Cities without taxes nor regulations managed by businessmen as if it were a start-up with which to do business. This libertarian utopia that despises democracy is embraced by more and more technology tycoons and investors of Silicon Valley. Some of them are watching the illegal military operation of USA in Venezuelawith which Donald Trump has managed to decapitate the regime Nicolas Maduroas an opportunity to turn your vision into a reality.
The calls freedom cities (freedom cities) are a seemingly marginal movement whose influence is expanding around the world thanks to the money of technological billionaires like Peter Thiel o Marc Andreessenthe two most prolific investors in the valley. Both, allies of Trump and his authoritarian drift, are financing the creation of these experiments in countries like Honduras, Nigeria, Zambia o Greenlandwhose sovereignty is also being openly threatened by the Trump administration.
“Venezuela does not need to become another Irak. “You need a city of freedom,” tweeted yesterday sociologist Mark Lutter, founder and executive president of the Charter Cities Institute, an organization that promotes the creation of charter cities, cities that a developed country creates within a developing country and that are governed by the book market to theoretically boost the economic growth. In other words, so that its ‘citizens’ settlers can make money.
Peter Thiel. / Reuters
This organization has been asking for the creation of this project in Venezuela since 2019, reports analyst Jenny Cohn. In addition, it receives money from a network of venture capital funds supported by Thiel, promoter of the vice president J.D. Vanceand the businessman Joe Lonsdale. They both co-founded Palantirthe controversial data analytics firm that White House used for the fight against terrorism and to deport thousands of migrants. In December, Lonsdale openly called for restoring public hangings in USA to show “male leadership.”
colonies for techbros
The promoters of this movement rub their hands with Trump’s interventionism. “Someone should propose to [secretario de Estado] Marco Rubio the creation of an autonomous city in Venezuela and Cuba“, asked Michael Gibson, another businessman allied to Thiel, on Saturday. At a 2024 conference, Gibson co-directed a talk titled ‘Manifest Destiny: Greenland, Cuba and the New American Colony’ in which he openly proposed sending 100,000 Americans to colonize those territories.
The requests to build a charter city in Venezuela match the call Network State (or State on the Net), a movement that encourages the elites of Silicon Valley, the mecca of the American technology industry, to build autocracies and to shape “parallel institutions” to replace existing ones in the fields of media, education, finance and science. Its main ideologue, the billionaire businessman and investor Balaji Srinivasanhas described the movement as a project of ““As far-fetched as it may seem, part of the Trump administration has taken it seriously.
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