Tech Titans’ White House Influence Isn’t Enough: They Want More Power
▼ Summary
– Laurence Ion is a Romanian programmer who leads Viva City, a temporary community in San Francisco focused on life extension, crypto, and AI.
– Ion aims to establish a permanent, independent city-state where biotechnology regulations are bypassed to “make death optional.”
– He has a personal motivation due to a bone tumor disease and believes creating a new city is faster than navigating government agencies like the FDA.
– Viva City is part of a broader “network state” movement, inspired by Balaji Srinivasan’s book, where tech elites build new jurisdictions.
– The project faces competition from other wealthy tech figures seeking to create physical enclaves separate from traditional nation-states.
A new wave of tech entrepreneurs, having achieved immense financial success, is no longer content with merely influencing existing governments. They are now actively pursuing the creation of their own sovereign territories, where they can operate beyond the reach of traditional regulations. This movement represents a fundamental shift in how some of the world’s most powerful individuals view political power, framing it not as a matter of left versus right, but as a battle between the established nation-state and a nascent “network state.”
In a San Francisco office building, the scene is more reminiscent of an early-morning gathering than a political rally. A man wearing a golden mask and a cape leads a small, energetic group in a dance. This is Laurence Ion, a 31-year-old programmer from Romania whose early success in a Google competition set him on a path to financial independence. Now, he is channeling his resources and ambition into a radical project: founding a new city-state named Viva City. For six weeks, the building, once home to Burning Man and later a WeWork, will serve as a temporary headquarters for Ion and approximately one hundred pioneers. They are bonding over shared interests in radical life extension, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence.
The motivation for this ambitious endeavor is deeply personal for Ion. Born with a condition that causes painful bone tumors, he has spent significant time in medical facilities. This experience fuels his desire to “make death optional” and avoid the frailty of aging. He has concluded that waiting for government agencies like the FDA to approve groundbreaking treatments is an outdated and slow process. His solution is to bypass these systems entirely by creating a new jurisdiction with its own laws. To accelerate this plan, Viva City is offering a $2 million bounty to anyone who can connect them with a politician willing to help them secure land and legal autonomy for their special zone, where standard biotech regulations would not apply.
Ion’s project, however, is far from an isolated fantasy. It is part of a broader trend inspired by ideas like those in Balaji Srinivasan’s book, The Network State, which provides a blueprint for translating online communities into physical sovereign enclaves. A growing number of wealthy technologists are attempting to build their own self-governing territories, believing that starting from scratch is more efficient than reforming existing systems. This movement underscores a critical divide emerging among the global elite. The central political conflict, for them, is not between conventional parties but between the traditional power of nation-states and the disruptive potential of decentralized, technology-driven network states.
(Source: Wired)
