> Seasteading used to be an oceanic engineering problem. And then the libertarians saw it was ideologically compatible and spent years dominating the dialogue. The whole thing became a hollowed-out space of unlaunched boondoggle projects.

I think you've got it backwards. Seasteading may or may not be workable, but the handful of people who've tried to do it have all been libertarians. If it had remained an engineering problem and nothing more, I don't think you'd see any attempts at all. Maybe an ego project by the UAE that gets abandoned in a year.