Jamie Loftus

It's quite a series, except for the weird moments of bigotry.

Good stuff.

Dan Simmons, I think, is the author.

Anyway.

So, yeah, they're talking about we want to create a human genetic experimentation base.

And they're like, we want to figure out what the sensible regulations around human genetic enhancement are.

But we also want to build a lab.

And while they're talking about this, Gabriel adds cryptically, probably there are other things that's useful to do with a sovereign country.

I don't know what he means by that, but yeah, probably.

So that could be as banal as just like money laundering, which Naru obviously has quite a history of, or issuing things like passports.

But given the fact that all these dummies are permanently poisoned by a mixture of sci-fi fandoms and weird futurist cults, I think it's safe to say we all dodged a bullet by the fact that they never got too far in this scheme.

Now, my favorite thing about this whole idea is how dumb it is on its face.

There are some countries that could act as really good apocalypse shelters for the super rich, right?

Switzerland is one.

A lot of rich people have their apocalypse shelters in Switzerland.

New Zealand is another.

But the problem for that is that like Switzerland and New Zealand are both functional states.

Obviously, if you're a billionaire there, you can have some outsized influence, but you're not just going to run everything because there's other interests and like a functional system of government in place in all of those places.

I think Sam and them were hoping that since Nauru is small enough, they could just utterly dominate the government.

But they ignored the fact that it's like one of the worst places imaginable to have as an apocalypse shelter.