The Libertarian Tech Bros’ Weird, Dystopian Plan for Guantánamo Bay (newrepublic.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The radical libertarian city builders of the tech-bro set have an audacious new proposal: They want to convert Guantánamo Bay, host to the infamous prison, into the high-tech charter city of their wildest imaginations, which will double as a “proving ground” for migrants seeking to enter the United States. The Charter Cities Institute, or CCI, which has lobbied the Trump administration on setting up so-called freedom cities in the U.S, suggests the president take advantage of Guantánamo’s special legal status to convert the controversial detention camp into “a beacon of 21st-century prosperity.”

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[-] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

I see these plans, and I see disturbing parallels to the fictional setting of Night City in Cyberpunk. For those not aware:

Night City was founded as an attempt to bypass the inefficiencies its founder perceived in centralised government in the United States of the Cyberpunk world. Free of governance by the central US authority, and indeed independent of the two Californias it sat on the borders of, it was a hellscape of corporate governance with rampant homelessness, a ruthless economy, brutal crime, a police force that unapologetically serves the rich and powerful, and corporate armies that regularly shake down subjects of this so-called 'free city'.

Considering Grimes' particularly important role in the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, and of course Musk's appreciation for nerdy fiction, I think there's a 0% chance that Musk is unaware of Night City. Thus, the similarities to his idea of a free city to the fictional Night City can't possibly be coincidental -- he WANTS to make a world where he can sit at the top of his ivory tower while his goons rough up people like you and me in the dirty streets below. I don't want to live in that city, though.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's not Musk being influenced by Cyberpunk nearly so much that Cyberpunk's development was influenced by Prospera, Seasteading, Balaji Srinivasen's “The Network State” and other "Startup City" anarcho-capitalist advocacy efforts.

I don’t want to live in that city, though.

The root of the appeal of the Free Enterprise Zone model originally embraced by Singapore, Hong Kong, Manilla, Monaco, and other micro-states is that you can consolidate the financial industry into a walled garden and then strictly control the lives of the inhabitants with a hyper-military police state.

Then the outlands are just impoverished wastes. Real political freedom, but no access to capital. Or real economic freedom, but no civil rights.

It isn't that you "don't want to live in the city", because you absolutely will want to live there when presented with the alternatives. You're presented with a false choice of proximity to wealth versus social autonomy.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago

The US occupation of Guantánamo Bay is illegal and unethical

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Illegal, no. Unethical, most likely yes. And it's certainly being used in an unethical way.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Illegal in the sense that the current Cuban government sees it as an illegal occupation under international law. The 1903 treaty that practically gave the US Guantánamo Bay hasn’t been recognized by Cuba since 1959. Unethical in the sense that it’s in violation of Cuban sovereignty, and the human rights abuses.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Cuba objects based on the Vienna Convention treaty on treaties from the Carter era, but that explicitly states it doesn't apply retroactively. Cuba doesn't like it, it's likely unethical, and it would be illegal if it went into effect today, but as it stands it's not illegal under international law.

The same would also apply to Puerto Rico and other islands won from Spain.

That original treaty with Cuba was renegotiated later (to be more in Cuba's favor) and in any event requires that both sides agree or the US vacate the area in order to annul the treaty. Obama tried to close down the prison (one of the best things he tried to do as president), but Congress stopped him.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Ever notice how the libertarians always wanna build a city in some remote place like the ocean, Mars, or Gitmo? Suspicious that these are places difficult to escape.

I mean who cleans the toilets in Gault's gulch?

[-] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Suspicious that these are places difficult to escape.

It's just magical realism. Easier to believe in a magical utopia on Mars than to deliver on a municipal government that isn't overrun by bears.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

surely the Free Town Project would go perfectly if it were started somewhere uninhabitable to animal life!

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

This is the kind of stuff that proves that the american oligarch regime has gone full on degenerate.

It will take very strict and no bullshit rehabilitation and justice procedures to cure them of their degeneracy.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Nah, instead we'll just give them what they want.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Tbf this sounds like an improvement over how gitmo is currently being used. I'd rather just shut it down though.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Return it to the Cuban people from whom it was stolen, maybe?

this post was submitted on 15 May 2025

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