Palantir Manifesto Is Here To Give Literally Everyone The Creeps
We're in trouble.
Palantir is evil and gross and was basically created by the CIA, learn all about it if you don’t know. But please, allow them to expand on that thought.
Over the weekend the company Xitted out a manifesto that eGadget says “reads like the ramblings of a comic book villain,” though comic book villains at last have fun names and decent outfits, and compelling origin stories, because simple power-hungry greedy billionaires who will murder anybody to make a buck is too boring and basic of a plotline, right?
Let’s just paste the whole 22-point thing down below! If you just can’t get enough, it is also an excerpt from an entire 2025 desk-poundy-call-to-action type book, The Technical Republic, by CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, Palantir’s top lawyer. Here is Zamiska’s author photo:
And remember this is Alex Karp.
So you can visualize the betters who are preaching here.
PREVIOUSLY!
Said call-to-action appears to be for the US to give up on soft power entirely, forget about ethics, and give techbros all of that money so they can use it to monitor everyone on earth and use AI to bomb the shit out of whoever, because they are philosopher kings and your betters. The manifesto is Palantir positioning itself like IBM in the ‘30s, but knowingly, gladly. And quite profitably, the multi-billion-dollar WAR and ICE contracts keep on coming, and the company’s stock is now worth 24 times what it was three years ago. Last year the Army even made Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar and three other tech executives lieutenant colonels in the US Army Reserves.
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So while the manifesto is in future tense, much of this stuff is already underway, to a degree much more than we know, or has already been happening for decades.
With no further delay:
1. 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.
2. 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.
Ok, sure, whatever.
3. 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.
Says the ... guy at the top of the decadent ruling class? Donald John Trump and his ruling class of elites have most certainly made both of those things much worse by any measure. But how can we fix it, Alex Karp and Alex Karp’s lawyer? And having a decadent elite class is what capitalism is supposed to be all about! Does Alex Karp want billionaires walking about in sack-cloths?
4. 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.
He soared, rhetorically. You see, nobody has any morals today, so may as well toss those pussy-ass “ethics” because they simply aren’t practical and nobody cares.
5. 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.
Palantir has and is already building them! See how many times they appear in this article about the US blowing up those little girls in Iran. No worries about any “theatrical debates,” the point is moot.
6. 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.
DRAFT BARRON!
7. 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.
Sure wish Congress would actually do that, debate appropriateness, instead of continuing to allow Trump and Pete Hegseth to AI murder all the Iranian schoolgirls they want to! Hey wait, wasn’t point number five that moral and ethical debates are theatrical wastes of time for dumdums?
8. 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.
I’ve been wondering why the trashman keeps refusing to hear my confession! Oh hey, if churches want to engage in politics from the pulpit, tax them! You’re all for that, right? Right?
9. 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.
You smelly serfs refused to forgive Donald John Trump his trespasses and have been so nonstop mean to him! Is it any wonder why the techbros want to put everybody’s face in a database? Why should anyone who does badthink and talks shit about Trump or Charlie Kirk enjoy the benefits of citizenship? Or maybe he is talking about how mean everyone was to Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi. The language is nice and vague, so a reader can plug in whatever nouns they choose.
10. 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.
Are you feeling disappointed at the way Donald J. Trump is not fixing The Gas or The Groceries or The Wars like he said he was going to? The problem is you! Politicians are there to give techbros money and do war, and if you expect them to do things like what they promised, like cutting healthcare costs or building bridges, that’s just you having an unhealthy parasocial relationship. Go apply some ibogaine to that!
11. 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.
I thought you said there weren’t going to be any ethics debates because soft talkin’ was for pussies, and we can’t afford to pause anything because our enemies will blow us to smithereens? Which is it?
12. 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.
The nukes are still out there, though, and how deterring is it really if the US bombed an elementary school then claimed it was by accident, because of 15-year-old maps? “Stop or I’ll shoot with a 50 percent chance I’ll hit the target! Feeling lucky, punk?”
And while Palantir has been a defense contractor for more than 20 years, the US ran out of anti-drone arms and had to beg for help from Ukraine less than a week into the conflict. If AI drone warfare is the future, the US is not winning, and organizing everybody on earth’s face into some database won’t help.
13. 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.
Sure, Jan, no self-made rich people anywhere else in the world! The country with the second-largest number of billionaires is actually China, which does hold meritocracy as a value, and bases college entrance on a national exam. That’s why all of the kids with rich parents who don’t score well end up going to college somewhere else.
14. 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.
Time to fix THAT oversight!
15. 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.
What?
16. 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.
Oh yeah, the “grand narrative” is what we’re all snickering at. Not the hair plugs, his pathetic bitter-divorced-dad energy, or the skinny jeans he crams under his paunch trying to look like someone half his age, or that time he tried to score an invite to a party from Jeffrey Epstein. Funny that this is what the billionaire class seems to fear more than anything. Not killing innocent people, and certainly not personal failure of any kind, they are way above and beyond worries like that! It is “the culture” of people who laugh at them because they’re ridiculous losers who huff their own farts all day. Guilty as charged! It was neat how Elon Musk built out Tesla and fucked traditional dealerships, he did seem cool until we were all forced to learn about his horrible personality!
17. 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.
Not in Baltimore, we’ve got license-plate readers, shot-spotters, and once even a spy plane watching the every move of all us degenerates.
18. 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.
That’s not a very nice thing to say about Donald John Trump!
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
Everybody wants to be an asshole, we’re just big enough assholes to say so.
20. 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.
It’s awful the way Muslims are being treated right now, but probably not what he means.
21. 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.
Don’t worry, dude, as shitty as things are, we can still say MAGA culture is some garbage.
22. 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?
Inclusion into what indeed? Why do people from other countries want to come here, what is our national culture if it is not the diverse co-existence of pluralism, diversity and inclusion? But sure, that is hollow, unlike the rich culture of MAGA, with its fine foods, traditional dances, and wedding dresses made of Trump flags.
Oi, where’s me jumper?!
[Bookshop link]
Jesus Christ. This reads like a college sophomore wrote it after reading Ayn Rand--- but only if said sophomore had only ever lived in a hermetically sealed basement, never experiencing anything of the world except through a computer screen. Never actually seen a sunset, listened to a piece of live music, comforted a dying or grieving friend, held a baby, traveled to someplace new where he didn't speak the language, hiked a national trail, had a conversation with a woman....the list goes on. Fucking scary. Too many people really need to touch grass more.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is why a liberal arts education matters. Half the entries of this numbered list have sentences that aren't even addressing the same goddamn point. To say nothing of the contradictions Marcie rightly pointed out between entries, the vague language that often says nothing, the unchallenged assumptions underlying the whole fascist enterprise, or the absurdity of making a list like this at all.