Palantir surveillance and analytics company recently published what he called a “brief” 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s book “The Technological Republic.”
Written by Karp and Karp and Palantir’s head of corporate affairs, Nicholas Zamiska, “The Technological Republic” was published last year and described by its authors as “the beginning of articulating the theory” behind Palantir’s work. (A critic said it “wasn’t a book at all, but a piece of corporate sales material.”)
The company’s ideological bent has come under scrutiny since then, as tech industry executives have discussed Palantir’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and as the company has positioned itself as an organization working to defend “the West.”
In fact, congressional Democrats recently sent a letter to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security demanding more information about how tools made by Palantir and “a host of surveillance companies” are being used in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.
Palantir’s post doesn’t directly address this context, saying only that it provides the summary “because we’re being asked a lot.” He then suggests that “Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible” and states that “free email is not enough.”
“The decline of a culture or civilization, and indeed of its ruling class, will only be forgiven if that culture is capable of providing economic growth and security for the public,” the company says.
The post is extensive and at one point criticizes a culture that “almost mocks [Elon] Musk’s interest in the grand narrative” and elsewhere touching on recent discussions about the military’s use of artificial intelligence.
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“The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it’s who will build them and for what purpose,” says Palantir. “Our adversaries will not stop to engage in theatrics about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will move forward.”
Likewise, the company suggests that “the atomic era is ending” while “a new era of AI-based deterrence is about to begin.”
The post also takes a moment to denounce the “postwar sterilization of Germany and Japan,” adding that “Germany’s sterilization was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price” and that “a similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism” could “threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”
The post ends by criticizing “the shallow temptation of an empty and hollow pluralism.” In Palandir’s argument, a blind devotion to pluralism and inclusivity “ignores the fact that some cultures and even subcultures … have produced wonders. Others have proven mediocre and worse regressive and harmful.”
After Palantir posted this Saturday, Elliott Higgins, the CEO of research website Bellingcat, he remarked dryly that it was “perfectly normal and okay for a company to do this in a public statement.”
Higgins too he argued that the post has more than a simple “defense of the West” — in his view, it’s an attack on what he said are key pillars of democracy that need rebuilding: verification, discussion and accountability.
“It’s also worth being clear about who’s making the argument,” Higgins wrote. “Palantir sells business software to defense, intelligence, immigration and police agencies. These 22 points are not a philosophy floating in space, they are the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it supports.”
