Editing Design (section)

== 1.1 Background ==

<blockquote>
"Everytime we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility."
<br>— Julian Assange
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The advent of computer networking and the creation of the internet established a new kind of geography - cyberspace. This digital global multi-domain operational construct, this ‘geography’ has become subject to increasing territorialization and claims of sovereignty, particularly by nation-states. The United States military has formally recognized cyberspace as a fifth domain of conflict alongside land, sea, air, and space.

According to the US Military, Cyberspace consists of three distinct layers:

# Physical Network Layer: The tangible infrastructure including computers, servers, cables, and physical network components that form the medium where data travels
# Logical Network Layer: The abstract relationships between network elements, independent of specific physical paths or nodes
# Cyber-Persona Layer: Digital representations of individuals or entities, which may relate to real people or be artificial, with the possibility of multiple personas per individual.

Like the historical emergence of piracy at sea, we’ve seen the rise of “pirate organizations” operating in the uncharted territories of cyberspace. These organizations, as defined by Durand and Vergne, are not mere criminals but organized actors that:

* Challenge state control and norms of exchange in new territories
* Operate from bases outside state control
* Develop alternative norms of social interaction
* Push the boundaries of known economic behavior and expand Capitalism

Early peer-to-peer file-sharing networks exemplified this pattern, challenging state sovereignty over cyberspace by enabling ungovernable information exchange. Following historical patterns, many of these services were later co-opted as “corsair organizations” - legitimate corporate alternatives operating with state approval (like Spotify replacing Napster). However, the underlying technology demonstrated the potential for autonomous digital territories, cypherspaces, within Cyberspace.

This territorialization of cyberspace intensified post-9/11, as the United States established what effectively became a virtual state through the convergence of cloud infrastructure and legal frameworks. The cloud, acting as an informational equivalent to container terminals, enabled a higher degree of standardization and centralization than the early internet. Through the Patriot Act, the US gained jurisdiction over all data stored by US companies (or their subsidiaries) in non-US data centers, including the entire US cloud - Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Dropbox, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others.

This “super-jurisdiction” meant that US law could be extended into and enacted in other nations through various forms of cooperation implied by server locations and network connections. Through initiatives like National Security Letters (NSLs), which can be issued directly by the FBI without judicial review, and by requiring global data centers to comply with surveillance demands and KYC/AML regulations, the US has effectively undermined the Westphalian sovereignty of other nations.

This infrastructure of control coincided with the rise of surveillance capitalism, now evolving into PsyOp capitalism - a system of complete economic capture fused with propaganda for shaping public opinion. The cloud’s centralized architecture, combined with informal relationships between private enterprise and government, has created a system where censorship and control can be enacted without explicit orders or legal justification, through shared interests and informal ties rather than strict separations by law.

This two and a half decade trend continues with the repeal of Net Neutrality laws, and with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) on the horizon - developments that threaten to complete the state’s capture of economic transactions by bringing all financial activity under centralized surveillance and control.

The concept of virtual states operating within and across traditional state boundaries is not mere speculation - it has historical precedent in institutions like the Jewish Kehillas and Qahals. These autonomous governance structures allowed the Jewish diaspora to maintain their own legal, economic, and social systems while dispersed across multiple host nations. They demonstrated how parallel institutions could provide essential services and maintain cultural cohesion without territorial sovereignty, offering a practical model for modern virtual states.

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"There are only two types of power: there's organized people and organized money, and organized money only wins when people aren't organized."
<br>— Saul Alinksy / Benjamin Todd Jealous
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Civil society has attempted various forms of resistance: mass protest movements (Occupy Wall Street), whistleblowing to expose surveillance (Edward Snowden), elite graph partitioning attacks through information disclosure (WikiLeaks), and collective financial attacks by Activist Retail Investors against Wall Street (WallStreetBets). However, these efforts have failed to create meaningful change, demonstrating that traditional methods of resistance and reform are insufficient against modern state power.

The solution for Civil Society may lie in the strategy of parallel organizing, successfully demonstrated during Eastern Europe’s transition from communism. Rather than working within rigged systems, movements like Hungary’s Civic Circles and Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 built parallel institutions outside official structures. They created independent societies within existing states, operating according to their own principles and earning legitimacy by actually improving people’s everyday lives.

However, while these historical parallel organizing efforts were local to their nations, today’s challenges are transnational in nature. The cypherpunk movement demonstrated how this approach could be globalized through technological means. Like the peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe, cypherpunks created parallel institutions that allowed people to opt out of poor governance. Bitcoin exemplified this by establishing a new transparent, auditable monetary system with clearly defined rules based on decentralized authority. The technology spread worldwide, gaining adoption particularly in Latin America where official financial institutions were unstable and inflation rampant.

<blockquote>
"Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!"
<br>— Timothy C. May
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The cypherpunk movement recognized early on that technological solutions, rather than political reform, were necessary to preserve civil liberties in cyberspace. Projects like Tor, I2P, and Freenet created anonymous communication networks resistant to state surveillance, establishing “wilderness” territories in cyberspace. While these solutions demonstrated the potential for parallel digital institutions, they remain either too narrow in scope or vulnerable to censorship and control due to their public nature and exposed network operators.

The key insight that enabled digital parliamentary sovereignty is best illustrated in Leslie Lamport’s description of The Part-time Parliament of Paxos. Through a fictional account of an ancient Greek parliament, Lamport described a system where legislators could wander in and out of the Chamber while still maintaining consistent records of decrees through a rigorous consensus protocol. Each legislator maintained their own ledger of numbered decrees, and through careful mathematical rules, the parliament could continue functioning and making decisions even with unreliable communication and intermittent participation.

This parliamentary model provided the theoretical foundation for blockchain consensus. Bitcoin and subsequent blockchain systems effectively implement this “Lamportian Parliament” - a decentralized decision-making process that maintains order through algorithmic consensus rather than central authority. Like the Paxon legislators with their indelible ledgers, blockchain nodes maintain a near-immutable record of transactions agreed upon by the network.

By combining the “wilderness” of anonymous communication networks with this ordered parliamentary system, we can create autonomous territories in cyberspace with their own internal governance structures. The blockchain provides the sovereign order - a boundary within which rules can be defined and enforced through consensus rather than coercion.

This sovereign foundation enabled the next evolution in digital institutions through Nick Szabo’s concept of Smart Contracts. By implementing a virtual machine that could execute arbitrary code, platforms like Ethereum allowed counterparties to create and enforce agreements without relying on traditional legal systems. These programmable contracts formed the basis for establishing parallel institutions - from financial services to governance systems - built on decentralized consensus rather than state authority.

<blockquote>
"When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."
<br>— John Perry Barlow
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However, these first-generation systems proved vulnerable to state power in unexpected ways. While their internal consensus remained secure, the public nature of their networks made them susceptible to new forms of lawfare. Transaction censorship through sanctions and regulatory pressure on network operators effectively undermined their parliamentary sovereignty. The immutable ledger, meant to provide transparency and accountability, becomes a tool for surveillance and control.

There is now a clear need for a comprehensive, privacy-preserving technology stack that can support a wide range of decentralized applications and services - a “cypher-state” or “virtual state” that operates autonomously in cyberspace. More than just technology, this represents an experiment in competitive governance, where legitimacy is earned through providing real value rather than maintained through coercion. By combining minimal information disclosure, Byzantine fault tolerance, and self-organizing networks with smart contract-based institutions, we can create a parallel socio-economic system that extends civil liberties to anyone, anywhere on the planet.

To succeed, this system must address sovereign claims over each aspect of Cyberspace:
* Physical Network Layer: Resilient infrastructure that survives network loss and censorship
* Logical Network Layer: Self-organizing protocols that maintain order through consensus
* Cyber-Persona Layer: Privacy-preserving identities with low-cost exit options

<blockquote>
"We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."
<br>- John Perry Barlow
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The goal is not to create another centralized service provider, but rather a foundational order for “Governance as a Service” - where the system is capable of provisioning governing services to under-serviced citizens. Institutions compete based on the real value they provide to users. Through express consent manifested in voluntary transactions, these services can evolve to meet user needs while remaining resistant to capture and corruption.

While our focus is in the provisioning of governing services to Civil Society, such a disinterested, disintermediated medium is equally, or even more applicable on the world stage - agreements between nations. It could serve as infrastructure for the United Nations and both secure and hold accountable to agreements between state and non-state actors while benefiting from the security of all nation-states, and even provide a world reserve currency

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