Technopoly on line one
The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska (Crown Currency, 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Stice
Palantir is the name of a “seeing stone” in Lord of the Rings. On the Dow Jones, Palantir is a publicly traded company that works with AI, data, and software and they have domestic contracts with the U.S. government—intelligence agencies, military branches, local government, etc.—and private companies. They also have contracts overseas with entities like the NHS in England and the Israeli Defense Forces. Palantir promises efficiency, analysis, and advantage. According to their website: “With good data and the right technology, people and institutions today can still solve hard problems and change the world for the better.” In consulting language, they “make products for human-driven analysis of real-world data.” That often translates into tools that assist with tracking, recognition, and targeting. Among other things, they help make the U.S. military more lethal. Palantir is led by a controversial figure, Peter Thiel.
The Technological Republic is a look behind the curtain at the philosophy of Palantir. Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska are both leaders at Palantir and Karp is one of the company’s co-founders. They and the company have faced scrutiny. Some software engineers have no interest in making software that works as a weapon. Some citizens worry that Palantir has managed to cook up a stronger version of the surveillance machine from The Dark Knight Rises (2012), but rather than destroy it they are selling access to it. Palantir sells the kind of technology that makes China’s social credit system possible and powerful (Palantir itself does not work in or with China). Of course, Palantir is another company at the cutting edge of AI, which not everyone loves. And then you have the relationship between Peter Thiel and the Republican Party. Karp’s “manifesto” from the Palantir account on X/Twitter has also stirred up animosity.
In The Technological Republic, Karp and Zamiska speak up to explain their view of the world and why they think Palantir is leading the way to a better America. They do not always talk explicitly about Palantir, more often they refer back to themselves and rely on “we,” but the association with Palantir is clear and sometimes explicit. The book opens with some criticism of Silicon Valley, which is no doubt welcome in most other valleys. They believe that for too long, Silicon Valley types have not appreciated the benefits they’ve received from the nation state and our government. Too many companies are also wasting their intelligence on silly consumer goods. Across America, Karp and Zamiska see a decline in sincere belief in America and its values. They want Silicon Valley, and Americans broadly, to enact “a renewed embrace of the public interest” (11). And they want tech and government to work together more closely.
After the diagnosis, Karp and Zamiska turn toward solutions. The Technological Republic unabashedly advocates hard power. Karp and Zamiska want to maintain U.S. dominance by arming us to the teeth. The lesson they take from Alfred Nobel is that terror prevents war, so terror is good (38). They want a new Manhattan Project (46). They want to take full advantage of the “software age” and assert our place in the world with technology and AI. Despite the risks that may come from linking AI with lethality, they suggest we move forward (26). And they interpret most opposition—especially from software developers who do not want to develop military technology—as performative rather than sincere.
Their views on AI are interesting. The authors acknowledge that because we do not always know how AI does what it does and that because there are errors, it poses a threat to human well-being. In fact, they believe that “the potential threat to our entire sense of self as a species” from AI “cannot be overstated” (20). Yet they emphasize the advantage of having powerful AI tools in our arsenal and the importance of not falling behind our adversaries, like China. The authors also think we should be “wary” of “a certain chauvinism that privileges the experience and capacity of the human mind above all else” (24).
The authors suggest that “soft belief” is why some people still need convincing to come around to their point of view. They offer a narrative of American cultural decline that parallels most conservative narratives about changes in the last 50 years. They point to things like education, the way that people talk about “cultures” instead of “culture,” and suggest that we are all ashamed of our past. The result of our cultural incoherence is that many Americans don’t believe very much in the country and are not very interested in public service. The authors consider Silicon Valley workers to be among the guiltiest. Many times in the book they suggest that sincere belief is not tolerated in America today, though they do not get into specific beliefs.
The authors then offer some solutions for our situation. We need to hire more Silicon Valley people to shake things up and we need to become more like Silicon Valley. They praise the “engineering mindset” and the organizational structure of most start-ups. They think we’d be better off with less structure. (David Epstein would probably recommend that they watch the documentary about General Magic, which operated along the principles advocated here and which was not a success.) Karp and Zamiska also think we should cool a bit on the “scrutiny” of leaders and emphasis on “disclosure” (61). They like the strong man theory of history and of leadership.
Karp and Zamiska believe that the emphasis should be on getting things done and alignment with country, not on personal behavior or personal beliefs. They don’t mind a man who takes bribes if he gets things done. That is their actual example, an admiral who took bribes and was criticized because of it. They think he should not have been criticized. Karp and Zamiska believe our national obsession with “enforcement of administrative rules and regulations” to prevent corruption means we are losing out on those “whose intentions are noble enough and, more important, whose interests are aligned with the group” (187). The tests ought to be effectiveness and location in the us/them dynamic, not some kind of purity. There is an entire chapter on “Piety and its Price.”
The preface states that this book is “the product of a nearly decade-long conversation between its authors” and it reads that way (xiii). Alongside some well-founded observations and relevant studies are unsupported broad statements that would be hard to ground in fact. There are also a few instances of slanted interpretation and avoidable errors. Arguably, as a diplomat, Benjamin Franklin was not a politician as he is described here. Inarguably, Elon Musk was not the founder of Tesla, as described. In some places, references to books and studies and authors often reflect surface knowledge (or research) rather than true familiarity with the sources. You would be hard-pressed to read James K.A. Smith’s work and believe that it would align with this book, but a quote has been pulled from Smith to offer support for Karp and Zamiska’s views.
Ultimately, the three best words to describe this book are cringe, contradictory, and craven. The cringe aspect comes from the obvious distance between Karp and Zamiska—and perhaps the Silicon Valley they speak for—and the rest of America. In many passages, they display a clear belief in the superiority of the minds and mentality of Silicon Valley and of the “engineering” approach to the world. They also seem to believe that Silicon Valley displays “disinterest in theater and posturing,” unlike the rest of us (xvi). It’s a dubious claim, but it plays into their persistence in diagnosing all their moral opponents with theatricality. They also write that “the most capable generation of coders has never experienced a war or genuine social upheaval” (10). Their entire community apparently missed both the GWOT and the events of the 2020s.
The idea that this book would be a positive representation of their views is also cringe. Three times they turn to accepting or rehabilitating Nazis as a good example of how we should move on from messy moral judgment and stop feeling guilty about everything. It’s an odd choice. The authors even go so far as to say that present-day German guilt is responsible for Russian aggression. Apparently, the fact that Germany was politically divided (and occupied) for almost 50 years was less of a factor in its current condition than the vibes. The fact that Germans did not feel very guilty for a long time is not on their radar at all. No one has introduced them to Vergangenheitsbewältigung yet, though that seems strange because Karp got his doctorate in Frankfurt.
The contradictory aspect of the book is everywhere. The authors suggest that genuine belief and virtue have been thrown aside in America. They find that wrong, yet they also suggest that we are held back by having too many purity tests for political and business leaders. This kind of contradiction can happen on back-to-back pages. On page 80, they bemoan “the speed and enthusiasm with which the culture skewers anyone for their perceived transgressions and errors.” On page 81, they bemoan the fact that “we have withdrawn just as much from making ethical judgments about the good life as we have aesthetic judgments about beauty.” Which is it? Should we make ethical judgments? Or should we avoid making ethical judgments so that the right people can lead? There are countless examples of such contradictions. We should have a less hierarchical organizational system, but we should be unquestioning of extremely powerful leaders. We should reject elites, but we should stop listening to the masses and let the best minds lead. Silicon Valley is insufficiently patriotic and deeply unappreciative of the nation, but we should let Silicon Valley run more of the country.
What makes this book craven is the mask it wears. At the end of the day, the authors are all in on some kind of nerdy, Nietzschean Übermensch. They advocate a strong nationalism, built on dominance and weaponry, and led by powerful individuals who should not be judged by the typical standards of right and wrong. They cloak this with shallow appeals to populism, throwing in predictable jabs at coastal and academic elites. They blame liberals for neutering America and killing our national pride. They also take some swings at Silicon Valley and its role in rampant consumerism. They say that bureaucracy is out of hand. They even make sure to bring in lots of religious authors in a chapter titled “The Next Thousand Years.” They run through something of a checklist of common complaints and tropes, hoping to help us go under the knife a little more easily. After all, you do not need Palantir’s data analysis to know a sentence like this will be warmly received by most of America: “Was American nothing more than a vehicle through which a newly globalized and educated elite could enrich itself?” (73).
Ultimately, the attempted cloaking of their lust for power is ineffective as ether. You do not have to read between the lines to notice that they perversely suggest that Google’s (now abandoned) guideline “don’t be evil” is nihilism (64). They side with Faust. They advocate for paying government employees better, while also advocating that Silicon Valley take on more government roles. They say that we need a shared communal experience, but they offer us no examples of what that might look like. They write about the need to emphasize Western civilization and American values, without identifying the values (inclusivity is definitely off the list, though). They attack idealism, which distinguished our country for most of its history and arguably began with our elevation of George Washington. They are openly skeptical of our historical appreciation for “transparency and process” (187). What matters is just getting things done, not how things get done. They make this point repeatedly.
The good news is, according to the authors, Palantir cares about the country. They care enough that they sued the United States to force the United States to employ them, for our own good (153). Karp and Zamiska bring that up, just like they bring up the fact that if we’d get over our squeamishness, they’d be happy to give us drones which would spare police officers having to approach cars and could easily shoot any driver. Karp and Zamiska, and others like them, are happy to swoop in and save the country. The old order has fallen on hard times, but: “We should now build something together in its place” (218). For readers outside of Palantir, it’s as though the entire book is prosecution’s evidence against them. It should be read as such.
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history and assistant director of the honors program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023) and she is a contributing editor and associate books editor at Front Porch Republic.
