Billionaires want to colonise the ocean now

In 1895, Jules Verne published The Floating Island, a science fiction adventure in which wealthy entrepreneurs retreat to an artificial island capable of navigating the oceans. A few years earlier, in 1869, the French writer had already been hailed as the father of science fiction with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the story of the Nautilus and the mysteries of the underwater world. Today, in 2025, humankind is turning both of his visions into reality. For some time now, the so-called Techno Utopians have been seeking new horizons, whether in deep space or the most inaccessible corners of our planet, and the latest frontier seems to be living in the oceans, both on the surface and on the seabed. A notable case is that of Rüdiger Koch, a 59-year-old German engineer, who has just entered the Guinness World Records for spending 120 days in an underwater house at a depth of 10 meters in the Panama Canal. His 304-square-meter accommodation is part of the Seapod Alpha Deep project by Ocean Builders – a company in which Koch is a partner – which aims to build floating habitats to counter rising sea levels caused by global warming and to offer new living spaces. The Seapods have an “upper floor” that floats, equipped with all comforts, large windows, and outdoor spaces, while the lower floor is an underwater living room. This room is designed to allow people to live permanently underwater without ever needing to set foot on land.

In reality, similar technologies have existed for decades, developed by various engineering companies to support underwater research. One example is the American company Deepche with its Sentinel underwater habitat system (actual science fiction capsules that can operate autonomously for 28 days at a depth of 200 meters), which allows people and researchers to live and work underwater for extended periods and make new discoveries at the bottom of the sea. But what would happen if these technologies were used solely by billionaires, ready to colonize the seabed to live there? This fear is far from abstract. In an interview with the New York Times, Koch and his partners Chad Elwartowski – a Bitcoin magnate – and Grant Romundt – a Canadian entrepreneur in the anti-aging field – declared that contemporary societies are “in a stagnant situation” and that “living in the sea, or in space, has become a realistic option, so the ruling classes 'back home' will have to think about what to do to make their countries more attractive.”

A vision that mixes unrestrained market rules, classism and elitism, in line with the manifesto of the Seasteading Institute, a 501 nonprofit organization (the number indicates that in the United States it is tax-exempt) founded, among others, by Peter Thiel – a techno billionaire closely associated with Trump – which promotes mobile and autonomous communities on marine platforms in international waters. These “micro-nations” would have semi-autonomous governments, independent of tax and social laws, embodying the libertarian approach which, according to Peter Newman – an Australian professor of sustainability – interviewed again by the New York Times, represents “apartheid of the worst kind”. According to Newman, the colonization of the oceans risks becoming a “nightmare in which only the wealthy can move to futuristic ocean villages and sneer at the rest of the world”. This is the usual double-edged sword of technological discoveries: on one hand, they open unimaginable horizons for all of humanity and help research create a better world; on the other hand, they can become exclusive privileges for the richest 1%, as we glimpsed with the recent dystopian all-female Blue Origin mission to space. Is it really necessary to conquer the oceans to inhabit them?