The 323rd Block: Network School is a cult, tech reporting is physical
And never forget that colonial empires are built on corporations, tech or not
This week…
Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.
Conspiracy theory watch-list: Taylor Farms, or dirty American food syndrome. 🙄 (See: this.)
Your Wikipedia this week: Underwater basket weaving
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block was about the new new media and Telegram.
CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified. TECH OLIGARCHY
Balaji Srinivasan’s tech cult threatens Malaysia
Gil Duran for The Nerd Reich:
In 2024, former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan opened something called Network School in Forest City, a mostly empty man-made island off the coast of Johor, Malaysia. The idea behind Network School is simple: it’s a camp to indoctrinate wannabe tech entrepreneurs into his Network State cult, which seeks to replace existing nations with micro-countries run by tech companies.
Network School participants attend “classes,” do group workouts and eat “bunny food” designed by Bryan Johnson, the longevity influencer (and Network State cult member) who has spent millions trying not to die.
Balaji, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner who generally goes by his first name, has described his ideology as “tech Zionism.” The New York-born millionaire, now based in Singapore, is a radical figure with a burning hatred for so-called “legacy” governments. In 2024, I exposed his bizarre vision of the future: a fascistic nightmare in which a “gray tribe” of techies don gray uniforms and purge all “blues”—Democrats—from San Francisco.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Balaji finds himself embroiled in controversy in Malaysia, where the government has launched an investigation into Network School. As we’ll see, it is investigating the wrong threat.
More by Duran on Threads. Loosely linked:
Network School founder says immigration probe at tech commune is a risk to Malaysia’s tech ambitions by Ashley Tang for Reuters.
Peter Thiel’s AI tribunal put journalists on trial. Now it’s pivoted to scoreboard model by Gary Baum for THR.
La vigilancia biométrica prohibida en la UE se propaga por India exportada por España por Nico Schmidt, Mayank Aggarwal e Ignacio Carrascón en InfoLibre.
Au Maroc, plongée au cœur de la machine qui surveille journalistes et opposants par Elodie Guéguen et Maxime Tellier dans Franceinfo.
DATA & AI
These are some of the most complex structures ever created’: how tech reporting moved into the physical world
Gautam Malkani for The Guardian:
Journalists often use the term “shoe-leather reporting” to refer to the on-the-ground legwork that goes into covering certain stories. As the tech industry’s focus has shifted from screen-based realities to the physical world of colossal AI datacentres and social media harms, comfortable footwear has become more essential to a tech reporter’s job.
Earlier this week, we published the Guardian’s latest investigation into the datacentres and energy infrastructures that underpin AI – revealing that an £8.2bn AI complex in rural Scotland has misrepresented its plans to be powered entirely by on-site renewables. “Our reporting is showing that you can’t simply wave a magic wand and have a datacentre appear,” says Aisha Down, who covers AI for the Guardian and went to Scotland to investigate the story. “There are a lot of huge physical constraints and reality checks. These physical, tangible things are what makes or sinks the AI boom.”
Much of this reporting involves interrogating the reality of all this tangible stuff – whether or not the infrastructure proposals by tech giants are realistic, whether the datacentres themselves are feasible, whether the energy and water commitments are genuine, whether the promised job creation is real and, above all, what it means for real-life, actual people.
Loosely linked:
Data sovereignty doesn’t mean data isolationism by Luca Belli for Tech Policy Press.
Un tercio de los españoles se informa sobre ciencia y salud con IA aunque desconfíe de ella por Ana Lozano del Campo en El País.
Une opposition aux centres de données voit le jour partout au Canada par La Presse canadienne.
What I read, listen, and watch
I’m reading Empire, Incorporated (2023) by Philip J. Stern. Just a reminder about how corporations build colonialism.
I’m listening to Tech Won’t Save Us on resisting technological development.
I’m watching a short doc by Scientific American with Mongabay and Project Multatuli on Indonesia’s new capital.
Chart of the week
From David McCandless’s AI copyright lawsuits tracker on Information is Beautiful.
