Surveillance and analytics company Palantir recently posted what it called a “brief” 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s book “The Technological Republic.”
Written by Karp and Palantir’s head of corporate affairs, Nicholas Zamiska, “The Technological Republic” was published last year and described by its authors as “the beginnings of the articulation of the theory” behind Palantir’s work. (One critic said it was “not a book at all, but a piece of corporate sales material.”)
The company’s ideological bent has come under more scrutiny since then, as tech industry figures have debated Palantir’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and as the company has positioned itself as an organization working for the defense of “the West.”
In fact, congressional Democrats recently sent a letter to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security demanding more information about how tools built by Palantir and “a range of surveillance companies” are being used in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.
Palantir’s post doesn’t reference much of that context directly, simply saying that it’s providing the summary “because we get asked a lot.” It then suggests that “Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible” and declares that “free email is not enough.”
“The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public,” the company says.
The post is wide-ranging, at one point criticizing a culture that “almost snickers at [Elon] Musk’s interest in grand narrative” and at another point touching on recent debates about the use of artificial intelligence by the military.
Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt
Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt
“The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” Palantir says. “Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.”
Similarly, the company suggests that “the atomic age is ending,” while “a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.”
The post also takes a moment to denounce the “postwar neutering of Germany and Japan,” adding that the “defanging of Germany 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 a vacant and hollow pluralism.” In Palantir’s argument, a blind devotion to pluralism and inclusivity “glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.”
After Palantir posted this on Saturday, Eliot Higgins, the CEO of the investigative website Bellingcat, dryly remarked that it was “extremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement.”
Higgins also argued that there’s more to the post 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, deliberation, and accountability.
“It’s also worth being clear about who’s doing the arguing,” Higgins wrote. “Palantir sells operational software to defense, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren’t philosophy floating in space, they’re the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it’s advocating.”
