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Hey everyone—
Welcome to The Under Report, your weekly intelligence brief about the stories that move the world without making headlines. Last week we talked about What Comes After the Nation State, and today we're continuing on to part 2. If this one piques your interest, check out the first installment!

I want to thank all of you for supporting the Under Report. Sitting down to write to you all is my favorite part of the week. I'm going to be starting a paid subscription soon. The weekly intel brief will always be free for everyone, but deep dives and additional content will be paid.

I want to make sure that all of my original readers (you) get full access. That's why I'll be launching a pay-what-you-want year subscription for every subscriber before July 1st. So share the Under Report.

Anyone who subscribes before July 1st can pay what they want for the year subscription.

Thank you so much, it's such a joy to write to you all.

— Eric

P.S. Check out this ad for citizenship to Liberland, the world's first libertarian microstate.

P.P.S. I wrote a book about accidentally becoming their ambassador.

Law is based on two things: where you plant your feet and what you own. The first one is more important, because the law of the land dictates what you can and can't own. Case-in-point, for many years I lived in Albania, a formerly isolationist communist state. 

Within the borders of Albania, the state owned the land, and the people for that matter. When the system collapsed people went scrambling to look at records from Ottoman occupation, to find out who owned what.

But what happens when people live online, transact in crypto, and route their business through three continents before buying their cup of imported coffee? Now, you can live in a place that maximizes what you can spend, keep, and own.

This is known as jurisdictional arbitrage. Basically making money in New York but spending it in Bali while traveling on a Swiss passport. This is great for people and companies that can afford to globe trot for the most bang for their buck, even though the majority of the world doesn't get the privilege. 

Corporations do this by registering in Delaware, Seychelles, or Wyoming. Individuals can do it by routing income through Estonia’s e-Residency or operating under the legal codes of “free cities” like Prospera in Honduras or Liberland in the Balkans. The rise of AI contract enforcement and smart legal templates could further de-territorialize law. 

Think of it like this: instead of being born into law, you’ll subscribe to it. Competing legal frameworks could offer different service tiers. Maybe the freemium platform will give you basic education, health care and protection, but don't expect the cops to come in less than an hour. For platinum-tier taxes you could probably get your own tutor, doctor, and army.

Welcome to the world of statehood-as-a-service.

Security used to mean standing armies and border patrols. But in a world where threats are digital, asymmetric, and decentralized, traditional militaries are poorly equipped for cyber swarms, financial warfare, or disinformation campaigns.

This opens the door to private security stacks. Think cyber-defense through autonomous organizations, reputation-score insurance, or cross-border mercenary outfits that operate like startups. Even today, governments contract out critical intelligence functions to private firms like Palantir, NSO Group, and Booz Allen. 

Nation-states have a monopoly on the use of violent force. What happens when that monopoly becomes a marketplace? In the future, protection may come not from flags, but from your subscription service.

And then there’s the “Musk scenario”—a world where a single individual controls infrastructure (Starlink), shapes narratives (X), and launches weapons platforms (SpaceX). When billionaires outpace governments in capability, they become customers, and CEOs become kings.

💬 Hit reply with your spiciest take—top comment gets featured next week.

Citizenship was once the backbone of identity. You were born into rights and freedoms, but also a shared story of a place. A DNA test cannot show that someone is an American because that fact is held in the heart and mind of the individual. But identity is fragmenting. 

Travel has never been more accessible. Homogeneity within borders is the exception for a few autocratic outliers. Our identity is now a story we tell ourselves rather than one we share with fellow citizens.

Moreover, people now belong to overlapping digital tribes: fandoms, subreddits, online collectives. Citizenship in a Discord server can feel more real than allegiance to a flag. For Gen Z it's more likely they have more in common culturally with digital friends they've never met in real life than their grandparents. Given the fact that Gen Z spends about as much time online every day as they do sleeping, the digital world is just as real as the physical one.

This is the rise of the meta-citizen: someone who holds multiple IDs, juggles digital and physical reputations, and navigates the world through memetic identity more than ethnic, national, or even legal identity. Zuzalu, the crypto “pop-up city,” issues biometric IDs and hosts policy experiments for its temporary residents. 

Culture is downstream of economics. In the digital age, the attention economy has jailbroken culture from borders. In the future, this all means that the passport you were born with will likely mean a lot less than the digital communities you call home.

All of this makes me feel icky. Honestly, I've been studying neo-statecraft for years and I don't love the idea of my country being an invention of silicon valley crypto bros. At the same time macro political trends are draining power away from traditional nation states. The bottomline is that the political unit of the world will change rapidly in the near future. That comes with a price.

The post-nation world could empower kleptocrats, displace millions, or trap people in algorithmic caste systems. Fragmented legal and identity systems make it easier to escape oppression—but also harder to guarantee justice. And as trust in states declines, so too might the social contracts that hold them together. Opportunism can turn to anarchism. Freemarkets into piracy.

At its worst, we get techno-feudalism: a patchwork of digital lords, opaque contracts, and no recourse. At its best, we unlock pluralistic governance models that are more humane, scalable, and consent-based than anything feudal kings or 20th-century states ever offered.

We’re in the messy middle. Governments will claw back relevance, probably with surveillance and force. Platforms will expand their soft power, and alternative polities will proliferate—some noble, some dystopian. Expect more enclaves, more exit options, and more experiments in how to live together.

In the next installment, we’ll explore “exit vs. voice”—the idea that in post-national systems, you don’t need a revolution to change your life. You just leave the server.

Eric Czuleger is a journalist and travel writer who has lived and worked in over 47 countries. He holds a masters degree from the University of Oxford and he is completing a National Security degree from the RAND school of public policy. He's the author of You Are Not Here: Travels Through Countries That Don’t Exist, and host of the “This Is Not a PsyOp” TikTok channel.

📚 Liked today’s brief? Dive deeper—check out my book You Are Not Here: Travels Through Countries That Don't Exist and explore the world’s unrecognized countries.