The Network School

Notes from month long stay at NS campus

Balaji has been a brilliant macro synthesizer across domains for many years.

So, when he decided to actualize his thesis of the Network State, a concept of post-nation society that converts an aligned internet group into a physical community, as the Network School, it seemed worthwhile to get involved in the project directly.

I joined ns.com for a month in July ‘25, and below are the notes from that stay.

As with any new idea, NS is in constant flux as people tinker with the execution each month to match theory with practice, so consider it as a snapshot from the current moment in time.

Details

A few non-obvious details that cleared up through the first-hand discovery process:

Location

NS campus is on Forest City island, Malaysia, sharing a marine border with Singapore.

The artificial island was part of a massive Chinese development plan for a Special Financial Zone, closer to Singapore, rising as Asia’s financial capital, which is now abandoned and sparsely populated with <10K people vs the original plans for 100K+.

2 closest major cities to NS are:

• Singapore, Singapore, ~45 km / 1.5 hours, requires border crossing

• Johor Bahru, Malaysia, ~40 km / 40 mins

Thanks to its location right on the equator, the place has year-round tropical weather with realfeel approaching ~40°C during the day & pleasantly warm post-sun hours.

Facilities

3 structures have been semi-taken over & repurposed as the NS campus in Forest City:

1. Forest City Marina Hotel
   This hotel is the primary hub for most NS activities, serviced with all amenities.
   NS has refurbished major parts of it for use: Reception lobby as NS cafe, NS library space, custom-built NS gym on the rooftop, 13th floor as NS mess hall.

2. Apartments
   People who commit to 1-year long-term stays use refurbished apartments in the building right in front of the hotel.

3. Co-Working Space
   Dedicated office space ~1 km from the hotel, serves as NS co-working.

NS campus: Hotel, Apartment, Co-Working

Rooms

Hotel rooms are first class, come with full daily service, and all the amenities needed.

Cost/person/month (all inclusive) = $3000 (Private), $1500 (Shared)

Demographics

In July ‘25 cohort of 100+ people, majority were from India, US being next big minority, followed by Asia, and people from around the world sprinkled in the mix.

Male : Female ratio in the cohort was about 80 : 20.

Majority of cohort was in 20s, with a handful of teens & higher age brackets in the mix.

Professionally, a large fraction of the cohort was broadly involved in crypto, followed by remote digital work and building software startups.

Lifestyle-wise, a large fraction of the cohort was broadly digital nomadic, and many were in between job or study pursuits, figuring out the next project on a break.

People from 100+ countries have passed through NS since its inception in Sep ‘24.

Daily rhythm

NS design intent is to offer a community-oriented daily rhythm to create a loop of - Learn, Burn, Earn, Fun. Everything is optional and primarily driven by community initiatives, along with weekly NS team scheduling and occasional guest visitors.

Learn

People on campus organize talks, workshops, and office hours across a broad range of domains, ranging from their professional, personal skills expertise for NS peers.

E.g., Balaji gave a talk biweekly, Tomas Pueyo gave a talk during a visit, Brian Chau did a weekly AI talk & ran a book club around the NS curriculum.

I did weekly talks on topics I’ve deeply engaged in

Burn

Daily expert-led HIIT workouts keep your calories burning. Moreover, peers organize tons of sports (volleyball, running, swimming, badminton, etc) with each other daily.

Curated 3x nutritious meals (buffet lunch/dinner, packed lunch) to replenish calories.

Earn

NS Earn offers crypto prizes to complete tasks, reincarnation of Balaji’s prior earn.com
This is still in the early stages of development and needs streamlining to get going.

NS offers select jobs to work directly on the core team or get funded for a fellowship.

Fun

With a high-energy, young cohort, people are up to something fun incessantly, which allows everyone to pick and choose the ones that fit their taste.

Select fun events from July '25: Boulder, Bachata, Go-Kart

Theory vs Practice

Based on Balaji’s prolific publishing on the internet, including the network state, my primary interest was to get a teaser of what it takes to build a country in a month, and if progress during the period fits core ideas, commit to the effort for the long term.

All the caveats sound fine to me, but a few core things differ in reality vs expectation:

• Country or Co-working

  I expected an effort to build a country to be 1-way door decision, irrespective of the odds of success. So, sustaining a series of 2-way door decisions at the NS v3 stage gives the project a sense of transience.
  Leasing vs owning, buying vs building, making a 1h trip to a nearby city are pragmatic choices, but without an ascendant ideology, rising beyond LARP seems unlikely.

  
  A country that doesn’t have self-sufficiency (food, energy, defense, etc) is not sovereign, but merely at the mercy of great powers with guns.
  There are likely many paths to get there, but no plan seems to be in progress as of now.

• Strong vs Weak code

  I expected each member’s primary evaluation on NS goal alignment, but the current criteria are loose, with a large fraction having a vague awareness. Given most orgs get diluted over time, it’s unlikely that getting NS members’ headcount to 1000+ automatically transitions culture from weak → strong at a later stage.

  
  Failure of multiculturalism experiment in West and Polytheistic religions in parts of the world not giving rise to successful civilizations offers some counter evidence.

  
  Practically, this shows up as not being able to ask a 100+ sized cohort what they can do for NS instead of what NS can do for them because of quality or trust concerns. Strong filters narrow the top of the funnel, but cut down the churn.

  
  Isolation of NS from major cities and hot weather confines IRL interactions to hotel premises, further necessitating that each incremental addition strengthen the bond.

• Physicalism vs Digitalism

  Balaji omits from the China vs Internet thesis that the Internet itself is an immense physicalist exercise, requiring electricity, cables, data center buildings, cooling, chips, etc, not merely digital running entirely on our PCs. Inability of Crypto to create any consumer-scale service after 16 years means replacing classic web is still distant.

  
  Despite being armed with every digital tool in our pockets, I’m wired to find meaning in embodied 3D experiences instead of virtual 2D ones. If the internet allows us to be part of a community from everywhere, being anywhere requires a unique physical reality for its own sake, not a support system for digital existence.

Epilogue

Overall, NS is an impressive effort in converting an internet concept into the physical world, especially with a terminally online community. I thoroughly enjoyed the daily loop experience of learning & doing things at NS for the entire month.

Although I’m leaving the campus for now, I’d be open to another shot at building a country’s foundations when NS allows people to directly work on the core mission.

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If details of the network school, the daily loop, or the startup society vibe sound like something you may thrive in while making progress towards your personal or professional goals, apply to join at ns.com/apply.