Very impressive and helpful comments here (Whiskey, Cannonner, Konyok, others. Thanks. I was once infatuated with Bobbitt (Shield of Achilles is as artfully fashioned to a high finish as its eponym) but all that theorizing won’t stop a bullet. He was right, I think, about the fall of Yugoslavia being the unbearable contradiction for the Nation-States who muttered and blinked during this rape in the drawing-room of Europe. But where we go now is, I think, much less clear than even his multiple scenarios suggest. It all begins and ends with the individual; and when a culture consists of “loose affiliations of billionaires [actually of post-modern gamers]” there is small chance that it will miraculously rally around a concept like the Motherland. Which is not to say that Gamer States cannot act: they will and probably with greater volatility and viciousness and less understanding of the costs, than old-style statecrafters will. That raises the odds of disaster.