 All right All right guys. Well, you know given the awesome talks at this conference It seems that network states and startup cities are starting to get more momentum and they're starting to get more real-world momentum So we need to start talking about security From prosperity practice, you know as as these Projects go from the cloud to the land security becomes a pretty big concern So I'm currently the the co-founder of spear bit We're incubating cantina, which is a marketplace for smart contract code review and penetration testing Previously I was an officer in the United States Army for four years So I was an artillery officer And then I was pulled up to the Pentagon to be a product manager for a large cyber security organization And I'm also an advisor to think tank in DC Foundation for American Invasion, which is the think tank that actually has a charter city and sort of city purview Okay, so let me set the stage I think in the space, you know a crypto Twitter. There's been this idea floated in the air that You know network states are going to be fully sovereign, right? Governments are not going to be able to touch them And the these network states will be ideologically pure and removed from the international legal system So I went out and I interviewed a bunch of startup city founders And even going back to the history of the startup city movement like Patrick Friedman's blog Back in the in the late 2000s even then and it's been proven out now There's been this concept that maybe network states and maybe startup cities aren't going to be fully sovereign Right that they're gonna really work in conjunction with host nation governments. And that's what's what's playing out, right? So You know sovereignty Actually can be a burden, you know having to sustain a military Actually can be evi negative. It's not always something you want so maybe a more pragmatic lens is to you know offload some aspects of sovereignty to a Larger government and then really focus on on the user experience of your network state or our startup city You know creating a safe environment for your citizens and your users Okay, so let's kind of go through the progression of the of the security model here So, you know, I think the assumption in the room is that these network states are gonna start in the cloud Right, you aggregate a community based on shared values and then you're probably gonna want to crowdfund something So the advice there would be to use Secure smart Dow contracts that have been audited by a reputable security firm And then you're gonna want to you know speak and coordinate So in that case use, you know, secure messaging like like signal and some other tools because you know free speech is important Right. I think we all support free speech here and there are some projects in the ecosystem shout out to an Infinitvc that put this together so logos is a is a blockchain that Is is marketing itself to to network states with a private messaging service? Orbit Not necessarily marketed directly for network states, but potentially some some use there with you know decentralized messaging And so on and there's also Cali and Lex Dow which allow you to spin up regulated crowdfunding Okay, so I think everyone in the room is you know relatively familiar with cyber security Maybe the the tech tribe isn't as familiar with the security model when we transition From the cloud to land right because it's cloud first, but not land never so it's a different mentality here Once we we go to land after we've crowdfunded a physical territory The model shifts from one of abundance to one of protecting scarcity And again, there's no real need to have offensive military capability here None of the the startup city founders I've talked to really want that Instead it's more of the public safety lens to protect sites and protect the residents that are going to occupy these these new developments Okay, so the question then becomes Can cryptography and can drones? Be the primary means of defense It's a sexy idea right we can offload it all to to robotics and to the math At least in 2023 the answer is that is a necessary but not sufficient Way to defend any piece of territory around the world. So that that photo. It's a pretty stark one It's the the border wall between Gaza and Israel and the Israelis had the mentality That they were going to become the startup nation and focus on cryptography through cyber security focus on drones focus on robotics, you know that there was a bunch of You know robotic video cameras that were monitoring the wall and they didn't have enough, you know troops to guard the wall and Obviously the attack recently happened because of that So some objections to this thesis that I have and frankly That's been proven out by a lot of the startup city founders I've talked to one common one is hey, you know, these these network states are going to be secured by Bitcoin Bitcoin is cloud first it may be cloud first, but there's still real world attack vectors What the mines are physical but even more pragmatically if you look at crowdfunding today, it's it's with less decentralized You know forms of crypto than the Bitcoin. Yeah, it's more likely that network states are going to use us DC or USDT for For daily operations that pay people to buy real estate and so on and then you know for the second objection, which is You know information age Defenses just portion of that cryptography, you know the the crypto field itself is always known about $5 wrench crypto analysis, right? The rubber hose attack so that that's been a known drug vector And then some other objections to this thesis that you know, we're in the age of AI and so on I think Elon would probably disagree that's why Neuralink exists right to help humans augment in the age of AI but even before that you know militaries today are working on human machine teaming which is you know having human pilots in conjunction with drones because AI is good Certain things humans are good at others. So again, I think that that falls flat and then finally the expression you can't nuke a network But you can certainly assassinate the people that comprise it Okay, so not to be a doomer I think there's some positives here and there's a lot of stuff for maybe founders in this room to build That can help solve some of these problems So the founders I talked to that are building these these sort of cities were pretty unanimous They're looking at kind of like a campus police model right where similar to you know in in America You have universities that have local police departments that prosecute major crimes But then you do have campus police Which really are focused on like, you know smaller order crimes on the college campus So that's the model that these founders of startup cities are going for and then you couple that with Public safety tech so a great example is flock flock technology, which is an American startup that builds gunshot detectors and they build license plate readers and Just getting started. There's a lot of opportunities for founders to build a better public safety tech to help out here Network states and startup cities are also going to need misinformation defense Whether we like it or not, you know, the internet is a It's a it's a battlefield. I think again these last two or three weeks have Have proven them out that the narrative warfare is real and It just is what it is So the overall takeaway here, you know first is with cyber security So there's some books you can read about the history of you know zero days and all that good stuff Nicole Pirouaf wrote a good book on that you can hire Cantina, which is the The marketplace that spear been incubated. We got you covered for for code review and for penetration testing and Then again like as the tech drive starts to tease out what in-person developments look like I think it's important to understand the culture of those folks that Have had a you know a more scarce life So maybe folks in the special operations community Sean Ryan is a great example that he's a former Navy SEAL that interviews a bunch of special operations veterans And I think it's it's good for tech folks to understand that culture and then of course The opportunity to hire campus police for these start-up city developments in coordination with local governments Working underneath the international legal system. I think it's a win-win for everyone and then finally With information war John Robbs and blogging about kind of the tactics of information war for a while And you know these these new developments are gonna have to hire social media teams Okay, but the the main takeaway is And this is something that came up multiple times as I was talking to founders in the space We need more statesmen So the skill set to Run a b2b sass company Although it's great and I'm not trying to downplay that it's a great accomplishment, but that's a factory floor model There's no precedent for this at least in recent history by this I mean starting a new city or potentially even a new country so the mentality of founders is gonna be different and it's gonna take folks with some Some gusto maybe even some Cones, so so that's the the main takeaway But there's a lot of opportunity to build so let's get after it. Thanks