He left America, moved into a $100 billion ghost city near Singapore and tried to build a new society. Malaysia ghosted him

Balaji Srinivasan spent two years testing whether an online community could be turned into a real-world society. His experiment took him to Forest City, a huge $100 billion development in southern Malaysia, where he ran a residential Network School for people drawn to his ideas about technology, community and new forms of governance. The experiment ended after a local council ordered the school to stop operating over licensing issues, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The closure came after Malaysian authorities also examined claims about Israeli citizens staying at the campus. Immigration officials checked passports after a pro-Palestine group made allegations on Instagram. Authorities later said they had not found evidence of wrongdoing and that the investigation was continuing.

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Srinivasan did not appear ready to abandon the idea. Within hours of the closure order, he posted a video showing himself signing an agreement with a Kazakh deputy prime minister to open another campus in Kazakhstan.

Who is Balaji Srinivasan?

Srinivasan, 46, grew up on Long Island after his parents, both Indian immigrants, moved to the US. He has recalled being the only brown child in a school of hundreds and being punished after defending himself against bullying. He eventually studied engineering at Stanford and built a career across biotechnology, venture capital and cryptocurrency.

His resume includes founding a genetic screening company, working at Andreessen Horowitz and serving as chief technology officer at Coinbase. Federal records show that Srinivasan and his wife renounced their US citizenship in 2023. Srinivasan has said he is now Singaporean. But his most unusual project has had less to do with Silicon Valley than with the question of how people might build communities outside existing systems.

His idea was simple: build the community first

Srinivasan outlined that idea in his 2022 book, The Network State. The basic concept starts without a country. People who share similar beliefs first connect online. They build businesses, create financial networks and develop a community. Over time, they pool resources, buy physical land and attempt to gain recognition for their new society.

Srinivasan described seven stages for the process.

His argument is that the internet has changed how people organise, but political systems have not necessarily caught up. He has questioned whether many countries created before the internet can adapt to the way modern communities communicate and work. That theory became more interesting when he tried to put it into practice.

Why he chose a ghost city near Singapore

The unlikely setting was Forest City in Johor, Malaysia. The development was conceived as a giant luxury project built by Chinese property interests, with an estimated value of $100 billion. It was designed to accommodate a huge population, with high-rise apartments, resorts and other amenities.

Instead, large parts of the development remained quiet and underoccupied, turning Forest City into one of the most striking examples of the problems facing China's property sector. For Srinivasan, however, an almost-empty city offered something useful: space.

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In 2024, he rented hotel space and launched the Network School. The programme cost $1,500 a month and included accommodation, food, classes and access to the beach. The first cohort had 128 people. The following year's programme offered 256 places.

The school had a gym, communal meals and a cafe that stocked products including creatine and collagen peptides.It was less like a conventional university and more like a temporary community built around a shared worldview.

Why people actually came to live there

For some residents, the attraction was the people rather than Forest City itself. Pranit Garg, a 29-year-old digital nomad who arrived in March, was drawn by Srinivasan's vision. He also liked the food and protein options available at the school.

Priyansha Dhoot, a 26-year-old programme manager from India, joined in April. She liked the community but quickly discovered that Forest City did not offer much nightlife.

The area's duty-free liquor shops provided entertainment for roughly a day. The unusual experiment had other problems too. Some residents complained about mould and an uneven gender balance.

Srinivasan said mildew was an unavoidable feature of the region and that his team dealt with it. He also pushed back against the idea that the school was simply a gathering place for young male technology enthusiasts. According to Srinivasan, the community included technology-focused parents and children as well.

For those who stayed, the appeal was the feeling of living among people who were interested in the same ideas.

Then the ghost city experiment ran into the real world

The Network School's biggest problem was not necessarily whether people wanted to join. It was that the community still existed inside Malaysia. A pro-Palestine group posted on Instagram claiming the school had admitted Israeli citizens, including one person allegedly travelling on a second passport.

Malaysia does not officially recognise Israel. Israeli nationals also require special permission to enter the country.Immigration officials visited the campus and checked passports following the claims.

Authorities later said they had not established wrongdoing and that their investigation was still continuing. Srinivasan rejected the social media post, calling it a hoax and comparing the incident to swatting. He also sought a meeting with the prime minister's office.

The closure order that followed focused on a different issue: licensing irregularities. The local council ordered the Network School to cease operations.

For an experiment built around the idea of creating new communities, it was an awkward reminder that the physical world still comes with existing rules.

Malaysia shut it down. Kazakhstan opened another door

Srinivasan's idea is not unique. Patri Friedman, grandson of economist Milton Friedman, has also worked on concepts involving startup cities and alternative communities. His efforts have received backing from Srinivasan, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.

One project associated with the movement is Próspera in Honduras, which became involved in a legal fight with the Honduran government after lawmakers moved to scrap its special economic zone.

Kazakhstan could now become Srinivasan's next testing ground. The country has tried to attract international companies through special economic zones offering zero corporate tax and relatively easy visa arrangements.

Srinivasan has discussed even more ambitious possibilities, including building an artificial island off a coast willing to host it. He has also spoken about the possibility of eventually following Elon Musk to Mars.For now, Kazakhstan is a much more practical next step.

The biggest problem was never finding believers

The Network School showed that Srinivasan could attract people willing to spend months living together in a community built around a shared idea. The harder part was everything outside that community.

A virtual network can choose its members. A physical community has to deal with immigration rules, licences, local authorities and the government controlling the land beneath it.

That is what made Forest City such an unusual backdrop for the experiment. The $100 billion development was already struggling with the basic challenge of getting people to live there. Srinivasan arrived with a different question: could people who believed in a common future be persuaded to build a society there?

For two years, the answer appeared to be yes, at least on a small scale.Then Malaysia stepped in. And just like that, the experiment's first real-world home was gone.