They're Starting A Country In An Abandoned City?!

I went inside Network School, a community inspired by Balaji Srinivasan’s idea from The Network State, where people are leaving their normal lives behind to build businesses, live together, and test what a completely new kind of society could look like. It just happens to be based in Forest City… a place most people wrote off as a failed megacity. But what’s happening inside isn’t what you think. From the moment new members arrive, everything is designed around one thing: growth. You’re surrounded by strangers from all over the world, pushed into intense routines, constant work, and a lifestyle where distractions basically don’t exist. Some people thrive in it. Others don’t last long. And the deeper I got, the harder it became to figure out what this actually is. For some, it’s just a place to lock in and build something meaningful. For others, it feels like the early version of something much bigger, a real attempt at building a new kind of country from the ground up. So I joined them to see it for myself. And by the end of it… I still wasn’t sure what I’d just experienced.