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I made me a script to load country data from Wikidata. And what do I see in the output? Weird numbers linked to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It has zero land, two citizens but 13500 order members, 80000 volunteers, 42000 employees. And it has diplomatic relations with 108 countries—which, according to analysis by experts in whatever field this is, exhibit the signs that the order is indeed a de-facto recognized sovereign entity even though this recognition is not so firm as that of a full-blown state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...

BTW, if we consider just the members and volunteers, the order would rank twelfth least-populous country, between Andorra and Antigua-and-Barbuda. And its population would be almost 1/5th that of the current population of Malta.



So yeah, if you ever contemplate the future Sovereign Chaebol of Samsung, I guess right here is the closest current political precedent.


Well, Samsung is already a defence contractor, they make autonomous sentry guns for the DMZ


Not just that: at least in the past, they produced artillery, helicopters and fighter jets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanwha_Techwin

However, if the territory dispute breaks out, Hanwha may have to fight it out with Hyundai's tanks and artillery. Notably, the same Hyundai's division also produces most of South Korea's train cars and locomotives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K1_88-Tank, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Rotem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Wia


As I recall, Samsung, Hyundai and Daewoo are all subcontractors on the F-15K program, an f15 American jet with Korean electronics.


The citizens thing is really weird. On investigation, the cap is three max, so one slot remains.


They don't like to max this out; in that case they'd have to set up a three-way duel to the death whenever a higher-status person wanted to join.




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