The largest market capitalization in history could lead to the emergence of the Network State. It is extremely important to understand what awaits us. This is stated in an interview with the French publication Le Grand Continent by Paul Saffo, an American futurist and expert in technology forecasting.
Le Grand Continent: In the general terms of use of his Starlink satellite network, Elon Musk envisaged considering Mars as a free planet, where terrestrial — Westphalian — law does not apply. Now, on the occasion of the IPO of SpaceX, valued at nearly $1.8 trillion, he goes even further, openly calling for the colonization of this planet to counteract nation-states. What's really going on?
Paul Sappho: Elon Musk's project seems crazy and strange. But it's based on an ancient mythological structure: the belief that we can always overcome the end of the world.
In "Medea" Seneca attributes this vision to Horus: "The time will come, in centuries, when Ocean will widen the girdle of the globe to reveal to mankind a vast and unexplored land; the sea will reveal new worlds to us, and Thule will no longer be the limit of the universe." Venture capitalists may not have read Seneca, but the idea still strongly permeates the imagination of Silicon Valley residents - perhaps because they themselves live on the California "frontier", on the edge of the American dream.
In any case, the fundamental premise is this: space is never truly limited. The very belief that something else might exist somewhere else or beyond our borders is an extraordinary driving force for the human mind and a source of fascination that Musk uses to attract investors. Like Seneca's Horus, he invents the idea that a time will come when a new "terra ultima" will be discovered and conquered.
However, the discovery of these new horizons is simply a means to an end. Because when you read the prospectus for the initial public offering and look at SpaceX, you understand that this large-cap company serves a political project for a Network State.
Le Grand Continent: What is this project?
Paul Saffo: The Network State is an extremely closed community made up of ultra-rich individuals who appropriate the most desirable territories on the planet, freeing them from the laws of other people. Essentially, it is the belief that with enough money one can build a state that does not belong to any state, a de facto private state.
The nation-state as we know it is defined both by what it excludes and what it includes. Its inhabitants are citizens, while those who live outside its borders are not; it owns a certain territory beyond which it is no longer sovereign; its sovereignty is therefore both complete and limited.
However, compared to this Westphalian nation-state, the specificity of the Network State lies in a new form of exclusion, as it relates to outer space - and in this case, to the planet Mars at SpaceX. The idea is to establish property rights over territories where sovereignty is not exercised. That is essentially the only difference. Because in essence, this project is no different from what some very wealthy people, often from Silicon Valley, already do on Earth when they travel on their private jets or buy islands.
Le Grand Continent: Why does Musk need this space trip?
Paul Saffo: Using his aerospace and technology company, Elon Musk combines in a hybrid entity the worst aspects of the nation-state - all the attributes of exclusive sovereignty - and the worst aspects of Silicon Valley corporate culture.
A similar ideology can be found, for example, in Jeff Bezos, who is also fascinated by space exploration. One of his professors at Princeton, Gerard K. O'Neill, who had a great influence on his life, popularized the concept of the "High Frontier" and the exploration of the galaxy. The latter is just another way for the ultra-rich to create a universe separate from the rest of humanity, a personal utopia.
Le Grand Continent: How can we explain the obsession with the planet Mars?
Paul Sappho: This is clearly a chimera and a very bad choice. What is fundamentally utopian about colonizing a planet? Even if there were suitable conditions for life, it is very likely that a populated Mars would resemble more than anything else a city like, say, the average Burbank, California.
Interestingly, space is seen only as a zone to be traversed on the way to another destination, not as a place where one imagines one could live. In fact, one might ask why Musk does not view space as a territory to be conquered. Technically, it would indeed be much easier to build a platform outside the gravitational field of the Earth, from which ships could be easily launched to multiple points in space, thus diversifying the areas for exploration. Mars may or may not be one of them. The obsession with colonizing this planet confirms that SpaceX's project is primarily political and territorial.
Le Grand Continent: You emphasize that SpaceX is essentially a paradigmatic form of the Network State. Why does Musk resort to this predatory form of planet grabbing?
Paul Saffo: This has a fundamental dimension: The network state is being built in opposition to nation states. It is incompatible with Westphalian territorial sovereignty, and Musk is extremely vigilant and clear on this issue from the first page of the stock prospectus, when he calls for overcoming the limitations imposed by "political borders".
Like other Silicon Valley oligarchs, Musk sees himself first and foremost as a landowner, and all network states have a physical anchor. The basic idea is always the same: privatize certain places in order to integrate them into a state that excludes most of us.
Le Grand Continent: Is SpaceX essentially trying to do to the state, on a new scale, what the Enclosure Act of 1793 did in England and which Marx considered the starting point of capitalism?
Paul Saffo: Absolutely. Network states "enclosure" and erect the new physical and digital barriers of our time. With SpaceX, Musk wants to create the first space enclosures on Mars and open a new phase of history in which he would play a leading role, perhaps even the only one. It is too early to say what cataclysms this could lead to.
Le Grand Continent: And yet Musk managed to coexist with the President of the United States during his tenure as head of DOGE. The federal government, SpaceX’s largest customer, is in a position of codependency with the company. Is a clash between nation-states and network states inevitable?
Paul Saffo: History is full of examples of people who have tried to create independent states, as the proponents of the Network State are trying to do today, and who have been quickly crushed by existing nation-states. None of them have really succeeded.
But these attempts took place at a time when cyberspace did not yet exist and digital technologies were not so powerful...
Le Grand Continent: Do you think this changes the situation?
Paul Saffo: These technologies are revolutionizing the very idea of space. But it seems to me that this theoretical reversal - the idea that the distance between two points or two countries can be zero - makes it even easier to destroy nation-states and international institutions. In a figurative sense, digital technologies act as a solvent, dissolving the glue that holds together the increasingly fragile scaffolding of Westphalian structures.
Elon Musk's DOGE was a demonstration of the power of the Network State within the very institutions of the nation-state. The goal was to weaken the United States in order to dismantle the "administrative state", as Steve Bannon often calls it - that is, to weaken the nation-state to the point where it can no longer resist the creation of these Network States.
This was just the beginning. I would be very surprised if in the next ten years we don’t witness a far more sophisticated cyber-coup attempt by a multi-billionaire in his own country.
Le Grand Continent: To imagine what Musk’s total Network State would look like, should we look at the closer ties within his technological and industrial ecosystem between SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, and Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence, Grok (xAI)?
Paul Saffo: SpaceX’s IPO is an obvious attempt to build an archetypal Network State, a kind of Proto-Network State. Once operational, it will represent a completely closed ecosystem, independent of any other sovereignty. In the prospectus, Musk reiterates this thesis: SpaceX manufactures launch vehicles, provides connectivity (i.e. satellites and therefore telecommunications), and develops artificial intelligence. And thanks to this technology, its founder may one day command entire armies of virtual entities to build and defend his country.
Le Grand Continent: In the clash between nation-states and network states, it seems that it is the latter that are trying to monopolize the imagination. SpaceX's Martian promise is aimed at an audience of investors who, however vaguely, echo classic works of science fiction. Does the Westphalian model of the state not exhaust and invalidate myths?
Paul Sappho: Not necessarily. But the truth is that Europe has not really managed to master the digital revolution. Grotius' era was very similar to ours. It was stunning. It was a time of discovery and the most daring dreams of European expansion; a time when the ocean, as in Seneca's prophecy, ceased to be a barrier and became a means of communication.
When you live in such an age of expansion, you need new kinds of order and, above all, new ideas. This is exactly what Grotius was doing at that time.
Le Grand Continent: Where can we find these new ideas?
Paul Sappho: Somewhat unexpectedly and for different reasons, I think they will come again from Europe.
Le Grand Continent: Why?
Paul Sappho: Because for more than seventy years Europe has been on the verge of creating a future based on the Westphalian model. Following Jean Monnet, the experiment has repeatedly come very close to completion, but has never been fully realized. And yet, paradoxically, the digital revolution could become an opportunity for the true birth of the European project.
Even if from a European perspective you think that events are not developing fast enough or are not going far enough, it is in the European Union - with the exception of China - that resistance to the philosophy of the Network State is relatively strongest. Not in all of Europe, of course, but take Spain: it is currently trying to articulate a discourse to invent a new Grotian order against the "digital Wild West". This is an expression of Pedro Sánchez, and it invisibly connects him to another Spaniard with whom we began our conversation, Seneca: the very idea that there is a border to be crossed is a powerful lever, which is why it must be regulated.
In the United States, many believe that we are now at a historical crossroads, where we have not one, but two possible borders to cross: space and cyberspace. It is no coincidence that the supporters of the Network State are so fascinated by these two borders. Cyberspace is a border open to all, and one that we are trying to turn into a zone to explore. Space is right above us, and SpaceX’s IPO shows that it is no longer seen simply as a frontier, but rather as the shoreline of a vast territory to be explored. People yearn for that frontier; they want to explore it, they want to colonize it, they want to occupy it.
Yet none of these frontiers are entirely within our reach, but they are close. We can’t go into space without a rocket, and we can’t stay there for more than ten days without destroying our physical bodies. As for cyberspace, we haven't yet found a way to live there permanently.
At this moment, when we are tempted by two borders that we cannot reach, the future belongs to those who can organize within our means.
Le Grand Continent: When it comes to borders and the end of the world, there is another idea that excites a darker side of Silicon Valley, personified by Peter Thiel - the apocalyptic imagination. How do you connect it to the idea of the Network State?
Paul Saffo: The entire history of civilization, technology and commerce is built around the idea of finding ways to overcome scarcity. And yet, even as we enter a world of abundance, our global institutions, our economic systems and our standards of innovation continue to focus on scarcity. Thiel is trying to deal with this contradiction that worries even the richest people on the planet: how to manage such abundance? The answer he formulates involves the Network State, even more explicitly than Musk's, since Thiel is a libertarian who has supported projects for "sea economy" and generally follows closely all attempts at territorial privatization. This answer is clearly not ours. We have to invent one, but this situation reminds me of the popular parable of the long spoons, which I think is a good way to respond to Peter Thiel.
Le Grand Continent: Tell us about it.
Paul Sappho: A philosopher died of old age after a life full of wisdom and piety. At the gates of Paradise, Saint Peter said to him: "Welcome here, but we know that you are a philosopher and we have always wondered what the difference is between Heaven and Hell. If you wish to visit Hell to see what it is like and to get an answer to this question, you can do so now." So the philosopher descended into Hell. Upon his arrival, he discovered that it bore no resemblance to what was described in Dante's "Inferno": there was no fire, brimstone, Satan, and torn damned souls.
Entering, he found himself in a magnificent banquet hall, where beautiful music was playing, and the tables were laden with the most exquisite dishes imaginable. And yet, everyone around her was starving: the spoons placed in front of the dishes were two meters long, and no one could bring this delicious food to their own mouth.
Naturally, the philosopher immediately returned to Paradise. But there, to his amazement, he found exactly the same scene: the same music, the same banquet hall, the same abundant food, and most of all, the same two-meter spoons. And yet, in paradise everyone was happy and healthy.
Because the inhabitants of paradise had learned to feed on each other.
Le Grand Continent: What inspires you in this story?
Paul Sappho: It suggests the following to me: if we need new geniuses, new visionaries to offer us new myths - which are really just reinterpretations of old ones - or even "new Grotians" to invent the coming order, it is above all to help us realize that we are all one Earth.
Let us recall a very simple objective fact: it is deadly to venture outside the atmosphere without protection. To live in space, we will have to modify our own organs through bioengineering. Perhaps a few owners of Network States will manage to do it and settle on Mars - but they will quickly start to miss Earth.
Therefore, we need a politics for Earth and I think we will find it in Europe.
Le Grand Continent: Who could the neo-Grotsians be?
Paul Sappho: In an unexpected way, the figure of the "citizen of the world" is beginning to emerge in the person of a Peruvian American of French-Italian and Louisiana Creole descent named Robert Francis Prevost.
Incidentally, perhaps it should not be surprising that the configuration of the clash, as it is beginning to take shape, pits the newest and most terrifying form of what I call the Proto-Grid State (SpaceX and its universe) against the oldest form of state (the Vatican).
If I had to bet on our future, I would bet on Earthlings with a planetary destiny, like Leo XIV, rather than Elon Musk's Martians.