An Indian-American CEO wanted to build a new country in an Asian ghost city, but then an actual country came in the way

Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School ran inside Forest City, a $100 billion Chinese-built ghost development in Malaysia’s Johor, until authorities ordered it shut. Balaji Srinivasan spent two years trying to prove that a country could be launched the way a startup is—community first, territory later. Last week, a local council in southern Malaysia ended the experiment with a piece of paperwork. The Network School, the Indian-American founder’s live-in campus set inside a half-empty Chinese-built development a bridge away from Singapore, was ordered to cease operations over licensing irregularities, The Wall Street Journal reported on August 1. The shutdown arrived after weeks…