Malaysia Shuts Down Balaji Srinivasan's Network School

Malaysian authorities have ordered the closure of Network School — the startup community created by entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan. The Wall Street Journal reports.

“A Frontier Community of Tech Optimists”

The project grew out of Srinivasan's conviction that the United States is in irreversible decline. He stated his goal plainly — to “start a new country.” Network School was conceived as the first of seven stages in a plan for building a new society, laid out in his book “The Network State.”

The school set up shop in an abandoned Malaysian hotel. WSJ described it as something between a tech incubator and a self-improvement retreat. Participants, however, complained about mundane inconveniences: mold in the rooms, along with a shortage of women and nightlife — details that sit uneasily with the image of an outpost of the future.

The Founder's Response

After fielding questions from WSJ, Srinivasan — who reportedly renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2023 — published a lengthy post on X. In it he declared himself a “proud Singaporean” and lamented that the paper was preparing a “hit piece” portraying him as a “crackpot” rather than an “early adopter” of new ideas.

The current Malaysian campus reportedly has to close over licensing problems. Srinivasan, though, does not intend to stop: he recently announced an agreement to open a new site — this time in Kazakhstan.

Source: TechCrunch