Last month, venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan announced Network School, a three-month learning retreat for people interested in a kind of anarcho-capitalist utopia: the “network state.” The first class, with 150 participants, starts today.
Details of the school are shrouded in secrecy, even to applicants. Potential applicants for the network schools made down payments of up to $2,000 without even knowing where the schools were located. Srinivasan has not yet revealed the name of the school, but social media posts and a WIRED report say it’s Forest City in Malaysia.
The Network School is one of the most ambitious projects yet by those who want to create what Srinivasan calls a “decentralized state.” The goal is for people dissatisfied with their society to band together and create a movement that would create a “parallel” society, an alternative education system, media institutions, a currency and special economic zones with tax laws that favor the wealthy. A key step is having physical land, and the Network School has cleared that hurdle. On Sunday, Srinivasan said he was working on “building real estate” with the goal of “expanding the school.”
While Srinivasan has yet to disclose the Network School’s location, he has been more clear about the school’s values, which he says students should abide by: According to a Substack post introducing the Network School, these requirements include respect for “Western values,” viewing Bitcoin as the successor to the U.S. Federal Reserve System, and trusting AI over human courts and judges.
“This is for people who believe in technology, harmony, internationalism, and capitalism,” Srinivasan’s Substack post reads. “This is for people who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco.”
Srinivasan added that the school is open to artists, athletes and engineers from any country.
The school’s application asks students to rate a series of things in different categories on a scale from minus 10 (unfavorable) to plus 10 (favorable). Topics include “protocols” like Solana or Bitcoin maximalism, “politics” like Karl Marx or Jordan Peterson, “technology” like AI accelerationism or military technology, “places” like Dubai or Israel, “cultures” like tattoos or traditional masculinity or femininity, “policies” like Drag Queen Story Hour or carbon credits, and “advances” like artificial general intelligence and space exploration.
Several people on X and Reddit said they’d been accepted into network schools, but that they needed to pay their first month’s rent upfront within two business days of being accepted or risk losing their place to live. The time constraints and not knowing exactly where they’d be staying caused stress for some.
One technologist who was accepted into Network School told WIRED that while he strongly supports the school’s philosophy, sending money without knowing key details is going too far.
“I was talking to some friends about it and they were like, ‘Wow, that seems fishy,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re right,'” said the applicant, who asked not to be named due to privacy concerns.
As for day-to-day life at Network School, Srinivasan said in a Substack post, students will work in mini classrooms to complete daily assignments that combine coding and social media posts, and upon completion, they’ll earn an NFT as “proof of their learning.” Students will also be able to compete for $1,000 worth of “cryptocurrency prizes” every day in “open source projects, AI content creation, and microtasks,” Srinivasan said.
