The Technological Republic

In April 2026, the media reported about a manifesto which Alex Karp, one of the founders of the software company Palantir, had posted to X. Many of these reports were negative and considered the manifesto a threat. When I learned that the manifesto was essentially a summary of a book published a year ago, The Technological Republic, I decided to get hold of the book to learn the message Karp wants to spread.

 

The central message of this book is that the software industry should support the state and be closely aligned with the government to combine "a pursuit of innovation with the objectives of the nation". The authors speak of a "national plan" to which every citizen should be committed, which should involve research and development in space travel, medicine, and military. The military is especially important. The adversaries of the West, most notably China and Russia, will invest in upgrading their military with artificial intelligence, the authors are sure. Western politicians have often underestimated authoritarian regimes. They believed, following Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy was the ultimate end-state of political development. But Russia and China have still not become liberal democracies. Therefore the West must prepare for war fought using artificial intelligence technology. Palantir is one of the companies that are providing equipment for it. In contrast to that, most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs currently focus on consumer goods, social media, chat and photo-sharing apps, while refusing to cooperate with the government and the army. This attitude needs to be changed, the authors state. As Walter Isaacson wrote in his review of this book: "This book is a rallying cry, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence, for a return to the World War II era of cooperation between the technology industry and government in order to pursue innovation that will advance our national welfare and democratic goals."

Much of the second part of the book reads like a continuation of Allan Bloom's 1987 book "The Closing of the American Mind". The authors complain that the current leaders of the United States lack a national vision. They call for a kind of civic religion to be founded. One chapter of this part deals with the abolition of Western civilization classes at American universities. In this context the authors praise the increasing number of computer science graduates but express the critical view that "we need engineers who are engaged with and curious about the world, the movement of history and its contradictions, not merely skilled at programming".

The third part mainly revolves around the virtues of the authors' company, Palantir, and its cultural embedding in Silicon Valley, such as resistance to conformity. The authors illustrate their arguments by references to some classical scientific experiments such as the well-known Milgram experiment.

 

The vision of the technological republic is the theme of the final part, in which the authors stress that the USA need a national plan and a national identity.

 

I think that the message of the book is clear: It calls entrepreneurs and politicians to action, to concert their efforts. In this respect it is interesting that Karp, according to Wikipedia, is actually opposed to President Trump. He calls himself a "socialist" and says that he supported Hillary Clinton. Indeed the political program of this book might be called statist if not even nationalist. While I agree that medicine is a good field to develop software for, it is just one of several areas the strengthening of which the authors suggest, the main one being the military. Of course it makes sense to use artificial intelligence in the American military if America's adversaries will do the same. What's controversial, however, is that military equipment can also be used for aggressive purposes.

 

Claus D. Volko