Global Shift from Territorial Sovereignty to Protocol Jurisdictions

The transition of legal authority from physical geography to self-executing computational protocols represents one of the most profound shifts in governance documented for this era (2035–2060). As global infrastructure—including orbital energy relays, deep subsurface utility meshes, and planetary AI utility layers—becomes functionally borderless, the traditional mechanisms by which nation-states assert legal control over defined physical territories become economically inefficient and operationally obsolete. This systemic pressure mandates a fundamental redefinition of jurisdiction: law ceases to be an interpretation of fixed statutes based on location (terrestrial sovereignty) and instead becomes adherence to verifiable, immutable computational standards (Protocol Law).