There is a man operating in Johor who calls himself a “Tech Zionist”.
He is not shy about it. He said so himself, on record, in a four-hour podcast interview in September 2023.
He compared himself - without irony or embarrassment - to the prophet Abraham, to Jesus Christ, to Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormons), to Theodor Herzl (founder of Zionism), and to Lee Kuan Yew.
His name is Balaji Srinivasan, and he has been talking as if he is God’s gift to Malaysia.
Balaji (above) is the former chief technology officer of Coinbase and a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He is the author of a 2022 book called “The Network State”, which outlines his vision for the future of human civilisation.
In that vision, nation-states become obsolete. Democracy becomes a relic. In their place rise private city-states - governed not by elected representatives, but by tech billionaires and the communities loyal to them.
This is not a fringe conspiracy theory. It is a fully developed, publicly articulated ideology, backed by some of the most powerful money in the world.
And its latest commune built around these ideals is sitting in Forest City, Johor.
No big secret
To understand what Balaji actually wants, you have to listen to what he actually says.
In September 2023, he gave a sprawling interview on the “Moment of Zen” podcast. What followed was one of the most candid and alarming expositions of technofascist thinking to emerge from Silicon Valley in recent memory.
He described a world divided into three tribes: Blues (progressive liberals), Reds (American conservatives), and Greys - his people, the network state loyalists.
The colour choices themselves are worth noting, being a none-too-subtle nod to the American Civil War, where the anti-slavery Unionists wore Blue, and the slave-owning Confederates wore Grey.
Balaji was explicit about what he wanted done to the Blues.
“Take total control of your neighbourhood. Push out all Blues. Tell them they’re… unwelcome. Just as Blues ethnically cleanse me out of San Francisco - push out all Blues.”
He reached for historical precedent to frame his vision.
“You know that there’s something called De-Ba’athification. De-Nazification after World War II, right? Lustration was the equivalent in communist countries, where former communists were drummed out. De-Blueification is the goal. Blues out, right?”
And he called for propaganda to cement the new order.
“You should have movies shown about Blue abuses… There should be lots of stories about what the Blues are doing that is bad.”
State propaganda against political opponents modelled on post-war de-Nazification. This is not hyperbole - these are his words, reported by The New Republic and Mission Local, drawn directly from his own mouth.
Replace “Blues” with any group. Replace it with “Palestinians”. Replace it with any community that has ever been deemed inconvenient by those in power. Same logic, same fascist approach.
Silicon Valley dream
What makes this more than the ravings of one eccentric billionaire is who stands behind him.
Balaji’s closest ideological and financial allies are Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen - two of the most powerful and explicitly anti-democratic figures in Silicon Valley.
Together, they have invested in Praxis, another Network State city project, alongside OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and the Winklevoss twins.
Andreessen donated more than US$80 million (RM327 million) to US President Donald Trump and pro-Trump political causes. Thiel has written, at length, that he no longer believes democracy and freedom are compatible.
And both men have deep, documented ties to Zionist sympathists in the US.
Meanwhile, the Network School in Forest City was promoted publicly by Nuseir Yassin, better known as Nas Daily - an Israeli content creator who previously made headlines after attempting to enter Malaysia using an Israeli passport.
When you look at who built this, who funded it, who promoted it, and what it openly declares itself to be, a picture emerges that should give every Malaysian serious pause.
Why here?
So why Malaysia? Why Forest City?
The honest answer is not flattering to us. Forest City is a vast, half-empty development sitting just across the border from Singapore, available and affordable in ways that no comparable space in the developed world would be.
Malaysia was not chosen because we are respected. We were chosen because we were, in their calculation, accessible. And maybe, we were chosen because we were deemed to be gullible - stupid enough to believe grand promises of investments with lots of zeros.
Balaji’s book is explicit about the endgame. A network state, he writes, is a community that “crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states”.
Its founders, in his vision, wield the power to “surveil, deplatform, freeze, and sanction”.
This is not a school or a startup incubator. This is a prototype for secession and private government - and it is being tested on Malaysian soil.
Political cost
There is a political dimension here that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the government cannot afford to ignore.
Keir Starmer led the British Labour Party to power on a wave of hope. He then proceeded to maintain Zionist-sympathising positions that alienated the very base that carried him to Downing Street. His political capital evaporated at historic speed.
Kamala Harris ran for the American presidency backed by the same coalition - young, diverse, progressive voters deeply passionate about the Palestinian cause. Her campaign’s ambivalence on Gaza was a wound that never closed.
Both paid dearly. Both serve as cautionary tales.
Pakatan Harapan, and PKR in particular, has always presented itself as strongly pro-Palestine. It is a moral position that reflects the convictions of millions of Malaysian voters.
Allowing a man who explicitly calls himself a Tech Zionist - backed by Thiel and Andreessen, promoted by an Israeli content creator - to operate a proto-state community in Johor is a contradiction.
And contradictions, in politics, have a way of becoming liabilities at the worst possible moment.
We don’t need him here
Balaji failed to build his network state in the US, where its institutions, flawed as they are, were too resilient, too contentious, too loud.
Singapore, right next door, looked at what he was proposing and said “no”.
So he came to us. And somewhere along the way, someone said yes - or at least, did not say “no” clearly enough.
And after all this, Balaji really has the gall to post some completely tone deaf, delusional video, arrogantly demanding a meeting with the prime minister?
Smiling while making threats so thinly veiled they’d be banned on Instagram, talking as if the country would lose out on hundreds of millions without his little cult settling in Johor, and having our name sullied for all the other tech billionaires.
To all that we can only say: Brother, please keep your alleged billions of blood money. Your data centres and other technofascists will most certainly be happier with whichever greater fool you can find to peddle your snake oil to. We’re good, man. - Mkini
NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant. He tweets @NatAsasi and can be reached at nat@engage.my.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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