The multimillionaire tech investor Balaji Srinivasan made his name as an anti-government crusader in 2013, when he gave a talk about Silicon Valley’s “ultimate exit” from the United States — what he called the “Microsoft of nations.”
Perhaps most memorably, Srinivasan described America’s “Paper Belt” — Washington with laws and regulation, Boston with higher education, Los Angeles with entertainment, and New York City with ads and publishing — as the modern-day Rust Belt.
In his view, Silicon Valley was usurping all four cities, previously the centers of power in postwar America, by outpacing regulation, scorning academic prestige, introducing streaming services and reinventing direct-to-consumer marketing. In the years that followed, Srinivasan doubled down on his techno-libertarian message. He gave prolix speeches about his contempt for government and was combative with his foes, often waxing lyrical about a “network state” or a new kind of polity where all decisions were made through ownership, consent and contract.