We are entering an era where sovereignty is increasingly bypassed by parasovereign protocols—systems that empower individuals to operate outside institutional control. Unlike traditional platforms, these protocols enable structured autonomy, facilitating peer-to-peer communication without permission from a sovereign authority. This shift offers a new kind of freedom, allowing individuals to reject control. Explore how these systems challenge traditional power structures and understand the trade-offs of autonomy in a world where sovereignty is becoming irrelevant.
The best way to defeat a defensive position is to make it irrelevant.
By Richard Martin, Chief Strategist, Alcera Consulting Inc.
We are entering an era where sovereignty—properly understood as the supreme authority of states and governments—is being increasingly bypassed by a new kind of system: the engineered parasovereign protocol.
These systems do not claim sovereignty. They are not states, corporations, or individuals exercising supreme authority. Instead, they enable autonomous individuals to act outside the control of institutional power. Their structure is not hierarchical, and their order is not enforced through law or violence. They offer a new kind of freedom, one grounded in constraint, not command.
Parasovereignty: Outside the Reach of Sovereigns
Parasovereignty refers to orders that persist outside the domain of sovereign enforcement. These are not governed by a central state, nor are they administered by corporate or bureaucratic institutions. Parasovereign systems can be emergent—like kinship, language, or religion—or they can be engineered.
Engineered parasovereign protocols are deliberately designed to allow peer-to-peer (P2P) communication, coordination, and exchange without requiring the sanction or intermediation of a sovereign authority. They function without being granted permission to do so, they cannot be easily stopped by those who would deny that permission.
Protocols, Not Platforms
These systems are not platforms. They are protocols, code-based architectures for action. There are no administrators, no customer service departments, and no reset buttons. Participation is voluntary, and enforcement is structural, not discretionary.
Bitcoin is money without a government mint. Tor is information routing without a switchboard. Nostr is publication without platform.
In each case, what emerges is autonomy for the individual, not sovereignty in the political sense. The system does not confer supreme authority; it simply creates a domain in which individuals can act without needing to ask.
The Architecture of Chokepoints
Sovereign and sovereign-dependent systems—whether state or corporate—rely on chokepoints. These are narrow channels through which communication, movement, or value must pass, and where control can be exercised: border crossings, licensing authorities, API gateways, KYC providers, DNS root servers, payment rails.
Control is enacted at these chokepoints: delay, denial, surveillance, taxation. These are the points of friction that preserve the power of institutions.
Engineered parasovereign protocols are designed to route around such chokepoints. They use topology, cryptography, and redundancy to bypass centralized gates. The key is not protest or confrontation. It is simply to build paths that no one can block. Trying to extinguish these types of protocols is like playing whack-a-mole on a global network. No matter how many heads you clobber, they keep popping up elsewhere.
Constraint Over Command
In traditional systems, rules are enforced by decree and backed by coercion. In engineered parasovereign systems, rules are enforced by protocol and backed by mathematics.
The protocol is indifferent. There are no privileges, no exceptions, no overrides. What you gain is not lawlessness, but predictable constraint, and the knowledge that no actor, no matter how powerful, can unilaterally change the rules.
This is not sovereignty. It is something else: structured autonomy. The individual is not sovereign, but they are free to act within a system that no sovereign can override.
The Trade-off
The cost of this autonomy is responsibility. You are not protected by institutional guarantees. You hold your own keys. You bear your own risk. No one can seize your assets, but no one can recover them, either.
For some, this burden is unacceptable. For others, it is the precondition of real freedom.
These systems make the trade explicit. They do not promise safety; they offer control. Not the power to rule others, but the ability to refuse to be ruled.
Exit, Not Protest
Engineered parasovereignty is not a rebellion. It does not aim to overthrow the sovereign. It offers exit, not revolution. It changes the landscape, not through confrontation, but through substitution. It builds new domains of action outside the reach of institutional control.
This is not the assertion of sovereignty by individuals or platforms. It is the creation of “protocolic” autonomy—a space where individuals can act, speak, and transact without submitting to a centralized authority.
Sovereignty belongs to the state. But autonomy belongs to those who are willing to take on the cost of freedom.
About the Author
Richard Martin is the founder and president of Alcera Consulting Inc., and the creator of The Strategic Code—a doctrine for leaders navigating volatility, constraint, and conflict.
His mission is simple: equip leaders to exploit change and achieve strategic coherence. Through his advisory work, writing, and tools, he helps senior decision-makers see clearly, understand deeply, and act decisively in high-stakes environments.
Richard is the author of Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles, and the developer of Strategic Epistemology and Worldview Warfare—frameworks that decode the beliefs, values, and power structures shaping strategic action in a contested world.
www.thestrategiccode.com
© 2025 Richard Martin