Palantir posts mini-manifesto denouncing inclusivity and ‘regressive’ cultures

Surveillance and analytics company Palantir recently posted what it called a “brief” 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s book “The Technological Republic.”

Written by Karp and Palantir chief corporate officer Nicholas Zamiska, “The Technological Republic” was published last year and described by its authors as “the beginning of the articulation of the theory” behind Palantir’s work. (One critic said it was “not a book at all, but a piece of corporate sales material.”)

The company’s ideological leanings have since come under increasing scrutiny, as tech industry figures have discussed Palantir’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and as the company has positioned itself as an organization dedicated to defending “the West.”

In fact, congressional Democrats recently sent a letter to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security they demand more information about how tools built by Palantir and “an array of surveillance companies” are being used in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.

Palantir’s message does not directly reference that context, saying only that it provides the summary “because we are being asked a lot.” It then suggests that “Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible” and declares that “free email is not enough.”

“The decadence of a culture or civilization, and even of its ruling class, will only be forgiven if that culture is able to achieve economic growth and security for the public,” the company says.

The post is wide-ranging and at one point criticizes a culture that is ‘almost chuckled at [Elon] Musk’s interest in the big story” and, at another point, addressing recent debates over the military’s use of artificial intelligence.

“The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” Palantir says. “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 continue.”

Likewise, the company suggests that “the nuclear age is coming to an end,” while “a new age of deterrence, based on AI, is about to begin.”

The post also takes a moment to denounce the “postwar castration of Germany and Japan,” adding that “Germany’s weakening was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price” and that “a similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism” could “threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”

The article ends with a criticism of ‘the superficial temptation of an empty and hollow pluralism’. In Palantir’s argument, a blind commitment to pluralism and inclusivity “obscures the fact that certain cultures and even subcultures… have produced miracles. Others have proven mediocre, and worse, regressive and harmful.”

After Palantir posted this on Saturday, Eliot Higgins, the CEO of the investigative website Bellingcat, said: noted dry that it was “extremely normal and fine for a company to put this out in a public statement.”

Higgins too argued that there is more to it than a simple “defense of the West” – according to him it is an attack on what he believes are the main pillars of democracy that need to be rebuilt: verification, deliberation and accountability.

“It is also worth clarifying who is making the argument,” Higgins wrote. “Palantir sells operational software to defense, intelligence, immigration and law enforcement agencies. These 22 points are not a philosophy floating in space, but the public ideology of a company whose revenues depend on the policies it advocates.”