Over the weekend, Palantir posted a summary of Alex Karp’s book “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West” – which was slammed as being “evil.”
Palantir: technofascists are technofascisting again
The post makes explicit what Palantir wants: the supremacy of the US military industrial complex to infiltrate every aspect of everyone’s life. It is also an ode to the PayPal Mafia, like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
Unsurprisingly, the two South African-born white men who grew up under apartheid are the poster boys! Though the post is calling for American conscription, bet Thiel and Musk will be dodgers, just like their mate Trump!
The book, which serves as the manifesto of the AI giant, is twenty-two rambling points: –
Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
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 limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. 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.
National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.
American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
The response to the post has been widespread alarm and disdain.
The post is indeed alarming with its glorification of past German and Japanese fascism, the glorification of Musk, the glorification of Western ‘culture’, and the glorification of Western totalitarianism.
Palantir’s call for western culture – read violence – has been in a lot of its marketing material. In its Q4 2024 results, the company referenced Samuel Huntington’s book ‘Clash of Civilisations.’
As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible “by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”
He continued: “Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
Huntington’s thesis, which argued that the main “clash” would be between the West and Islam, is called by Ruby Hamad a “self-fulfilling prophecy; a foreign policy directive in (thin) disguise.”
Feinstein commented on Palantir’s post, saying that Thiel’s apartheid South African upbringing shaped his racist, pro-genetic, pro-Israel, psychopathic worldview, and Palantir is now being handed the British state by Labour’s Starmer, Streeting, and Mandelson, among others.
Peter Thiel’s upbringing in apartheid South Africa & what is today Namibia clearly had enormous influence on his thinking: racist white supremacy, geneticism, glorification of South Africa’s closest ally the ethno-nationalist Israeli state, an almost psychopathic indifference to… https://t.co/SPWlUt1QUT
— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) April 19, 2026
We think Lammy’s recent handshake with Palantir sponsored Thiel should also be highlighted.
Lammy calls Palantir-sponsored JD Vance a ‘friend’ on latest Washington trip
Who is going to vote for David Lammy’s party in the local elections? With friends like Vance and Mandelson, it’s anyone’s guess. ‘Debasement’, as @ZackPolanski saidhttps://t.co/03b0PrMmwK…
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) April 15, 2026
Yanis Varoufakis summarized Palantir’s post, the main point of which can be, as Varoufakis put it, ‘Ethics is for suckers. The West needs more of Palantir’s murderous software.’ He also said, “If Evil could tweet, this is what it would!”
Old advertisement for Israel trends
The bizarre post also led to people posting the whole-page advertisement that Palantir bought in October 2023, in support of Israel.
Palantir stands with genocide. https://t.co/6zYAqNGqzZ
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) April 19, 2026
People like Mai El-Sadany also emphasised Palantir’s connections to ICE and Israel.
Today, a lot of people will be talking about the manifesto that Palantir released. In addition to pouring over what those words mean, I invite you to ground the conversation in what Palantir has already done.
Its work with Israel and ICE show us exactly what it stands for.
— Mai El-Sadany (@maitelsadany) April 19, 2026
From a £1 NHS COVID contract to long-term roles in health and defence, Palantir is now part of the UK’s data infrastructure. This company, which is boasting about being evil, should be nowhere near civilian infrastructure.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
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americans are fucking removed.