The Sovereign Transition 2025 - 2045

What comes next in the information age?

By Gareth on 20th Jun, 2025

One of my favourite books is The Sovereign Individual. Considering that it was published in 1999, I'm facinated by the author's ability to see into the future. In my opinion they very closely predicted how technology would evolve and impact society over the following 20 years.

I would love to read the same sort of book, published today about the next 20 years. As far as I know that book doesn't exist, so I gave ChatGPT a prompt to see if it could come up with something satisfying.

Here is the prompt:

I want you to consider the book The Sovereign Individual and try to adopt the mindset of it's authors James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. They published this book in 1999 and almost perfectly described the macro trends of the next 20 years. Now, I want you to take into context everything that has happened over the next 10-20 years, since this book was written, and then write an essay, as if you were the authors, about what the next 20 years will look like.

And the response:

The Sovereign Transition: The Next Stage of the Information Age (2025–2045)

By James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg (in spirit)

In 1999, we anticipated that the Information Age would unravel the centralizing grip of the industrial-era nation-state. We wrote The Sovereign Individual as a warning and a guide: a roadmap for those capable of navigating the disruption of governance, identity, and capital. Now, nearly three decades on, the future we envisioned is no longer speculative—it is unfolding in real time. But what lies ahead is not mere continuation. The sovereign individual of 2045 will emerge from a crucible of convergence, collapse, and creative reinvention. This is the epoch of irreversible transition.

I. The Retreat of the Nation-State Accelerates

The twentieth century’s apex predator—the bureaucratic nation-state—is undergoing terminal atrophy. The past 20 years have seen debt metastasize into dysfunction. Advanced democracies, once symbols of stability, are increasingly arenas of performative tribalism and economic mismanagement. In the West, governments have become platforms for rent-seeking elites, hemorrhaging legitimacy in the eyes of the productive class.

Simultaneously, military deterrence no longer guarantees sovereignty. Cyberwarfare, AI-assisted insurgency, and economic sanctions have replaced physical conquest. States can no longer fully protect—or even meaningfully restrain—their citizens. Nor can they effectively extract tax from capital that has gone algorithmic, encrypted, and borderless.

The result: a growing bifurcation between nominal residents and functional citizens. Geography matters less than ever. People live physically within a jurisdiction, but operate digitally in dozens. In the next 20 years, expect the hollowing out of mid-tier states and the rise of “meta-sovereignties”—transnational communities defined by cryptographic access, economic interdependence, and shared code, not flags.

II. AI as the Ultimate Class Divider

We wrote in 1999 that the cognitive elite would escape the gravitational pull of the state. In 2025, that escape is complete. Artificial Intelligence is their catapult. Those who can wield AI—through capital, skill, or institutional leverage—will dominate the next twenty years, just as those who mastered code and cryptography defined the last.

But this is not merely a technological evolution—it is a moral and political schism. The “have-AIs” will not just be more productive; they will be epistemologically distinct. Their ability to model reality, simulate outcomes, and optimize behavior will render traditional debate irrelevant. Those without access will increasingly dwell in narratives detached from empirical truth, locked in loops of social and political dysfunction.

AI will not level the playing field. It will fracture it. Expect a future where digital aristocracies command thousands of autonomous agents—bots, businesses, even entire synthetic economies—while the unaugmented struggle to remain legible to institutions that no longer understand them.

III. Parallel Polities and the Rise of Exit Communities

The emerging sovereign individual does not seek to change the system. He opts out. Crypto was the first step—not because of its monetary function, but its cultural signal: trust no central authority. The next steps are more concrete.

By 2045, we anticipate the widespread adoption of “network states,” as Balaji Srinivasan presciently described. These are not states in the Westphalian sense, but opt-in governance platforms that offer a bundle of services—security, adjudication, education, identity—in exchange for loyalty or subscription. Many will fail. A few will thrive. All will undermine the monopoly once held by the state.

Expect nomadic citizenships, reputation-linked passports, and the emergence of “citizen stacks”—modular identities that individuals use to gain privileges across jurisdictions, DAOs, and private territories. A growing share of economic value will be created in enclaves: private cities, virtual polities, and remote-first collectives with their own currencies and constitutions.

The most important borders in 2045 will not be territorial—they will be memetic and digital. And those who understand this will shape the future of human cooperation.

IV. Wealth, Warfare, and the New Leviathan

We also forecast that violence would shift from coercive to cognitive. That prophecy has manifested in full. Cyberwar, information manipulation, and psychological influence now supersede boots on the ground. The nation-state, bereft of loyalty, increasingly wages war not on external threats but on internal dissent.

However, as state legitimacy collapses, so too does the monopoly on violence. Expect the privatization of security to accelerate. The rich will live in gated citadels, guarded not just by armed personnel, but by AI-powered drones, biometric filters, and autonomous deterrence systems. In unstable regions, protection will become a subscription—another layer in the stack of sovereign independence.

The next Leviathan is not the state—it is the stack: a private operating system for life. Those who own the stack will rule. Those who do not will be ruled algorithmically, or excluded entirely.

V. Identity Will Fragment—Then Reconstruct

Mass identity—the “we” of the nation—is disintegrating. We predicted it, but few grasped its implications. In its place, we see the rise of fractal identities: overlapping affiliations based on belief, behavior, and blockchains. People will no longer define themselves as citizens of countries, but as members of cults, protocols, and pseudonymous tribes.

This will be disorienting. Culture wars will metastasize into memetic civil wars. But out of this chaos, new stabilizing forces will emerge. Reputation systems, zero-knowledge proofs, and cryptographically enforced contracts will allow strangers to coordinate in high-trust environments without central mediation. Expect an eventual rebirth of trust—but rebuilt on code, not constitutions.

Conclusion: Prepare to Be Excluded, or Sovereign

In 1999, we offered a warning: the future would not be evenly distributed. Today, the bifurcation is clear. A shrinking class of sovereigns will operate globally, privately, and intelligently—shielded by encryption and enabled by AI. The rest will remain entangled in the obsolete machinery of the state, offered diminishing returns for their loyalty.

The next 20 years will not be about democratizing power. They will be about re-localizing it to the individual, or re-centralizing it into unaccountable techno-corporate fiefdoms. The sovereign individual must decide—opt into the stack, or build his own.

Prepare accordingly.