Notes On Malaysia And The Network State
Balaji represents the quintessential enemy - a parasitic leech who has built his trade not on the expansion of genuine infrastructure or extrastatecraft mastery but hyperfinacial vaporwave and LinkedIn vibes. The Network State in principle has much that one can discern and learn from but in reality and practically it is a front for American Imperial machination akin to the establishment of American Universities across the MENA region in the 20th century. A metastatic cancer that seeks to lobotomize and brainwash entire cultures and civilizations, helping to abort emerging indigenous forms of cosmotechnic modernities.
In light of the recent Malaysian debacle, there is now an opportunity to drive out Network State and to thoroughly terrorize and incite fear amongst such adherents so they think twice before stepping into any Old Islamicate nation. We are in a state of total and unending hyperwar, everything is Harb and everything is a fight till death. As such Balaji is a combatant, a genuine participant in the Interregnum. He does not qualify as guest and has no right to hospitality.
The recent incursion of the Network State to one of the more prosperous islands in Malaysia should not be used as a lightning rod for Luddite, reactionary radicalism. Rather, it should be an opportunity for new collectives of Islamic Futurism like SAIF to take the fight directly to the Network State. To reclaim, in the process, an indigenous form of cosmotechnic modernity that will gladly tackle the questions of technology that the Network State seeks to negotiate, but on its own sovereign terms.
The adherents of the Network State will seek to make this a fight between technology and tradition, between modernity and antiquity, between progress and a new atheist caricature of religion. This should be dismissed, and the leading opponents of the network state should be Muslim technologists who understand and are comfortable with the question of technology but reject the often American and Zionist imperial undertones of the answer that collectives such as the Network State have to offer.
The fundamental question regarding the Network State controversy is none of these issues. It's far simpler and far deeper and far more primal. It is: who is sovereign when it comes to negotiating the question of technology? Who is in charge? Who calls the shots? Who makes the decisions? Muslim responses should not recycle or regurgitate broken and tired cliches from has-been perennialists or reactionary Dawah Inc types about "the excesses of technology/modernity" as they have no understanding of the contours and constructs of a world that is in a state of constant hyperwar over extrastatecraft boundaries.
Malaysia has much to offer. It is a latent reservoir with bounding and enormous amounts of potential that far eclipse the heartlands of the Old Islamicate in the MENA region, all the way to the subcontinent. In many respects, because of its geographical proximity to China, and in its own indigenous ethnic makeup there is opportunity, possibility, potential for genuine Islamocosmictechnic modernity that is comfortable in negotiating hyperwar and navigating its way through the Interregnum.
To banish Balaji and his acolytes, all and every weapon on the table must be utilized. In this respect, Muslim technologists and collectives can deploy and use the mass street power of reactionaries to drive away the Network State from getting a foothold. This would create an environment of constant tension, strife, and uncertainty that would make many think twice before relocating and shifting their lives halfway across the world.
In this respect, one also has to be careful, because this could potentially boomerang around and end up becoming a pyrrhic victory that undermines the constructions of a genuine New Islamicate technological sovereignty. This is because reactionaries and populists will fan suspicion of technology in general, rather than the actors and the histories associated with the Network State, particularly their relationship to American imperial power and Zionism.
The answer then is simple: eternal jihad against the Network State - it should not be tolerated, should not be engaged with. It is not a good-faith actor. It openly seeks to decimate and destroy the burgeoning sovereignties of emerging potential powers in the Global South. It also seeks to parasitically capitalize on the emergence of the technological scene by recruiting local talent (much in the way that American universities in the MENA region did) to its own nefarious Palantir-esque global designs. It seeks to subject new potential elites in the future to constant cogwar, to the point that they become unwitting proponents of Global American Empire.
I offer the following pointers:
- to raid the archives of the Network State
- to take what sounds eminently sensible from within their ranks and acolytes
- to seek to steal, pirate, and take whatever one feels points towards wisdom and discernment
- to completely and utterly burn down the embodied institutional form of Balaji's design and to seek its annihilation and extinction from Muslim lands using whatever lawful means are appropriate and this will be up to local actors and not something for those outside the theatre to dictate
This is only the beginning of the Interregnum. I was once optimistic that at the end of the Interregnum there would be a new formal stable order. Perhaps though in our lifetimes we will only know strife. We will only be passengers in an era of total FitnaPunk, hyperwar, cogwar and other machinations all around us that seek to impose a total form of GAE sovereignty for all that we hold close and dear to our hearts.
And truly God knows best