Mathr de Leon:

You're listening to Traceroute. I'm Mathr de Leon.

Amy Tobey:

I'm Amy Tobey.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

I'm Grace Ewura-Esi.

Mathr de Leon:

And Grace is here today with a story.

Amy Tobey:

I want to hear a story.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Well, good, because you know I love to tell one.

Mathr de Leon:

We got time. Why don't you lay it out.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

I like a good story. I think everyone knows this about me at this point. And if anyone's been even kind of, sort of, partially listening at any point in any episode, I am really into cultural understanding and cultural study. It's the anthropologist in me, specifically in Indigenous and Native peoples. A couple of years ago, I was doing what I do best, which is honestly surfing the web, and I came across this video. And in this video was a minister from Tuvalu standing knee-deep in water, giving a speech about how the island was sinking. It was his plea to the world to wake up, to pay attention, and to not let his people literally and figuratively drown.

Simon Kofe:

Your excellencies, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, [foreign language 00:01:22], warm Pacific greetings from Tuvalu. Last year, I addressed this August assembly, proclaiming that we must take bold and alternative action today to secure tomorrow.

Mathr de Leon:

The man standing in the water is the honorable Simon Kofe, then Minister of Justice, Communication, and Foreign Affairs for Tuvalu. The assembly he's addressing is the Conference of the Parties, the decision-making body for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. What you're hearing now is actually Simon's second video presentation, this one produced for COP27 held in November of 2022. The two videos begin almost identically with Simon outdoors, looking directly into the camera, the sound of the sea in our ears, and music slowly rising in the background. However, Simon's first video, the one Grace was referring to, is accompanied by an inspiring, almost hopeful score, whereas his second video is markedly more stark. And as the camera slowly pulls away, we see that the islet he's standing on is surrounded by an endless, black void. The palm trees, the birds, even the sand are being rendered in what appears to be a digital space, which seems to imply that time is running out.

Simon Kofe:

Today, I speak again from my country, from a small island that is likely to be one of the first spots in Tuvalu to be submerged by rising sea levels. Since COP26, the world has not acted, and so we in the Pacific have had to act. We have seen temperature rise projections remain well above 1.5 degrees Celsius, foretelling the imminent disappearance of islets like this one. We've had to take our own precautionary steps with the Future Now Project. As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world's first digital nation. Our digital nation will provide an online presence that can replace our physical presence and allow us to continue to function as a state. We have been working on these initiatives for the past year, building our capacity to retain and preserve our nation and the unity of our people, even as climate change spirals out of control.

Mathr de Leon:

You see, if a nation like Tuvalu were to lose its physical lands to rising sea levels, international law suggests that this might jeopardize its sovereignty, like it might cease to exist as a state. And so the Future Now Project aims not only to spearhead the digital preservation of Tuvalu, its lands, and its culture, but seeks also to establish a new definition for statehood. One that according to the project's website, tuvalu.tv, helps protect Tuvalu's sovereignty and therefore its culture, its people, and its economic security.

Simon Kofe:

Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people. And to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we'll move them to the cloud. Islands like this one won't survive rapid temperature increases, rising sea levels, and droughts, so we'll recreate them virtually. Piece by piece, we'll preserve our country, provide solace to our people, and remind our children and our grandchildren what our home once was. It has long been the time for action, but we have not stepped up to the challenge. We must start doing so today. Otherwise, within a lifetime, Tuvalu will only exist here. [foreign language 00:04:55].

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Hearing someone literally beg for the life of his people, it's hard to watch, and I've just been haunted by this story ever since. But I was really captivated by this idea of preservation into the cloud. Like, is this possible? Can you move to the metaverse if your nation state can't handle the technical load? This is the ultimate puzzle.

Amy Tobey:

It is. I think two things are coming up for me most strongly. First thing is, do we cover what is a nation state?

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Amy, you're bringing up a really interesting point that when we talked to Simon, the government of Tuvalu doesn't quite yet know. There is currently no fully replicated digital nation. We've got people moving to a virtualized state in waves or in process, but not where the physical land mass also exists in a virtual capacity.

Mathr de Leon:

And may not exist in a physical capacity.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Exactly.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay. In truth, it's debatable whether or not Tuvalu can officially claim to be the first digital nation, because since the early 2000s, the country of Estonia has been a recognized pioneer of digital governance. They have an e-residency program allowing non-Estonians to access Estonian services like company formation, banking, and taxation, and the vast majority of their government services are available online 24/7, meaning Estonians can do almost anything from voting to accessing healthcare anytime they need. Furthermore, every Estonian is issued a digital ID, which affords them access to all of these digital services securely, ostensibly from anywhere in the world. But while programs like these have laid the groundwork for e-governance, their transformation isn't driven by climate change, meaning they're not currently at risk of losing their physical territory. And that's really, really important, because physical territory is one of the major criteria currently recognized by international law as being essential to retaining statehood.

Simon Kofe:

And retaining our statehood is critical for us.

Mathr de Leon:

That, of course, is Simon, who as special envoy for the Future Now Project is currently busy imagining the worst-case scenario for Tuvalu. And that scenario in which Tuvalu is unable to preserve its physical territory could be made even worse should they fail to establish that all-important, new definition for statehood.

Simon Kofe:

It's our identity. It gives us certain rights on the international stage. We can be a member of organizations like the UN. We have voting rights. We also generate revenue from our sovereign assets like the 40 million area from fishing licenses in our maritime zones. We also generate revenue through the .tv domain name that belongs Tuval, and we're able to have these assets because we're a sovereign state. We're recognized as a nation under international law, so do we also lose that if we lose our status?

Mathr de Leon:

In other words, a worst-case scenario for Tuvalu may result in the loss of far more than their physical territory. And what's more, territory is just one of four criteria thought to define statehood in this context. Now, I use the word thought because international law, at least to me, feels kind of squishy at its core, is a set of principles derived from multiple sources including treaties, international custom, judicial decisions, and even at times the teachings of highly-qualified publicists. And while many elements of international law, especially treaties, are considered binding for consenting parties, continued adherence to them is technically voluntary and largely set forth by precedent. Okay. For example, if states all agree to follow the principles set forth by a treaty and importantly, feel obligated to keep following said principles, then yeah, that treaty might later get cited as precedent for international law. And in this case, there's an old treaty adopted in 1933 called the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which is where we get those four criteria. The treaty says that the state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: A, a permanent population, B, a divine territory, C, government, and D, capacity to enter into relations with the other states, which some experts refer to as independence.

Jonathan Gliboff:

There's a lot of writing about what each of those things mean and what they definitely don't mean.

Mathr de Leon:

That's Jonathan Gliboff, a student at Columbia Law School. He has a particular interest in international law, international human rights, and understanding how climate change impacts statehood, especially for small island developing states, referred to as SIDS. Now, like Tuvalu, many SIDS are grappling with the fact that their statehood might someday be challenged by sea level rise, as noted in Jonathan's contributions to the October 2023 volume of Columbia Law Review titled-

Jonathan Gliboff:

Waterproofing Statehood: Strengthening Claims for Continued Statehood For Sinking States Using 'E-Governance'. Because statehood is so important to the international legal system, there's definitely a potential to have hesitancy in other states recognizing this completely online, almost abstracted, idealized version of a state out there on some digital server. And so the first issues that they run into is the practical issues of continuing to meet the four criteria. At a straightforward definitional level, they're not going to have a territory if they're completely underwater. If they don't have a territory, their entire population is going to supposedly have to migrate out, and so they would no longer have the population requirement met since they're not going to have a population in a given space. Government, they might still be able to have. That's assuming that there's a way for them to actually carry out whatever the government sets forth. And then in terms of engaging with other countries in foreign affairs or in the independence, I think that runs into some technical problems as well. First, in the sense of you might have something on the metaverse, but are states going to want to interact with that at a first place? And second, if we do understand the fourth prong to be independence, is there opportunity for their entire government and country to come down because they have the server go down? Is that really independent? So at a practical level, there's a straightforward dissonance and distance between what the metaverse is and what our traditional legal understanding of the state may be.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

I keep thinking, what happens when your entire island is below the sea? Will there need to be new designations, especially if you're sinking or you've lost territorial lands? What constitutes a government or independence if, let's say, you're sovereign yet inside of another nation state jurisdiction? You still exist, because your population meets those other criteria.

Jonathan Gliboff:

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of small island developing states and the International Law Commission has echoed that these four criteria are what's necessary for the creation of a state, but not necessarily the continuity of a state. As we know just from living real life is that things change in these states all the time. You're going to have border changes. You're going to have population changes. Your government system might change or your government might completely fail. And even with those things, we don't say at that moment, "Well, the state stopped seeing." It's like object permanence but for states. Then, I think where a lot of the conversation is now, is what do we make of this presumption of continuity?

Jonathan Gliboff:

A lot of the conversation now is, "What do we make of this presumption of continuity for states?" Each of the four categories, territory, population, government, independence, whether it matters if they fulfill a functional purpose is if we could say that an e-government is doing the same things that we'd expect a state with territory and population are doing, or get really, really close to doing a lot of the same things. So, by having digital platforms and digital systems, by having a metaverse version of the state, do we get close enough to what that state was doing beforehand that we could say that's the same thing, and therefore we just presume that the state continues?

Mathr de Leon:

Now, while this proposed new definition of statehood may be intended to formally recognize the continuity of SIDS in the fallout of climate change, in some ways, it sounds more like a formality because as we've established, international law is predicated on the idea that two or more states get together, hash out the details, put something in writing, and then everyone just shakes on it like we're cool if you are cool, that kind of thing. Simon's government is already hard at work ensuring that Tuvalu is setting a clear precedent for continuity when entering into relations with other states.

Simon Kofe:

When we first came into office, we put in our foreign policy that any country that wants to establish diplomatic ties with Tuvalu, that they needed to recognize our statehood as being permanent regardless of the impacts of climate change. So, by accepting that definition, you're accepting that a country like Tuvalu can continue to exist as a state even without a physical territory.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay. So it seems plausible that maintaining their sovereignty as a nation in the face of climate crisis is perhaps only a matter of time. There are likely to be many, many more discussions, and debates, and campaigns that help shape the trajectory of what we eventually recognize as an e-state or e-SIDS as Jonathan calls them, but the Future Now Project is already well on their way to success in this endeavor. In the meantime, there is still the matter of all this data that the project aims to capture, the stuff that Simon calls their most precious assets, their land, their ocean, and their culture. To me, it seems like recreating 124 islands in great detail, all of the trees, and the buildings, and infrastructure on each one of them, and recording for posterity all of your songs, and your stories, and your dances, and your artifacts. It feels like that's going to take what? At least a few petabytes of data, probably thousands if not hundreds of thousands of hours of labor, and they'll need some fairly advanced technology. They're trying to build something that is... Gosh, it is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.

Jonathan Gliboff:

Yeah.

Mathr de Leon:

What does that look like, and where do you put it? Right?

Jonathan Gliboff:

So that was the second point that was coming to mind to me. When we create these digital assets, we create a large amount of data that represents a map of the Iowan which is... It's a nice, probably a very detailed representation of a snapshot in time that would then be stored somewhere on some servers, and that goes onto hard drives. It's usually replicated for redundancy, sometimes within a single data center, sometimes across multiple data centers if you're really serious about it. Once you've got your snapshot, the island, and the nation, and the peoples, and the critters, and the sand and the ocean, we formed a new dynamic system.

Mathr de Leon:

That new dynamic system, it's not just a large amount of data, and when considering what tools to employ in the collection of such vast amounts of data, there are a handful of things you might want to keep in mind. Things like precision, detail, the ability to penetrate vegetation, speed, efficiency, 3D capabilities, compatibility with other data, automation potential, safety, and accessibility all come to mind. Okay. So it's more than a handful of things, but as it would happen, we've been utilizing technology like this for decades and especially in the last 10 to 15 years in a profession that is, for obvious reasons, far more concerned with the past than with the future.

David M. Carballo:

I'm David Carballo. I'm professor of anthropology, archeology, and Latin American studies at Boston University. I'm primarily a specialist in the pre-Hispanic cultures of Central Mexico.

Mathr de Leon:

These pre-Hispanic cultures represent some of the most advanced and influential civilizations of the ancient Americas. Civilizations like the Olmecs, the Toltecs, and more recently, the Mēxihcah, commonly called Aztecs. While his predecessors were fascinated by the pyramids and palaces of the elites, those with power and political propaganda, David's work is more concerned with domestic life, work that draws him to what was for the better part of a millennium, the largest city in the Americas, the pre-Mēxihcah capital, Tenochtitlan. There, David's team has spent countless hours uncovering the truths of urban society in this ancient world.

David M. Carballo:

To do that, we excavate. That's obviously one of our techniques. As archeologists, we dig, but we do other techniques as well. My collaborators in Mexico, Mexico's National University, UNAM, are specialists in geophysical prospection. So there are different techniques where you can see or detect patterns underneath the surface using tools like ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, magnetic gradient, and that can help you see architecture or where there might be walls, where there might be features, activity areas without having to excavate.

Mathr de Leon:

In addition to these techniques, modern archeologists like David often employ another tool, one commercially developed in the early '60s shortly after the invention of the laser. It's now used in a wide range of fields, including autonomous vehicles, forestry, and geography, and is valued not only for its cost and accessibility, but also for the detailed high-resolution large data sets it can produce. It's a technology known as LIDAR which, of course, stands for-

David M. Carballo:

Light Detection and ranging. Really, the LIDAR revolution of the last 10 to 15 years or so has had major consequences for how archeologists work. These new techniques really allow for the understanding of space and how people use space at a much better level than previously. What something like LIDAR allows you to do is to see these just micro differences in topography and the changes in the ground level, and so that can really help to define urban spaces. In the case of a densely forested area, then you can apply an algorithm that allows you to essentially get rid of the forest canopy. So the modern tree cover can be taken off the image, and then you just have a ground image with a topography that allows you, really, to see a lot of buildings that wouldn't be possible before.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay. Let's break this down. When capturing LIDAR data, in Tuvalu's case, they're likely to use aerial acquisition which involves fixing a LIDAR sensor to a drone, and then flying that drone in a pattern known as mowing the lawn, like long lines up and down, back and forth, overlapping, so that you're collecting consistent data throughout the entire area. These sensors project laser beams down to the earth and measure the return time of each one. We're talking 2 million pulses per second here. Meaning, some very, very small measurements. A GPS device tells you where you are, and an inertial navigation unit calculates the pitch, angle, and roll of the sensor. You take that data, you merge it with surveyed ground control points, and eventually, you have something called a point cloud. Now, if you've ever seen a movie from the '90s or even 2000s with a hacking scene, you could probably imagine what this looks like. Right? They're going into the computer, and the virtual world is made up of all these little points connected by vector lines to create a sense of three dimensions. It's like that, except millions or even billions of points resulting in data sets designed to represent the surface of the scanned area in three dimensions with remarkable precision and detail. It's important to note all of this data, it's not just for posterity. We're not just making a map here. We're building an interactive replica.

Ron Chapple:

A digital twin is a digital replica of the built world, not just a visual representation, but a representation that includes all of the living, breathing features that city, or an environment, or our human bodies have.

Mathr de Leon:

That's Ron Chapple, VP of Global Strategic Solutions - Digital Twins for NV5 Geospatial.

Ron Chapple:

Our services are primarily doing LIDAR and high-fidelity imaging. Most work, I would say, would be in the US, but we certainly have a number of international projects as well. When you take the LIDAR data and pull it together into a visual digital twin, you can then embed that digital twin with IOT or Internet of Things data in real time, so that ultimately, the digital twin is no different than what the built world represents.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

This part is actually fascinating to me because Tuvalu is working on a digital twin, and if I'm hearing this correctly, the digital twin is alive, and well, and actually, expanding and maybe contracting dependent on what's happening in the three-dimensional landscape of real time that we exist in.

Ron Chapple:

Yes. If we want to use that word, "metaverse," and I think this is where you're going, Grace.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Yes, it is.

Ron Chapple:

That digital twin is the landscape for the metaverse to act upon. So instead of having sand beaches and feel the sand under your toes, you will be able to walk on a virtual sand beach which may not be nearly as much fun, but at least we have a record of what was there, and we can share that with the generation and generations into the future.

Mathr de Leon:

Now, I got to say, being able to explore parts of the world I may never see in real life in an immersive virtual environment sounds awesome, but we can't say for sure if this particular vision of a digital twin for Tuvalu will take that form. It could be something altogether more stripped-down, more straightforward, and really, it's designed and built for the Tuvaluans. So it will be whatever they decide it should be. Whatever shape it takes in the end, it has to live somewhere, and it has to be secure so it can be accessed by Tuvaluans when the time comes. In this, we look again to Estonia. In April and May of 2007, Estonian institutions, including government bodies, banks, and media outlets, were all hit by a wave of cyber attacks, mainly in the form of distributed denial of service or DDOS attacks which overwhelmed the servers with traffic causing them to crash and rendering services inaccessible. Given their heavy reliance on digital services, the impact of these cyber attacks was massive and eventually led to the creation of a new concept called a data embassy. Essentially, you take critical data, store it in a secure data center, declare it territory of the nation to whom the data belongs, then put that center in a foreign country, and you got yourself a data embassy. The idea being that even in the case of severe cyber attacks or...

Mathr de Leon:

Being that even in the case of severe cyber attacks or other disasters, nations can maintain the integrity and accessibility of their essential digital services. So it's no surprise that the Future Now Project is already looking ahead at where their data will live and how it will be protected.

Simon Kofe:

We have five embassies in different parts of the world, and under international law, your embassy is actually Tuvalu territory and there's no limit to how big your embassy can actually be. In fact, the U.S has embassies that is bigger than the island that I'm living on right now. We could even have servers in these different embassies and have them work as a network of servers. So I think that there's technology that is available for us to best reconstitute ourselves as a digital nation.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Let's talk about this because this is what I think has been missing so far in the conversation. How could you protect this information? Is it possible to safeguard it and or to prevent it from being changed?

Jonathan Gliboff:

So the short answer is it's a never ending battle. Just like preserving anything, preserving paper, preserving old Buddhist texts, there's always environmental factors coming into play. There's hackers, there's fires, there's natural disasters. In the digital space, we have all the same things, but in digital forms. So we have the equivalent of natural disasters, which we often call like internet weather, when there's a large outage and now I can't access my digital nation because some chunk of the internet has gone offline. It's not as common as it used to be, but this is a thing that happens. It's like erosion, right? It's just kind of always changing, that landscape is. So that data that represents the nation won't just get represented once. It has to get copied. It has to get re-encrypted. It has to kind of evolve. The data has to evolve to new formats, right? As computers change, new architectures come out, new encryption algorithms come out, the nation, the ARC is going to have to continue to evolve with it to maintain accessibility and integrity. And we pay organizations to do this for us because it's so complex to do this and because you do have to have this kind of constant battle against entropy and constantly waging that war, or you will lose because entropy, well, it doesn't stop until the heat death of the universe.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

So my brain is doing some gymnastics, and I'm going to tell you I'm over here doing back flips no one's ever seen before because I'm trying to figure out how an island nation like Tuvalu can do this when they have got to create a digital plan in order to onboard people of the island to use legitimately their electronic devices in order to collect this data. So the data collection process is already what we in the south would say out in these streets, as in it's the citizenry that will be collecting this data. And I'm just thinking even in step 001, this digital entropy that you speak of, this balance is maybe not there, but when we push far forward into the future, but how do we encourage this while thinking about the technical weight of this work, because this isn't free and this isn't cheap?

Simon Kofe:

Yeah, you're right. It's very costly. The Tuvalu government has funded most of the activities that we've conducted thus far, and we intend to continue that, but also find the right partners that are willing to support us. As you know, sometimes our partners come in with their own agenda, how they see things, but I've been very careful to ensure that Tuvalu takes full ownership of this project to ensure that it meets the needs and the intents of the people of Tuvalu.

Mathr de Leon:

Despite every effort that Simon and his people have taken to ensure the Future Now Project's success Amy's, right it is a long game. Meaning even if they somehow manage to protect their physical lands, Tuvalu is in this for the long haul because we know even in the digital world, entropy is always coming for us. And to Grace's point, it will not be cheap, and Tuvalu will almost certainly need additional financing and several long-term revenue streams that can scale with the needs of their digital identity, which of course might pave the way to a more entrepreneurial outlook for the South Pacific.

George Siosi Samuels:

I guess it's a sad reality that I've just learned to accept. If you have a non-financial problem, usually it's the financial side that helps fix that problem, right? Even if you don't want it to, it just comes back to it.

Mathr de Leon:

That's George Siosi Samuels, a three time tech founder and managing director for Faiā, a community tech consultancy focused on helping to transform workplace cultures and operational efficiencies through community and tech.

George Siosi Samuels:

And I'm a big advocate of smaller players having a big impact, hence my connection to the Tuvalu Project, but in general, this theme of supporting the underdogs, that's what I like to do through community and tech.

Mathr de Leon:

And George's connection to the Future Now Project goes all the way back to 2020 when an article he published on Medium caught the attention of Simon Kofe.

George Siosi Samuels:

So I think he was thinking of some solutions already, but a lot of the digital stuff, it started off with a five point plan.

Mathr de Leon:

George's article titled A Five Point Plan to Future Proof Tuvalu, the Sinking Nation suggests the following action items. First, Tuvalu should open their nation's DotTV domain to a bidding war. Second, they should run a nationwide digital transformation program. Third, improve internet infrastructure. Fourth, go cashless and finally, they should invest in land and property. And everything in George's plan speaks clearly to that need for financing, which makes sense because as we already know, Simon and Tuvalu want to ensure that this whole endeavor is funded largely by the Tuvaluan government and overseen by its people, but while the task of mapping their lands, preserving their culture, setting up data embassies around the world and doing it all without letting it be shaped by powerful outside forces might seem insurmountable to some. If we look to the past for precedent, it shows up in a phenomenon known as leapfrogging. Coined in 1983, the term leapfrogging describes a phase of innovation where developing countries skip incremental steps and move directly to more advanced phases of change. Some key aspects of leapfrogging include adoption of technology, development of infrastructure, and of course transformation of economy. And the way George sees it, Tuvalu could adopt advanced technologies without having to follow the same developmental path that more industrialized countries have taken.

George Siosi Samuels:

This is why I'm a fan of history, and I think there's a lot of examples from history that we can apply to the Pacific region. I'll start one with Bangladesh. When I was schooling, I did a research paper on bridging the digital divide for the rural poor of Bangladesh, this was 2004. Back then, we were already documenting how a lot of rural villages were skipping the landline, right? So they were going from absolutely no phones straight to mobile phones.

Mathr de Leon:

Or how about in 1965 when a small resource poor island in Southeast Asia celebrated its newfound independence by taking its underdeveloped economy, significant unemployment and lack of basic infrastructure, and transformed itself into one of the world's most prosperous nations in just a matter of decades. One of the most commonly cited examples of leapfrogging Singapore's incredible success has been attributed in large part to its visionary leadership, strategic planning, investment in human capital, and in openness to global trade.

George Siosi Samuels:

And again, there are so many examples of this. So from Singapore to Estonia. Estonia was able to literally transform themselves to also become the first digital nation and they are a small country that punches way above their weight.

Mathr de Leon:

Way above their weight indeed. After regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 Estonia rapidly evolved to become one of the most digitally advanced societies in the world, a leapfrog that's particularly notable because it didn't just adopt existing technologies, it used them as a foundation to transform its society, governance, and economy positioning itself as a global leader in digital innovation.

George Siosi Samuels:

I think there's a lot of lessons from these smaller players that apply to nations like Tuvalu. And so that's kind of what I'm seeing for the South Pacific region, they might have been in a not-so-great position compared to the rest of the world, but I think they have an opportunity to be able to leapfrog. Just because you're small does not mean that you can't punch above your weight.

Mathr de Leon:

So this idea that the South Pacific is poised to punch above its weight is super compelling and such an ambitious vision makes sense coming from such a self-professed fan of the underdog, but for George, there's a lot more on the line here. You see his belief in the power of the South Pacific to become a major player in the digital realm well, like Simon, it's in his blood.

George Siosi Samuels:

My mom is Tuvaluan Samoan. My dad is Fijian Indian. I'm an Australian citizen. I have an Americanized accent, all over the place. The ironic part is, even though I feel such a strong desire to help Tuvalu, I haven't set foot onto the islands, but my mom's connection to our culture growing up is what made me appreciate, one, the benefit of having been raised in the west and almost a duty to bring everything that I've learned here and benefited from and try to help my ancestral homelands.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay, this might be obvious, but George is what's known as a TCK, individuals who during their formative years, spent much of their time in one or more cultures different from their birth culture or their parents' culture, and TCKs excel at blending elements of these varied cultures into a third culture unique to them. Hence the term third culture kid. In George's very existence, hints at the forces driving his ambitious vision of a Tuvaluan leapfrog, one that could potentially stall an immediate crisis and begin to address a much slower, albeit less headline-making crisis that's been unfolding for generations. One that's every bit as pressing is climate change.

George Siosi Samuels:

If I look at my own ancestry and what they did, they left the islands for better opportunities because in the South Pacific, a lot of the families feel the need to leave because the money is just not good enough at home and that's what led them to go from Tuvalu to Fiji to New Zealand to Australia. And then now for me, I'm just living pretty much as a digital nomad all around the world. Remote work is the name of the game now, right? My company is just remote first. And that type of opportunity did not exist before, but it does now thanks to technology.

Mathr de Leon:

So thanks to tech, this upstart TCK from Australia grows up to be a successful digital nomad, trotting the globe in search of problems, just begging for tech solutions, but one might wonder, would that be the case if George had grown up in Tuvalu? Honestly, probably not. I mean, as he said, that's why his family left, but in George's vision for Tuvalu, meaning the technologically advanced, digitally proficient Tuvalu of the future, a kid might grow up on the islands with access to all kinds of opportunities normally afforded to families that opt to leave. Is this vision practical? If we consider what Grace calls the technical weight of the work that the Future Now Project has undertaken, redefining statehood, preserving their sovereignty, digitizing their territory, archiving their culture all the while working around the clock to mitigate the impacts of climate change on their islands, like implementing coastal seawalls, strengthening their sustainable land use planning, expanding rainwater harvesting capacity, and even afforestation of areas where vegetation could improve land stability, is there room for this almost-

Mathr de Leon:

Is there room for this almost idealistic version of Tuvalu as an island nation that might one day be a major player on the world's digital stage? Well, like many of the really big existential questions that come up when working on a story like this, it's impossible to know for sure. But back in December of 2023, while Grace was actually attending COP28 in Dubai, Simon dropped a third video on his YouTube channel. In it, he stands against that empty black void of digital space. And this time, alongside a now familiar call to action, Simon comes to the assembly with an update.

Simon Kofe:

This time last year, I announced that Tuvalu will become the world's first digital nation, ensuring its continuing sovereignty in the face of a worst case scenario. Since last year, we have continued to digitally map our land and have now completed a detailed three-dimensional LiDAR scan of the entire country, all 124 islands and islets that make up Tuvalu. With this, we have built the foundation of our digital nation, redefining our legal territory, preserving Tuvalu for future generations, and creating a model to track and forecast rising sea levels. In September this year, Tuvalu enshrined a new definition of statehood in its constitution, the first of its kind in the world. 12 nations have already signed joint communiques with Tuvalu to legally recognize this definition of statehood. Joining Tuvalu, the 18 leaders of the Pacific Island Forum recently pronounced that their statehood and sovereignty will continue notwithstanding the impacts of climate change related sea level rise. Eventually, Tuvalu's digital nation will need to serve all the practical functions of a country. So we have begun exploring a system of digital identity that can eventually connect the Tuvalu diaspora. A digital passport stored on the blockchain will allow our people to conduct government affairs online from elections and referendums to births, deaths and marriages. To facilitate Tuvalu's digital migration, we've also begun upgrading our national communications infrastructure. A submarine cable laid in collaboration with development partners will provide the bandwidth we need to move our country into the cloud. I call upon the world's leaders. I ask you to embrace our principles, view our plight through the lens of our shared humanity, act not only as neighbors, but as family. And together we can turn the tide, not just to rescue Tuvalu, but to save the world. [foreign language 00:41:44].

Grace Ewura-Esi:

The fact that Simon has to, every year, debut a new video, [inaudible 00:41:58], is to me more gut-wrenching to watch because it's the same plea, but it steps on the path. So it goes from we are sinking, to the latest video, we are building an arc, right? It goes from, will you help us to, we are helping ourselves, and the vehicle of helping themselves is technology. And I think of all of the groups of people who had they been given the opportunity to, via technology and advancements in broadcasting software, done that 200 years ago, 300 years ago, 400 years ago, a thousand years ago, this world would have been and would be a different place.

Mathr de Leon:

Interesting. Yeah. And you like this terminology. I noticed on your LinkedIn, you had a couple superlatives there. What was the other one?

George Siosi Samuels:

There's digital wayfinding, right? Somebody had called me that one time, they call me a digital wayfinder and I'll say, kind of like it.

Mathr de Leon:

You carry that proudly.

George Siosi Samuels:

I do. I do.

Mathr de Leon:

That is such a powerful and evocative metaphor, right? Even if we don't leave our islands, we are still existing in two places, both here and in the cloud, right?

George Siosi Samuels:

Yeah. Literally. Right?

Mathr de Leon:

I mean, are you suggesting that more nations like Tuvalu could learn to be digital wayfinders, and what does that mean?

George Siosi Samuels:

I think, in a very simplistic way, yes, because we still have an issue where there are a lot of nations as a whole that feel like they're getting left behind. You know, once upon a time it would be enough to just live off the land or the seas, but that's not the case anymore, and so for me, I had this like personal vision of using tech to sort of connect and empower people who have strong traditional values, But have the technology serve. Not the other way around which is what is causing a lot of the issues. What that would allow is for Tuvaluans, in today's times, To be able to tap into things like, the internet. pay themselves at globally competitive rates, And not have to sacrifice their own home, in terms of needing to leave it. And I think that's the thing that did not exist for my ancestors the option to be able to still earn but stay where you are, instead of being forced to have to move out and then lose a part of your identity if that's not what you're wanting. Tuvalu and the South Pacific culture, we have a huge history of Polynesian wayfinding. And just like we were masters of wind and wave, then we can become masters of digital wind and wave in this future metaverse of state.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay, so it's a bit of an understatement, I admit, to suggest that humanity's story is off to a rocky start, but the end is ultimately unwritten. We're all still finding our way. And with a little help, the world may yet become, as Grace suggested, a very, very different place because George is right, and nations like Tuvalu are truly on the verge of a metamorphosis, one that could light the way for an entire region's miraculous leap into the digital age, that our map of this burgeoning digital world seems vastly incomplete because when I think about the Future Now Project and their trajectory, I wonder how long before the rest of the world looks to them as a model for success, not just in going digital, but in shaking our global society from what feels like an ancient slumber. And then it occurs to me that as is too often the case, they might just save the rest of us as a result of needing to save themselves.

Traceroute is a podcast from Equinix and Stories Bureau. This episode was hosted by Grace Ewura-Esi and Amy Tobey, and was produced by Mathr de Leon with help from Lixandra Uresta. It was edited by Joshua Ramsey, with mixing sound design and original music by Brett Vanderlaan, and additional mixing by Jeremy Tuttle. Our fact-checker is Ena Alvarado. Our staff includes Tim Balint, Suzie Falk, Lisa Harris, Alisa Manjarrez, Sadie Scott, Stephen Staver, and Rebecca Woodward. Our theme song was composed by Ty Gibbons.

You can check us out on X at Equinix Metal, and on YouTube at Equinix Developers. Visit traceroutepodcast.com for even more stories about the human layer of the stack. We'll leave these links and a link to the transcript down in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this story, and I hope you'll share it with people you hang out with online. And if you have time to give us a rating on Spotify, a rating and review on Apple, it would really mean a lot because the show is growing, but every little bit helps. This is the last episode of season three, and so I wanted to say a special thanks to you for sticking with us. I'm Mathr de Leon, senior producer for Traceroute, and we'll see you when we see you. Until then, thanks for listening.