From Budva with Love
Field notes from JST Montenegro + Sovereign AI kits, and religion-as-a-startup with Lou Kerner.
404Embassy://Transmission_Log_#1
Signal_Source: Ray Svitla // svit.la
Status: Broadcasting...
Signal Boost
Balaji drops $100 k on “dark talent.”
Network School (Balaji’s private-island academy near Singapore) opened a Fellowship Program to bankroll high-variance founders too weird for YC.OpenAI pitches “sovereign-AI” kits to governments.
OpenAI for Countries promises “democratic rails,” yet the first launch partner is the UAE. Washington loves it; Brussels flinches.Praxis flexes a $525 M war-chest & starts a 10-city world tour.
Nuuk to Buenos Aires, Kyiv to Marrakech – scouting an “Acceleration Zone” for its first charter city. Can someone please connect them to my friend Viktor Riabokin? He’s been building a real-world city project in Ukraine for 5+ years – knows the land, the people, the process. A rare combo of local trust + network state thinking.
Field Notes: Montenegro, JST Ideas Exchange — “Shifting the Power”
Backdrop. Dukley Hotel, Budva. Three intense days. ~30 John Smith Trust Fellows from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia – think OSCE, World Bank, UNFPA, Freedom House, UK FCDO – plus yours truly.
Fun fact: parts of Casino Royale were shot nearby.
Theme: “Shifting the Power: challenging prevailing narratives and building a fairer future.”
Translation: What the hell do we do now that everything’s broken?
Let me tell you, Operator, day one felt like a global pessimists’ convention – war, displacement, crumbling institutions, autocratic shadows. I was almost the only one saying, “Actually, this is a chance to build something better.”
By day three the mood flipped: experiments sparked, _value-based states_ bubbled up. These gatherings don’t fix the world; they do something more subversive: they remind us we’re not alone.
☕ World Café: “Re-imagining Home”
My corner of the mosh-pit: “Reimagining Home: Navigating Displacement, Migration & Life in Exile.” Some signals to chew on:
Identity Crisis or Remix? When your birth certificate says one thing, your tax residency another, and your VPN a third – who the hell are you? With 280M+ international migrants, this isn't a niche problem anymore.
Presidents in Exile: Belarus has a recognized government operating entirely outside the country. Not a think-piece theory. That’s our Tuesday.
Citizenship-as-a-Service: Nations are head-hunting talent with visa fast-tracks. Is your passport the new SaaS subscription, and what happens when the terms of service change (or the price spikes)?
Raw observations from the ground:
Armistice by Espresso: Ukranians & russians, Armenians & Azeris (still bleeding over Nagorno-Karabakh), shared coffee and sketched ideas. Proof of what human-to-human diplomacy can still do when the venue is neutral.
The Great Grant Constriction: With Trump 2.0 and USAID budgets slashed, many NGOs face extinction. Some pivot to product-market fit for impact. And yes – they still saving lives and freeing political prisoners. It's just a damn hard value proposition to "sell" to someone in a safe, developed country.
The New Silk Road: Budva’s streets paraded Bentleys and G-Wagons with russian and Ukrainian plates – war-economy after-shocks. As Russian sway wanes, Central Asia is rising. The recent Solana Economic Zone in Astana is just one signal. Power is shifting – from one autocracy (Russia) toward another (China) to another (China), via soft-power and infrastructure projects... for now.
These insights feed another piece for the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), due next month. I’ll share it here once live.
Interview Peek — Lou Kerner × 404Embassy
“The biggest communities in the world have the fattest value-deltas. We call those things religions. They print a book for 25 cents—what’s salvation worth?”
Lou (CryptoMondays) sees Bitcoin as the first community that pays you not to get rugged – unlike “the government, or my ex-wife.” We riffed on Web3 vs. Big-Tech as a literal “war for the soul of humanity.”
Full transcript & audio drop next week.
Quick Take
Sovereign AI – Next Frontier or Digital Colonialism?
OpenAI’s "democratic AI." pitch feels like “AWS GovCloud with constitutional emojis.” Their principles pivot as fast as their cap table – non-profit to for-profit in record time. Until inference weights and user prompts go full ZK-encrypted, it’s polite dependency with a Silicon Valley accent. With US-and-China dominance, the open-source stack remains our best hope. 404Embassy will be tracking the fight.
Operator Actions:
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Ray Svitla
Stay evolving 🐌
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