#113: E-residency Program, SDZ Alliance, China-US Relation, Chartered Cities with Joel Burke
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Kia ora, ni hao, hello. Welcome to the Chiwi Journal podcast. I'm your host, Camilla Yang. On the show, I interview global citizens who follow a unique path to build a better future and share stories and tips they learned along the way. Our conversations are focused on culture observations, technology trends, career development, and philosophy. My guest today is Joe Berg.

He is a partner at Tribe AI, MA candidate at George Towns International Business and Policy Program. He leads the e-Residency program at the Republic of Estonia and has been a mentor to a startup accelerator focused on the defense solution in the U.S.

He has been to more than 50 countries, lived and worked on 3.5 continents, and helped with many remote work visa and city building projects. We discussed the e-residency program, SDZ Alliance city building projects, China-USA relations, tips for nomadic lifestyle, and more. I hope you enjoy this episode. Sounds good. This is actually my first podcast interview.

Really? Oh my God, such an honor. That's great. Okay. Welcome to the show, Joe. Thank you so much for having me. Why don't we start from your career? Let's start from the very beginning because I know you've done so many projects. Yeah. You know, I always tell people when they ask about my career, it really got kicked off when I first moved to Silicon Valley right after my undergrad.

I did a couple of things, but most notably, I went to Draper University, which was really formative. And I worked for Tim Draper on some projects. And then I went to Gigster as an early employee. So right after they graduated YC is when I joined as the ninth employee. And then I was with them through the Series B, which was amazing. You know, kind of seeing a company go through hyper growth. We did on-demand software development with a network.

a freelancer so it was also really interesting to see the community aspect of that which i think is really really important and then i went to germany went to run a business for rocket internet which is kind of hybrid vc slash company builder or or maybe the the appropriate analogy is like a startup studio and then after that i went to work for the estonian government running a team for uh

e-residency, their kind of flagship digital initiative. I led biz dev right now I'm doing, I'm doing some part-time stuff and actually a bunch of random projects, mainly with SDC Alliance, which has a really cool take on sustainable approaches to alleviating urbanization informality in the developing world. And it has a pilot project in Ethiopia that, that I've been helping out a little bit work with, which is why I'm in Kenya and headed to Ethiopia in a week and a half, two weeks. Well,

brought you to have the interest to the interaction between technology and the policy? Yeah, I've long had some interest in maybe not policy, but government broadly. When I was a kid, I went through a phase where I wanted to be a speechwriter because I thought that would be really interesting. But for me, really working for the Estonian government was an eye-opener. So when I first went, I didn't really think of it as working for a government at

They kind of – even the e-residency team build themselves as a startup within the government, and they definitely act like it. We had our own board. We moved very quickly relative to other agencies. But being there, I saw just how critical the intersection of government was because Estonia is – it's 1.3 million people, and the policies are –

The policies and interaction are a lot easier to see, kind of the causal line, right? Rather than compared to the US where what the federal government does is like so diffuse. I mean, it's hard to tell, right? Because it's so big. But with Estonia, you can really feel it, right? And so that definitely made me...

understand like how critical this was. And then, you know, just kind of being in that world, I'd, you know, been a fan of decentralization and kind of innovation in all its regards. And I thought government is like the big, the biggest business in the world that hasn't been disrupted yet.

I see. So Balaji, he mentioned the e-resident program at Estonia. It's very fascinating. What was your thoughts on why they launched that program first and what their motivation behind that program was?

So I think there's maybe just a little bit of background, just in case. I know people listening to this are probably aware, but just in case. The idea behind the e-residency was basically at the beginning, in Estonia, about 99% of government services are online. So the idea was, you know, since they're online, you know, the infrastructure allowing access to them is limited.

quite scalable. And again, like, you know, if you're talking about technical systems, there's no reason to only scale to 1.3 million people or, you know, your population, right? That's, you know, that's a total arbitrary limitation when you're talking about, you know, software. So the idea was, okay,

If we give other people access to Estonia, what will happen? And basically, so it was kind of an open-ended experiment. And basically more than 60,000, 70,000 people at this time have signed up. And the main use case today is for people to start businesses in Estonia and run them from anywhere in the world.

So if you are in Russia, Ukraine, anywhere outside kind of the EU market and you want to get access to the EU without physically moving, it's a great kind of leveler. As to why they were the ones to do it first, I think Estonia was able to do this because they had kind of made this bet on going digital as a government some 20 years prior to the launch of e-residency, basically since independence. So

for them it was not a whole ordeal you know digitizing services and then launching this program it was you know 99 of it was already there they just issued cards on top of an existing system it was i mean if anything it was more of a policy change than a you know than a technology change right do you think the small country will have an advantage

for launching this kind of program. You know, for New Zealand, they launched the Global Impact Visa, Edmund Hillary Fellowship. So they granted 3,000 visas to people all around the world to come to New Zealand to build a better future because New Zealand is relatively small compared to

US or Australia. So do you think that would be a trending for small countries to take the advantage to do this technology transformation? Yeah, I 100% think that. I see, I'm not sure if you've read Sovereign Individual, but I see us coming into the kind of that face of the world where, you know, it's much more about where individuals have much more

ability and scale than in the past. And individual countries, you know, we're not so tied to industrialization and that kind of thing where you need thousands and thousands of workers in a factory enabled, you know, to produce something. Now, you know, one guy with a laptop can make something pretty incredible. To me, the most emblematic sign of this was the WhatsApp acquisition. I mean, I think they had like under 50...

50 employees and sold for what was it, $16 billion or something, right? I mean, it's pretty incredible what a small team can accomplish these days. So I think that applies both to small countries. However, I will say that I caveat this because there still are some benefits from having large countries. For instance, if you're an entrepreneur starting a company in the United States,

States, for instance, you get access to one single market with pretty similar rules, unless you're in, you know, healthcare or some very regulated space, you know, similar rules, similar business culture, one language that you have to deal with across the whole country. Whereas, you know, if you're, if you're Estonia, it's, it's okay selling into the EU and you can do it in English in some places, but the EU single market is not as, you know, it's not as much of a single market as the, as they would like us to

What about the techs and healthcare? Because for me, I'm originally from China and I lived in New Zealand, but now I'm based in the UK. But sometimes I feel like I want to do my digital normal life, but the techs or healthcare problem, that would be the challenges for me. I think kind of the updating of systems that we've depended on governments for needs to happen. So

Uh, safety wing, I think has done a great job of, you know, doing insurance, insurance really focused on nomads. However, you know, their, their insurance policies are still centered around kind of short term travelers. You know, it's, you know, quote unquote short term. It might be for years, but it's going to be tough if you have like a chronic illness like cancer because they're, they're just not built for that. And nor is any company that I've seen. Um, uh,

So I think functions like that, functions like social security taxes that are maybe not intrinsically tied but have very strong ties to state agencies or essentially are subsidized by them will either need to be updated by governments or change for the private sector.

And I hope nomadism kind of pushes this forward. However, I do worry a little bit that there will be, you know, in every period of innovation and disruption, there's, well, disruption, right? And that is unpleasant for lots of people. And so I think...

governments are not disruptors. And I think often people act like they want them to be, but if they were, I think they would be very angry. I mean, just consider if you were, you know, you're, you're in the UK. If the NHS changed its rules every six weeks as to who was eligible, I think people would be furious, right? I don't think they'd be happy. I think they'd be like Dominic Cummings and these guys have gone nuts. That's, that's kind of, that's kind of where, where I'm at with things. I think there's an opportunity for entrepreneurs who want to basically recreate the

stack for governance or government products online. And you could even argue that companies like an Uber, for instance, have basically done this, where public transport was something that you might expect government to provide through a larger infrastructure. And now you take Uber pools, or maybe not during COVID times, but in the past, you take Uber pools and you basically have subverted public infrastructure via a private company and a network of freelancers and contracts.

right? Have you noticed any startups that are working on these infrastructures? Yeah, I mean, I think you can see it, like, you know, and maybe I'm reading too much into certain things, but you see something like a forward medical, right, which is basically kind of redefining, um,

the primary care. And I see that as kind of taking a step in the direction of like providing a service that in many other places, the government would be expected to basically provide, right? You see in the United States, private security companies, I mean, it's not as hot a topic anymore to talk about black

water in these ones, but there are still many private security companies that basically have outsourced the, you know, quote unquote, monopoly of power that states usually have. And then I think you can also talk about the charter city movement, which is, you know, to me, this is the most, I don't know if extreme is the right word, but this is like kind of the embodiment of like, okay, we need to fundamentally reimagine governance and try and recreate it in the modern age without being too disruptive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So what other initiatives you've been helping global citizens adapt to today's digital world, like Columbia remote working visa and the OPEA city building project? I was lucky enough to chat with a friend, Alana. So Alana and I know each other for decades.

gosh, five, five plus years ago from Draper university. Um, she is a entrepreneur in Columbia from Columbia. Um, and she asked me about e-residency and we ended up talking and coming to, um, the idea, you know, they're,

the Colombian government's digital infrastructure isn't in the same place as Estonia's work. We thought it didn't make as much sense to basically launch an e-residency program. And the value prop is just different, right? However, we basically pitched and it took, you know, more than a year of meetings and convincing government officials and educating them as to like what digital nomads are. But like,

a new visa class that hopefully, hopefully will be coming out soon. Oh, okay. And then other projects, yeah, the SDZ Alliance work, like I mentioned, going up to Ethiopia with these folks, I highly recommend for people who are interested in the intersection of like charter cities and social good, I highly recommend checking out SDZ Alliance website.

which is the organization that I'm volunteering with. They're doing some really cool stuff. Okay, I'll put the link in the show notes. What's the process look like for you to do this city building project? So I'm coming in way at the end. They've been working for years. They have worked with the Ethiopian government as well as many other stakeholders to figure out ways to...

to better incorporate people from the informal sector and urban migrants into the formal economy. So, I mean, hopefully, you know, you're from China, so you can probably sympathize. Like, urbanization is happening incredibly rapidly, and the infrastructure of many countries is just not built to deal with it, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah.

already there's issues with power, there's issues with water sewage, all these kind of things that we probably take for granted in the West as government functions just working, they don't always exist. And especially at the mid-market and the low-end, and also the

issue with the formal and informal sector, you get weird things where it's tough for people. They come from the rural areas. They're not technically allowed to work in a city or something. I'm talking very, very broadly. And this happens all the time. And then they get stuck in the informal sector and jobs are lower paid. It's harder hours, et cetera, et cetera.

So the idea behind the project in Ethiopia is basically doing this as a pilot and seeing, can we do, and quote unquote, SME city focused on building small and medium enterprises that kind of boost the economy, incorporate people into the formal sector and start creating a real tax base? Because that's the other problem with the informal sector and kind of the gray economy that exists is that, candidly, I wouldn't tell this to

to most governments, but like, I don't blame lots of people in many of these countries for not wanting to pay taxes. Like if you're, you know, if you're not getting clean water, there's no police service, there's no whatever. It's kind of like, well, what am I paying for here? But, but, but however, that, that does produce,

you know, it presents a conundrum, right? Because if you have, if you're, you know, say a mayor of a city and you have no tax base, how are you going to supply service? So you're caught in this catch 22, right? Where it's like, there's, there's almost no one who's paying taxes. And then, so you have no money to supply services. And then, you know, it, it creates this, you know, it creates this problem over and over. So this, this idea is, you know,

Creating basically an SEZ, and I'm oversimplifying here, but creating a zone to bring in more FDI with the idea of integrating people into the formal economy. It reminds me about a lot of street vendors in China. They use WeChat Pay, which I don't think the government can track the transaction to get the tax rate.

So it's very interesting to see a lot of people, they go to the city urban area and they just use digital payment.

like without a trace by the government and they start a business it's very interesting yeah it's it's quite interesting and i i admire people like that a lot right i mean the search for a better life and hustling and working hard i think are are all laudable traits it's just um it's it's hard if you're a government to kind of escape this trap right where you're you know you're you're kind of in this in between stages of you know developed and developing and

whatnot. Right. So what draws you to the 1729 community? How did you know this website? I mean, honestly, Bology. Yeah. I mean, just following Bology, honestly. I've watched some of his talk. I think there was the talk at YC some years ago. And I think that was the one that really hooked me. And then I'd seen him, he had talked a bit about e-residency. So of course, he was kind of on the radar, but I was really, you know,

From that and then the kind of intersection of charter cities and the stuff Balaji was talking about, I found really fascinating. That's how I saw that. And of course, I'm sure it was in his profile or he tweeted about it or something. And then I signed up. What's your thought on the network nations and the cloud city first and then the land later on?

Do you think it's achievable in 10 years time based on your experience? I actually have mixed feelings on this. So this is probably where I differ from a lot of people in this space where I'm much more bullish on one, developing world and two, physical stuff. So I think like, you know, I'm all about cognitive uploading and like, you know, transhumanism and this stuff. However, like for the time being, the vast majority of us still have physical bodies and it's important for us

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint. And it's important to remember, and it's part of the reason why I like to travel so much, is getting out of the comfort zone. Because I think a lot of people will complain about London or SF or whatever, but they're not that bad. Relative to many other places in the rest of the world, they're not that bad. And so I...

I guess I worry that building online kind of neglects moving fast enough in physical spaces. And I also just, you know, having worked in government, it's very stodgy. And I think having physical presences is really important for establishing yourself if you want to eventually be considered like a real nation or territory or something in the future. So like thinking long term, I think having physical territory is important for that. And then, yeah,

Again, I'm much more focused on like the developing world just because I think that the delta between like, you know, a startup city in the U.S. that is out competes like Miami or SF is like pretty hard to build. You know, and there's there's a lot, you know, like cul-de-sac, for instance, is really cool. You know, how much better will cul-de-sac really be?

than the alternate choices someone in the United States have. Whereas building a charter city or a startup city in the developing world, even the bare minimum stuff needs to be addressed. I see SECs in Nigeria, for instance, where one of the main selling points is having reliable electricity.

It's like the delta between the potential improvement is way bigger in the developing world. And so I'm a little bit more excited about that. I see, yeah. Because if you build the online world and you don't have electricity or infrastructure,

like set up is so hard, your city probably just gone like immediately. Yeah. And I mean, like, I also think if you don't move to that phase, then it gets a lot more confused with like existing online communities. So for instance, like I'm on Hacker News every day and I love being on Hacker News and like

And, you know, there's some forums and stuff that I like going on. And I feel like, you know, I feel strong connections to many of those communities or with like discords. But I think there's something very different about the physical aspect of living together and building communities in the real world that I think is just really, really hard to move from online to

to the real world. So I think the sooner people move to that, the better it'll be. You just mentioned the transhuman. I know you are very interested in sci-fi stories and movies. So what's your favorite one? So total recency bias. I just read Stand on Zanzibar, which is, oh gosh, like 50 years old. What's that? It's from this author, John Brunner. And it basically, I mean, it's just a fascinating book. And I don't want to spoil it, but it kind of predicts like

you know, things like being able to change. It depicts like population booms and busts, I should say. It depicts basically how consumerism moves over time. And it's really fascinating to see because actually when I read the book, I hadn't realized it was from so long ago. And even now,

Like reading it now, I was like, oh my gosh, like I can't believe this guy is like so on point and with all this stuff. And then I looked and it's from 50 years ago and I was like, wow, this is incredible. Other than that, I think my favorite is probably the Three Body Problems series. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

By the Chinese writer, yeah. Yeah, which was just incredible. And then when I was a kid, I think I read every Ender's Game and related book that was canon and not canon that I could find. So I like tons of sci-fi. I just recently had a discussion with my friend about transferring the brand to some machine, like Neuralink, this type of thing.

Are you willing to make this sacrifice, we'll say, sacrifice your physical body but let your thoughts live forever? - Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends what kind of infrastructure there is. And this is why like very long-term, I am much more bullish on virtual worlds because I think like, you know, the human body is like super inefficient

And I think I'm really excited. You know, I mean, I'm really excited that we're now in a time where we can like influence our biology. But to me, the ultimate idea is like, you know, being able to upload your mind. And then, you know, instead of physical bodies, you know, that we're born into, you can just like rent a body like Uber for robots and you just download your yourself into a robot somewhere in the world or some new experience. And I think that opens up.

a lot more avenues for humanity. So, I mean, yes, I would definitely do that. I'm already a member of a cryonics facility, but that's more of a hedge for when I die, right? Yeah. But yeah, I'm very keen on all that.

Great to know. Yeah. Let's go back to the physical world. I know you're very focused on the geo policy. You mentioned your role as a mentor to a startup accelerator focused on defense solution in the US. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that?

Yeah. So, well, I'll mention before that in Estonia, I had a friend that I helped his company and they do deep fake detection. And so when I came back to the U.S. at the beginning of COVID, I moved to D.C. and started a master's at Georgetown and I was looking for volunteer opportunities. So I linked up with this accelerator that basically commercializes technology from government labs around.

So I've been working with the team there and I won't, you know, I, I won't talk about too much about, you know, what, what that does, but I think, you know, I think supporting the U S and Western governments are really important in this day and age. And I think that's been something that's been undervalued and neglected by Silicon Valley for too long. I have a politics aside for, for whatever you care about, but I have a lot of admiration for Palmer Lucky and his mission with, with Andrew. I think he's brought a lot of spotlight and, uh,

resources and, you know, kind of Silicon Valley thinking to the defense world and got a lot of more people engaged, which I find, which I think is great. You know, there is an increased tense between China and the U.S. I just worry about the relationship between these two powerful countries that maybe lead us to a doomed future if there is a war or

I'll try and be politically correct here. But my basic opinion is that there's this thing called the Thucydides trap. And I'm not sure if I 100% agree with it. But basically, it's this idea of when there's a waning power and a rising power, China and the US, there's an increased likelihood of conflict. Because someone like China is saying, well, why don't we have a seat at the table for all

these things. And, you know, we're, we're, we're, you know, we're one of the big boys now. You know, we should, you know, we should be able to act like the US or Britain or whoever does, you know, the big powers are, they don't think they've lost their power, right? And they don't want to acknowledge upstart. So anyways, I am especially worried in this period we are we're in right now,

At least from a Western perspective, my impression is that China probably thinks it's in a much better position relative to where it's been in the last couple of years vis-a-vis, you know, the United States just from, you know, from how COVID was handled. And I mean, I should say,

I shouldn't say United States, broadly the West, right? From how COVID was handled, especially, but even like economic growth and political satisfaction, let's say. I think the real danger comes when someone, so say China underestimates the US and overestimates itself and potentially vice versa, right? So China might think that the United States is weaker than we are and think that they're stronger than they are just because there's always an asymmetry of information, right?

Doing something like taking Taiwan right now might be disastrous because it could trigger a full-scale war. For me, China is probably the biggest global threat in my opinion. I mean, from their treatment of basically the genocide that they're engaged in, East Turkestan, to the actions that they take with illegal fishing, to their rampant theft of intellectual property. I think...

China has proven themselves as not willing to be part of the real global world order and a good global citizen. And my personal opinion is that they should basically be totally cut off and ostracized. But I understand that that's a hard opinion when so many people have been making money off of China for so long. And, you know, China has hugely invested in

Africa when you are working in Ethiopia? Have you talked to the local people? Like what's their perspective towards China? Yeah. So I haven't been to Ethiopia physically yet. So I haven't had those sorts of on the ground coverage. In Kenya, I think there's honestly the conversation I've had has been varied from anger that because

Often what China does is they offer to pay for something and then, you know, let's say a big infrastructure project, the costs are quite high for what they're getting and maybe you don't even need it. So like, for instance, the train from Nairobi to Mombasa is at much lower capacity than expected, right?

and therefore probably not going to be worth what it was supposed to. The Kenyan government is still going to have to pay for it. And they also use all their own people, right? So they're not employing that many locals. So I think there's a lot of animosity because of that. However, I've also seen the other side of the coin where people are just happy that someone is investing in them on more of business terms rather than donation. Oh, so sad, you're poor. Here's a billion dollars.

It's much more like one-to-one, like, you know, hey, this is a business venture. In my mind, more of a framing rather than actually anything real. I guess, yeah, I am pretty concerned about China and Africa. And I think, like, you know, I won't say anything negative. I think China has done...

And sorry, when I refer to China in this way, I mean the CCP. I don't mean the Chinese people, just to make that clear. I think China has done like a very admirable job overall in the stewardship of their economy and actually a brilliant job, I should say. However, I worry a lot for the world that they've done this because, as I mentioned, I don't think they're a good global player. I think they're looking out for themselves, which is totally fine, but a problem when it comes to the detriment of the rest of the world.

So when we built the cloud country, do you think the ideology also will impact the cloud community? Are we going to copy what happened in the physical world and bring them to the online world?

Of course, I mean, humans are humans, right? I think ideology and personal beliefs will always have a huge role in how institutions are shaped. So that would be a huge problem we need to solve. Yeah, I actually am not so sure because I don't worry so much about the average Chinese person. What I worry about is the political ruling class. I don't think the average Chinese person...

you know, they've been happy that the economy has grown, but I don't think they, you know, are actively thinking of America as enemies or thinking they're in a new Cold War or, you know, engaging in rampant IP theft. Like, I think that's very much a state-run thing. So I'm actually not so worried about, like, individual companies. And actually, I think, like,

you know, exposure, I think is one of the best things that can happen for the world. It's like cross culture because everyone has something to learn from others. So among all 50 countries you have traveled and lived, have you encountered any interesting culture shock? Yeah. In terms of culture shock, I think the biggest for me was probably when I was a kid, I went to Russia. Sorry, kid, a teenager, I went to Russia. And to me, that was probably the biggest culture shock that I've had just because, you know,

It was the first big international trip I'd ever taken to a non-Western European country. And it was also in this era where like Russia was like – it wasn't like the crazy early – it wasn't like the crazy 90s, right? Like the wall hadn't just come down. This was in the – oh, gosh. When would this be? The late 2000 and something, right? Not 2010 yet.

But it was really fascinating for me to get exposure to a country that like in reading old books in the US and kind of the education I got growing up, Russia was kind of the boogeyman, right? And I think, you know,

bogeymen can be important as levers for politicians and to galvanize nationalism and to bring a country together. But it was a very eye-opening thing for me that I was like, oh, these are just normal people. The vast majority of people in every country are just normal people. They want to have families. They want to live happy lives. Humans are semi-similar all over in these fundamental ways. And I think that trip was

Very eye-opening and a good reminder. So what's your top three tips for people who want to choose to live a mobile life and do remote working in the future based on your experience? I think getting comfortable with like...

doing things alone and being by yourself is really important. I mean, sorry, I say that if you want to do that by yourself, if you want to travel with, with friends and stuff, that that's also totally fine. Um, however, most people are, you know, you know, kind of by themselves when they do the nomad thing. I mean, that's, you know, nomads. Um,

And I think that's really important because I think a lot of people get, you know, lonely and homesick and whatever. And I think part of that is due to one lack of community, which is totally true. You know, having community, it's great, but there's also something to be said about also being comfortable with, you know, going to a restaurant by yourself and that sort of thing. And, you know, just, just being happy being on your own. Other things I would, I would say it's like, you know, embrace, embrace the ambiguity. Like, you know,

think of it like an adventure, like going to get money is an adventure, trying new things at a restaurant and ordering off menu is an adventure. Like, you know, just have fun with it, right? And don't take it so seriously. And then I think this is something one of your previous guests had mentioned, but like after a while, you know,

you will kind of gravitate towards hubs anyways. And I find myself and a lot of the people I know who have been more nomadic for a long time do that. So I, I often go back to Estonia to see friends there or to Berlin, uh, you know, or, or to London. Right. And it's kind of, you know, random hubs that I'm comfortable. I know the neighborhoods and I know the, the Airbnb's and then, um,

you know, in then also take some months to explore new places. So yeah, but I, I highly recommend that nomadic remote work life for folks. I think it's really, really important to get out there and experience and live something closer to being the local, you know, don't stay at the Hilton for two weeks, right? Like get an Airbnb in a real neighborhood and like talk to people. Yeah. It's very important. Yeah. I think once you are on the digital nomad life and you

you can never go back to your normal life. Yeah, that's my experience. Yeah, I think so too. And also, you know, I mentioned the Hilton and I'll make fun of, you know, the classic business travel, but also if you're on the other side of it, don't just get stuck in the coworking spaces that are entirely expat nomads like you. Go and meet like real people. Sorry, you know, everyone's real. Go and meet, go and meet.

Go and meet real locals. I mean, don't go to Thailand and only meet, you know, Brits and French people and Americans who are all doing the same thing. Go and meet actual Thai people. I see. So what gets you most excited about the future?

Oh, so many things. I think, you know, like, like I mentioned, I see, I kind of see humanity at like being at this inflection point where we're, you know, if we're not, if we're not already there, we're very close to the day when like, we can accelerate our own evolution, which I think is really, really exciting. In the sense like, you know,

Traits like your genetic traits are basically predestination and it's luck, the place you're born and how tall you are, all these things. And I think –

genetic editing will allow us to basically evolve as a species and take control of that. And I think there's lots of pitfalls there, lots of very big ones. But I think that's something I find really, really fascinating and, you know, basically world changing. And then the idea of hopefully, you know, I think the climate change

I think the climate crisis has gotten to a point where it's just like – it's finally, I hope, at a point where people are willing to embrace out-of-the-box solutions. So I see more startups in the nuclear space. It seems like more governments are starting to care. And I hope it moves us to a point where we finally get over our hysteria of nuclear energy and these sorts of things.

and can move on, you know, on, on that, on that vein. And then finally, you know, cognitive uploading, I think is another really fascinating point and kind of the evolution, you know, I mean, to me, the evolution of humanity in, in every regard is, is what's really interesting, uh, in the longterm future. And I think that's part of the reason I'm, I'm really interested in the charter cities is because, um,

I see that as enabling better governance, which will allow us to move towards a shared era of prosperity for the world faster. I see. Is there any example of the charter city you could explain a little bit more? So there's Prospera, there's Cuidad Morazan,

Basically, the idea fundamentally of charter cities, I mean, there was kind of the Paul Romer idea back in the day, which was you would go to a state that's, I don't want to say failing, but not as successful as it wants to be. So think Honduras, places with low GDP, and a third country would come, say Canada, and they would say, okay, we're going to have this little zone of a couple miles by a couple miles, and here it's going to be our regulations that

you know kind of go we're going to have our government our judgment system so the idea being that like it would basically allow foreign multinationals and companies to flourish in this area where before they would like you know they would get caught in corruption in a you know in the court system where people could be bribed or you know people would steal their stuff or you know whatever all the legal ambiguity or things that come with you know being in a

zone without, without good governance and kind of have a third party administer a zone. Now the idea has evolved where it's much more about, you know, public private partnerships and private entities. So it's, you know, uh, an individual goes to, goes to a country and says like, Hey, uh,

I want to acquire this plot of land and use it for X, Y, Z purposes. And I want to have my own arbitration, my own rules. We'd still obey your constitution. So like the highest level of the law and like criminal code is according to you. But everything else kind of we get to set or in partnership. Right. Which which I think is a really interesting. So final question was one thing you'd like to achieve this year.

graduating Georgetown. So fingers crossed. So it's a one year program. Yeah, it ends in December. Okay, great. Okay, good luck with that. And thanks so much for your time. Thanks for sharing everything. My pleasure. All right, ciao.