Booted from Malaysia, tech guru Balaji Srinivasan finds a new patron for his ‘nomad’ commune: Kazakhstan

A controversial, self-styled tech prophet had been searching the world for a place to set up a nomadic education community. Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer for Coinbase, thought he’d found one in Malaysia—specifically, in a largely uncompleted complex just across the waterway separating the Southeast Asian country from its neighbor, Singapore. Srivansan’s Network School had operated for years without incident, until a single social media video that was studiously vague about its location caught the eye of social media users, which built into a regulatory crackdown that shuttered the school’s doors on July 21.

The day after, Srivansan was in Central Asia, signing an MOU with authorities in Kazakhstan. “Our new campus will become a haven for global techno-optimism, with expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation, and active recruitment of talent,” he wrote in a July 22 post on X. It’s the latest development in a weekslong saga involving Srinivasan and his dream to build the “network state,” a new kind of political entity spawned from the energies of the global tech sector; it’s a drama that sits in the middle of crypto-friendly tech utopianism, continued tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even China’s real estate crash.

Why Malaysia shut it down Malaysian authorities opened their investigation after online allegations that Israeli nationals had joined Network School’s programme, entering the country on second-country passports. Malaysia does not recognize Israel and generally bars entry to Israeli passport holders. The probe found no evidence of travel document violations.

Yet the Iskandar Puteri City Council chose to revoke Network School’s business license on July 21, instead arguing that it had breached licensing conditions and premises-use requirements. The council also revoked the Network School’s advertising license, after finding that the business activities carried out at the premises differed from its office-use licen