GoKawiil"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," says military contractor and all-around surveillance-enabler Palantir.
The big data company—whose analysis tools help power everything from "predictive policing" in U.S. cities to military operations in Gaza—recently released a 22-point manifesto that's perhaps best described as bootlicking, though icky, elitist, and ultranationalistic would also do.
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Palantir posted the document to X on Saturday, calling it a brief summary of The Technological Republic, a 2025 book by Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and head of corporate and legal affairs Nicholas W. Zamiska. You can read the full manifesto here.
From the start, the company's view of the proper relationship between private entities and the government becomes clear.
"Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible," it states. "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation."
A debt to the country that must be paid back by participating in national defense? That sure sounds like a suggestion that tech companies must do the state's bidding as a thank you for being allowed to exist and thrive—which would be an amazing distortion of how a liberal society should work. (It's hard not to see this through the lens of the Pentagon's recent dispute with Anthropic.)
Even the idea that tech companies owes "the country" as a whole—or individual Americans anything more than the goods and services we pay for—is a weird thing to suggest and a little too "collective good" for my liking.
Overall, the document drips with melodramatic language ("the tyranny of the apps"), conservative dog whistles (cultural "decadence"), and some jarring contradictions. For instance, we must have more tolerance for religious beliefs, it says—but also "resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism."
There's a lot of bizarre shade thrown at other tech companies and/or people's satisfaction with them. "Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization?" it asks at one point. "Free email is not enough," it says in another. ("The thesis is simple: Silicon Valley should stop building apps and start building weapons," commented one anonymous X user in response.)
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