about US bureaucracy, sanctions, aid, NGOs, or whatever the fuck our elite thinks they are doing to improve the world. 

They care about their son not getting shot at school and talk almost in reverence about the six Wagner fighters with masked faces who cleaned up their neighborhood in a month.”

Source: https://twitter.com/radigancarter/status/1761013582022545593

The whole point of this story is that as we move into a new decentralized world, we cannot take  law and order for granted. Of course, you absolutely should have financial resources, food & water supplies in general. But to protect this, you need to be in good shape, well armed and trained and be part of a larger community. In a world of growing Nation-state decay and movement to a new Network State world, it’s probably a VERY good idea to have a private security and private military company on speed dial as it’s gonna get ugly before it gets better.