Palantir CEO Karp to Silicon Valley: Up to arms!

The next target of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal state is expected to be the Department of Defense (Pentagon). The US military’s interventionist foreign policy orientation, its global presence, and the unwieldiness of arms companies that claim a large share of Pentagon contracts have become top priorities for “Trumpism” and the Silicon Valley contingent that aligned with Trump.

We will examine the Musk-Trump-Hegseth plans for the Pentagon later, but first, we need to analyze Silicon Valley. This examination is necessary because, at the beginning of the second Trump era, a book that serves essentially as promotional material for Palantir—one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive companies—has been released. Both the author and Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, reveal the technology-supported New Right’s vision regarding the USA, the Pentagon, and the world.

“The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West” by Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska is not yet available, but Karp’s promotional interviews, articles about the book, and our knowledge of technology-loving New Right-libertarian thought (such as the ideas of Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel) enable us to offer commentary.

For instance, Erich Schwartzel of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) conducted his interview with Karp in a “cave-like” cabin reminiscent of the billionaire’s famous Heidegger retreat. Schwartzel describes the scene as follows: “The features of the hut perfectly reflected the interests of a billionaire on a quest to save the West. The windows were decorated with curtains with American flag motifs. Completed and half-completed Rubik’s Cubes were scattered on coffee tables.”

Karp asks, “Would you like to see my guns?” According to Schwartzel, one of Karp’s hobbies is long-range shooting, targeting objects beyond normal firearm parameters. “He took a stance to show the mix of practice and instinct that come together to make the perfect shot,” the reporter explains.

Here we have a profile of the quintessential wealthy New Rightist. After more than two decades running Palantir, a data analytics firm known for its work with the US military and intelligence agencies, Karp owes his billions to the US government. With a market capitalization exceeding $260 billion, what we know about Palantir’s clandestine activities pales in comparison to what remains hidden.

What does Palantir do? In 2003, Karp, who co-founded Palantir with Stanford Law classmate Thiel, essentially adapted a program from Thiel’s other company, PayPal, which identified Russian money laundering by detecting seemingly unrelated cash transactions.

Palantir, named after the “seeing stone” from the Lord of the Rings series, was designed from inception to sift through government and private company data to uncover hidden patterns. The company’s early work traced a series of attacks on an Iraqi village and identified a cyber network infiltration campaign against the Dalai Lama. In Afghanistan, Palantir software enabled the US military to discover patterns in roadside bomb placements, facilitating their discovery and dismantling.

When asked about his occupation, Karp typically responds that “it’s classified information.” “For most people we were not very sexy, and for a small number of people we were uncontrollably sexy,” he told the WSJ.

The company’s clients include the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, as well as “civilian” corporations such as Amazon, Airbus, and Merck.

The WSJ reporter also notes that in recent years, many “philosopher-kings” have emerged from Silicon Valley—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Thiel, among others. Within this group, Karp is known for avoiding the spotlight.

This discretion may be part of his mystique. Karp oversees Palantir’s lucrative contracts while urging Silicon Valley to help “the West win the clash of civilizations.”

Karp’s book criticizes the tech industry for abandoning its history of “helping America and its allies.” Echoing Musk, Hegseth, and Trump, he argues that the industry’s last two decades represent “a colossal waste.”

The WSJ reporter quotes from the book: While he and his Palantir colleagues work to save American soldiers’ lives in Kandahar by detecting roadside bombs, his peers in Northern California enable college-educated smartphone users to obtain paragliding coupons and play FarmVille after decades of peace. Karp rebels against this disparity.

John Ganz, who reviewed the book for Bloomberg, highlights a similar theme. “At some point, Silicon Valley lost its way,” the book summarizes. What began as a “bold partnership between the US government and the private sector to develop innovative new technologies” has degenerated over five decades to cater primarily to consumers and markets. The Valley has built social media platforms, e-commerce sites, and food delivery applications, but either from principle or self-interest, its founders failed to help the US Department of Defense develop effective new weapons.

If Karp’s book could be distilled into one sentence, Schwartzel suggests it might be: “The wonder kids of Silicon Valley—their fortunes, their business empires, and, more fundamentally, their entire sense of self—existed, in many cases, because of the nation that made their rise possible.”

Karp believes the industry must now repay that debt by uniting with the American state. The authors declare that it is “time for the prodigal son to come home.” “Softened” by their dedication to consumerism, peacetime, and comfortable living, Silicon Valley workers must rededicate themselves to the “collective project” of American nationalism and defense of the “civilizational project” called the West.

The Bloomberg author quotes directly from the book, revealing the mindset of New Right techno-libertarian billionaires. According to them, since in “authoritarian” regimes the wealthy’s fate intertwines with the state and society, they behave “as owners who have a say in the future of their country” and demonstrate greater sensitivity to public needs and demands. The authors explain this through a typical property owner’s perspective: “All of us in business and politics are always bargaining against the threat of rebellion.”

But what does defending Western values entail? Silicon Valley’s role is defined as: “A society of ownership, a founder’s culture that comes from technology but has the potential to reshape government, and not to entrust leadership to anyone who has not had a hand in its own success.”

“Silicon Valley’s fundamental insight is not just to hire the best and brightest, but to treat them as such, to give them the flexibility, freedom and space to create,” the book states. Through libertarian thinking, these exceptional engineers would dominate the state—at least that’s the intention.

And there’s more. According to Karp and Zamiska, this special minority will apply a “ruthlessly pragmatic” engineering mentality to national issues. And who decides what constitutes national issues? Naturally, Silicon Valley’s uniquely aware engineers.

According to Bloomberg, the “republic” envisioned by the authors appears to have only two components: elites and masses, bound together by a “collective identity” supported by “civic rituals” and a “common mythology.”

Contemporary concerns for public opinion and democratic will are dismissed as “symbolism,” “conformism,” “performance,” and “social calculation.” Instead, the technological republic’s leadership relies on the “diligent pursuit of advances and results.”

These arguments align with Peter Thiel’s views on democracy. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in his 2009 article “The Education of a Libertarian.” To Thiel, elections as a democratic procedure made no sense. Thiel and his associates combined this dissatisfaction with hostility toward the “regulatory state” and challenged “all forms of politics” with an almost Schmittian revulsion.

Consequently, the book contains numerous contradictions. It criticizes unaccountable “technocrats” yet proposes governance by Silicon Valley engineers shielded from public or political interference. It condemns federal bureaucracy excesses while advocating an equally unaccountable form of government. Similar to 20th-century fascism, it advocates for artistic-aesthetic freedom while subordinating it to a single goal: the nation-state’s military dominance. In the Bloomberg author’s words, it proposes that “politicians and civil servants should be replaced by STEM soldier-poets.”

The Bloomberg reviewer likens this to Weimar period “reactionary modernism,” citing similarities: nostalgia for lost national greatness, disdain for markets and consumerism in favor of state management and industrial production, romantic obsession with advanced weaponry, and the virtual deification of engineers as the spiritual vanguard of this dark utopia.

The introductions to Karp’s book by figures like former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, General James N. Mattis, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon suggest these ideas extend beyond fringe New Right extremists.

The authors advocate for collaboration between state and corporate power merged with “engineering genius,” with the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb as their ideal model. Karp believes the US should undertake a similar initiative for artificial intelligence, requiring massive capital investment.

The Palantir CEO approves of Trump and Musk’s attacks on the federal government, claiming to have “predicted” them years ago.

“Predicted” is an understatement. Palantir is expected to strengthen its position under the Trump administration and has already begun doing so. The company’s stock price has increased by over 180% since the day before Trump’s election. Growth in Palantir’s artificial intelligence business and expectations that the new administration will favor companies like Palantir over traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin propel this momentum.

Karp perhaps summarizes the difference between the New Right-libertarian Silicon Valley cohort and its predecessors: In a recent investor call, he stated that Palantir is “making America more lethal” by analyzing vast data sets for US armed forces and allies, helping them predict enemy movements, determine coordinates, “and sometimes kill them.” Unlike the old warlords who ruled from behind the scenes, Karp proudly aspires to direct state involvement. At least he’s forthright.

Indeed, several former Palantir employees have recently taken positions in the Trump administration, deepening the company’s government connections. In turn, Palantir has hired figures like former Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who chaired the House Chinese Communist Party Committee from 2023 to 2024 and advocated for stronger responses to

Chinese influence in America. Gallagher now leads Palantir’s defense business. Karp told potential investors that investing in Palantir meant supporting a company whose mission was to “support Western liberal democracy and its strategic allies.” He guaranteed that the “know-how” of Silicon Valley’s relatively small but technologically sophisticated companies would be made available to Western states, especially the United States.

In 2022, as Russian forces invaded Ukraine, he warned against nuclear escalation while acknowledging that “bad times are good for Palantir.”

According to the WSJ, Karp had advocated many of the book’s central themes for years, but several developments prompted him to compile them: Operation Aqsa Flood, led by Hamas, motivated him to speak more boldly. Hours after news of the attack spread, Karp deployed Palantir staff to Israel to “help coordinate the country’s response.”

Arguing that we’re entering a new global era, Karp contends that the artificial intelligence systems driving investor interest in Palantir will elevate talent requirements and compel everyone to “do something unique and creative.”

This brings us to the Pentagon plans of the Trump-Musk-Hegseth trio, which we will address in subsequent installments of this series.