I could technically explain the context as I go along with the question, but I’m generous, so here’s a rundown.

Tuvalu is an island nation (or was an island nation) in the Pacific Ocean, a part of Polynesia. If there was ever absolute proof of climate change that you could show climate change deniers to disprove them, Tuvalu would be it, as Tuvalu is so flat all across its surface that the rising sea levels are swallowing it extremely rapidly. A whole nation disappearing beneath the ocean, where people could no longer call it home, was considered unprecedented long ago, so here you have a nation disappearing like a rabbit in a magician’s hat and people who still identify with it (as cultures do, if you’re a sociologist) wondering what to do. So while the people of the island physically change residences to places like Australia and New Zealand (which I guess technically makes them an ANZAC nation now), who have welcomed them with open arms, they decided to upload a replica of the entire island into the digital sphere and use that as the foundation for their nationality whenever someone in the United Nations questions the real-world foundation for their nationality (I guess they never heard of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta). Representatives of Tuvalu have explained it better than I can.

A lot of this isn’t new knowledge to many people reading this, though the thought that we are slowly deconstructing the definition of nationhood might be. Along comes the fediverse. Anything with the right format can be federated. And here you have an actual nation that has taken on a projection of itself in digital form. And so a thought arises: in return for its protection, can we federate it (mainly as the fediverse, though some people ask it in the sense of whether we can federate it into either the United States as a state, the UK as a commonwealth nation, Russia as an oblast, etc.)? And assuming it hasn’t already been federated (wink wink), what do you think would happen?