The technocrats' archipelago: Voyage to the heart of ”autonomous cities”

The stake goes beyond the simple criticism of technological capitalism. It is a question of defending the very principle of a political common good against its reduction to a merchant service.

Translated from Essentiel News- an article by Matthias Faeh

In the corners of the Internet and the felted salons of Silicon Valley develops an ideology which aims to replace democracies with autonomous cities led by a technological elite. From Dark enlightenment theorized by Curtis Yarvin to concrete projects like Prospel in Honduras or Praxis in Greenland, a neo-feudal vision of society gains in political influence and materializes its territorial ambitions. Behind these initiatives hides a network of influence piloted by technological giants, notably Peter Thiel, whose ramifications are now extending to the top of the American state.

Foundations and philosophy of Dark Enlightenment

The neo-reactionary movement, or Dark in lighter, emerged as an intellectual counterculture in the early 2000s, with two founding figures with distinct but complementary routes. In April 2007, the American engineer Curtis Yarvin launched his blog Unqualified Reservations under the pseudonym of Mencius Moldbug, where he published "A Formalist Manifesto", founding text of the movement. This disappointed libertarian explains his deep rejection of democracy there, which he considers fundamentally ineffective and destructive, and pleads for a return to monarchical or camera forms of government.

Nick Land, former professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick and co -founder of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, discovered Yarvin's work around 2010. In March 2012, he published on his blog Urban Future a series of articles entitled "The Dark Enlightenment", which popularizes the movement by giving it its final name. Land, an intellectual figure avant-garde of accelerationism, theorizes that capitalism must be not contained but accelerated to reach its ultimate consequences.

Neo-reactionary ideology is defined by its opposition to the values ​​of the Enlightenment and to political modernity. It categorically rejects egalitarianism, representative democracy and progressivism, which it considers forces of social decadence. In their place, it advocates a hierarchical vision of society, where power should be concentrated in the hands of an intellectual and technological elite.

Neo-reaction political theory is articulated in particular around the neo-cammeralism of Curtis Yarvin, which conceives the State as a company whose owner is the owner-action. In this model, governance is evaluated only in terms of its effectiveness in maintaining social order and economic prosperity, without consideration for citizen participation. As Yarvin himself explains, "in modern feudalism, the kingdoms would rather resemble businesses, with CEOs as sovereigns".

This vision paradoxically combines extreme technophilia with the idea that leaders could be people with very high IQs, even cyborgs, and a return to pre-democratic social structures. The movement thus proposes a society where authority would no longer be justified by popular will but by technical competence and superior intelligence, establishing a new type of digital feudalism where citizenship would be replaced by a customer-company relationship.

The Expansion of Neo-Reactionary Influence

While the neo-reactionary movement initially remained confined to the intellectual fringes of the web, it gradually infiltrated the power circles of Silicon Valley, finding fertile ground among techno-libertarian entrepreneurs disillusioned with democracy. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an influential investor, has become one of the main vectors of this influence. Although he does not explicitly identify as a neo-reactionary, his writings and investments demonstrate clear ideological affinities with the movement, notably when he declared that "freedom and democracy are not compatible."

In the second Trump administration, J.D. Vance, now Vice President of the United States, maintains close ties with Peter Thiel, who funded his Senate campaign with $15 million. Vance met Thiel after hearing him speak at Yale Law School in 2011 and later joined his investment fund, Mithril Capital, establishing a mentor-protégé relationship that culminated in his becoming Vice President.

These connections are not trivial but reveal a deliberate strategy of ideological influence. By placing his allies in key positions, Thiel contributes to the diffusion of neo-reactionary ideas within the US executive branch. This growing presence at the highest levels of the American state represents a remarkable success for a movement that, barely fifteen years ago, existed only in the form of obscure blogs and fringe forums.

Network States: The Realization of Dark Enlightenment

Neoreactionary ideas have found concrete expression in the concept of the "Network State," theorized by Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase. In his book of the same name, Srinivasan defines the Network State as "a highly aligned online community with the capacity for collective action that collectively funds territories around the world and ultimately secures diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states." This concise definition conceals a radical conception of political sovereignty that breaks with the usual model.

Srinivasan expands on his definition by specifying that a network state possesses "moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, a level of in-person civility, an embedded cryptocurrency, a consensus government bounded by a smart social contract, an archipelago of collectively funded physical territories, a virtual capital, and a census proving a sufficient population to warrant diplomatic recognition." This complex structure aims to replace democratic legitimacy with one based on voluntary membership in an ideological community.

The fundamental difference from classical nation-states lies in the conceptual starting point: While the nation-state system begins with a map of the globe and assigns each piece of land to a single state, the network-state system begins with the world's 8 billion humans and draws every mind into one or more networks. In other words, whereas the nation-state is defined primarily by its territory, the network-state is defined primarily by its community of ideas, with territorial acquisition occurring only later.

This model is explicitly inspired by the technology company, transposing the logic of the startup into the political realm. Srinivasan argues that "unlike politicians, entrepreneurs can launch companies without integrating into existing corporations, with market competition fostering diversity, quality, and progress." This entrepreneurial vision of politics is accompanied by a critique of the nation-state as an obsolete structure, incapable of adapting to the speed of technological change.

The network state thus represents a political incarnation of the principles of the Dark Enlightenment: rejection of democratic foundations, valuation of political experimentation by founders and founders, and creation of exclusive communities based on voluntary adhesion to a system of shared values. By proposing a decentralized but ideologically coherent vision of political sovereignty, this concept particularly seduces techno-libertarian environments which see it as a means of emancipating oneself from the constraints of the nation states while establishing new forms of power.

Case study: Prospel in Honduras

Prospera, established on the island of Roatán in Honduras, represents one of the first attempts to materialize the concept of network state. This City-Enterprise has developed under the legal status of Zede (Economic Development and Employment Zone), a framework created in 2013 following amendments to the Hondurian Constitution. These amendments, controversial from their adoption, have enabled the establishment of autonomous zones with their own legal, tax and administrative systems, largely independent of the Honduran government.

The governance structure of Prospera, approved in July 2019, is strongly corporatized, offering little room for democratic participation. The technical secretary exercises the main authority, alongside the "promoter and organizer" (Honduras Próspera LLC) and a board of directors of nine members, four of whom are appointed by Honduras Próspera LLC. The voting system is limited: although the “residents” elect a majority of decision -makers, conditions limit this representation. Until August 2025 or until Prospe will reach 10,000 residents, two administrators are elected only by landowners, with a vote proportional to the surface owned. This model establishes a plutocratic system where power is linked to land ownership, thus promoting the control of investors and large owners at the expense of a fair democratic representation.

The controversy took on an international dimension in 2022, when the new Hondurian government voted decrees repealing the legal framework of the ZEDE. In response, Prospera filed a complaint against Honduras for $ 10.8 billion in damage, or about 31% of the country's GDP, with a arbitration court in Washington DC. This legal action, supported by billionaire investors like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and Sam Altman, could have devastating consequences for the Honduurian economy and represents a modern form of neocolonial economic pressure.

The Praxis project and the Groenlandian ambition

Founded in 2021 by Dryden Brown, a former Silicon Valley analyst, Praxis embodies the most radical ambition of the networks. This project aims to create a “post-liberal” city-state populated exclusively with handpicked “talented”, with the stated objective of “replacing the United States as a global superpower”. In 2023, Brown tried to acquire 600 km² of Groenland territory from the Danish government, a maneuver revealing convergences between geopolitical interests and techno-sovereignist utopias.

The choice of Greenland is not trivial. This territory, rich in rare minerals and strategically positioned in the Arctic, had already attracted the attention of Donald Trump, who had proposed in August 2019 to buy the island for $ 600 million. Although Denmark rejected this offer, the Trump administration has maintained a marked interest in the region, formalized by the reopening of the American consulate in Nuuk in June 2024.

Since his return to the White House in January 2025, Trump has repeatedly reiterated his desire to obtain Greenland. During his speech at Congress on March 4, 2025, he said that he would obtain the territory, saying that the United States needed it for international security. Trump even launched a direct call to the Greenlanders, promising their security and wealth if they joined the United States. These statements caused strong reactions to Greenland, where the outgoing Prime Minister called for an emergency meeting of party leaders to jointly reject these remarks. Despite the firm opposition from the Greenlandic and Danish authorities, Trump reaffirmed on March 13, 2025 that he thought that the annexation of Greenland was going to come true.

Praxis benefits from influential support. The company has raised $ 15 million from investors like Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan, while maintaining opaque links with key figures from the previous Trumpian mandate. Michael Kratsios, former CTO (Technical Director) of the United States under Trump, sits on the Advisory Council of the project. This porosity between public sphere and private interests illustrates the strategy of systemic infiltration advocated by neo-reactionary theorists.

Andreen and the Freedom Cities

Marc Andreessen, co -founder of Netscape and mythical figure of the Silicon Valley, operates a revealing ideological moult. After having financed libertarian projects like Seasteading Institute, he has theorizes since 2023 the concept of "Freedom Cities". These free cities, presented as laboratories of deregulated capitalism, promise algorithmic governance and taxation close to zero.

Andreessen’s influence has increased considerably on the political scene. In March 2024, he launched Andreessen Horowitz Policy Labs, a think tank dedicated to political innovation. Its rapprochement with the Trump administration is manifest: Andreessen invested $ 45 million in various republican campaigns in the mid-term elections in 2022.

Andreessen's free cities take up the codes of the Hondurian Zede while radicalizing them. Their charter notably provides for legal extraterritoriality for technological companies and an education system based on diploma. These proposals, although still theoretical, have benefited from an active lobbying in the congress since the entry of Vance to the vice-president.

Analysis of geopolitical and ethical issues

Peter Thiel is the central node of this network. Its Founders Fund fund has invested $ 890 million in network status projects between 2020 and 2024, while funding political campaigns. The appointment in January 2025 of Ken Howery, co -founder of Paypal with Thiel, as an ambassador to Denmark, takes on its full meaning here: this atypical diplomat would negotiate behind the scenes of the autonomy agreements for Greenland, preparing the ground for future Praxis type implantations.

This strategy is an uninhibited techno-colonialism. The projects of autonomous cities, presented as governance startups, in reality reproduce the historical mechanisms of the eastern Indies companies: exploitation of local legal faults, capturing strategic resources, and progressive replacement of state structures by privatized devices. The economist Branko Milanović describes this dynamic "algorithmic neo-vassalization", where citizenship becomes a revocable subscription.

The local opposition is organized, however. In Honduras, the coalition against the ZEDE has gathered unions, churches and native groups since 2024, obtaining in February 2025 the freezing of three new projects. In Greenland, the Inuit Ataqatigiit party had a preliminary agreement with Praxis canceled in November 2024, qualifying the "new form of real estate piracy" project.

Free cities or colonial enclaves?

Dark Enlightenment and its concrete avatars - from Zede to Freedom Cities - represent an existential threat to the democratic social contract. By transferring political sovereignty to technological oligarchies, these projects substitute the "we, the people" of modern constitutions a "we, the shareholders" to cyber -feudal hints.

Their danger lies less in their immediate realization than in their function of an ideological Trojan horse: each attempt to implant normalizes the idea that democracy would be obsolete in the face of the challenges of the 21st century. The recent decision of the Inter -American Court of Human Rights, invalidating in March 2025 the status of the Zede in Honduras, shows, however, that the resistance is organized.

The stake goes beyond the simple criticism of technological capitalism. It is a question of defending the very principle of a political common good against its reduction to a merchant service. As the Hondurian lawyer Julieta Castellanos sums it up: "These autonomous cities are not the future, but a return to the worst hours of colonial enclaves - simply recoded in JavaScript".

However, should we systematically reject these social and political experiments? History teaches us that innovation, whether technological or societal, often arises from daring and sometimes controversial experiences. The Italian Renaissance Cities-States, the utopian communes of the 19th century or the special economic zones in China have all, in their own way, contributed to shaping new forms of social and economic organization.

The free cities and similar projects, despite the legitimate concerns they raise, could potentially provide valuable lessons on governance in the digital age. Rather than trying to suffocate them in the egg, wouldn't it be more judicious to observe them carefully, to learn from them-positive as negative-and to use this knowledge to improve our current systems?

The freedom to experiment, supervised by solid ethical and legal safeguards, could be the key to a constructive social development. It is probably in the tension between innovation and regulation, between freedom and responsibility, that the contours of future social organizations will be emerged.

By Matthias Faeh