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Notes -
Opening up the discussion on Palantir's CEO 22 points manifesto (original twitter link) which is an excerpt for his new book The Technological Republic.
First impulses when reading through the list, I see that it's melding nationalism and civic responsibility with some kind of tech-elite-ism (?) and culture war critiques.
Anyways, here is what I got from it after thinking about it more and talking with various AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen):
I think I am influenced because I am currently reading through Seeing Like a State, but I get the feeling that Alex Karp believes he is a leader in a vanguard of tech elites that knows what's best (even if many are distracted from the real issues right now) and everyone should listen and just follow this vanguard. Oh and throw in some "woe is me, only I can save the republic, they just don't understand me, so read my book because then you will".
I think this is an interesting view into the CEO of one of the most important companies. My impression of the man has decreased, and increasing my concern for the kind of leaders and elites that is brewing up within American society.
Is it one of the most important companies? I honestly don't know, it certainly gets enough press for it recently.
No, seriously, I don't know what exactly they do, certainly not how I mostly know what SpaceX, Google, Meta, Apple, and the rest do. Probably in large part because unlike most of those previous companies, they don't have any real consumer-facing presence, no products that 'regular' people integrate into their lives. Even looking at their history its like they took a bit of tech used in Paypal for fraud detection and adapted it to analyze, effectively, any given database you might plug in? And it kinda stuck around in a stealthy startup phase for like 10 years, then started getting various DoD/Government contracts, and then finally IPO'd in 2020, so seems like it took a long time to find footing, and during that time the founders kept tight control of it and kept adding funding to it even while it wasn't clear what the company would do.
I am not in fact critiquing them on this basis, I'm just saying it is opaque to me why this company is important in the same way that Boeing, Eli Lilly, or even Amazon is important. If they disappeared tomorrow, how would i most obviously notice their absence?
And if detection of fraud is a core feature, I'm definitely confused as to why all the various fraud schemes in Minnesota, California, New York, and elsewhere just went undetected for so long, or at least unremarked and prosecuted.
Again, not a critique of the company, maybe a critique of how gov't actors have been using it, but certainly me wondering the value being provided here.
And since as far as I can tell they do make some sort of platform that allows use of AI analysis, but they do NOT build their own AI models... what would make them more important than one of the frontier AI labs, or the Chip manufacturers, or any given major player in the energy sector?
As for the the manifesto, I guess I'd ask for it to put out something more 'actionable' to really offer a opinion on it. I think I see what it is gesturing at, but the actual, positive vision for what the world should look like hasn't been laid out here.
This seems to be the most concrete point:
It also does that annoying thing by pointing out that U.S. "adversaries" will keep trying to undermine U.S. interests. Great. But what does the actual threat model look like? There's an easy list of countries that are 'adversaries,' and none of them are able to launch a land invasion. None of them can (currently) threaten U.S. energy independence, or disrupt citizens' lives much without exposing themselves to much worse reprisal.
Realistically the U.S. is going to bring itself down through self-inflicted wounds before any of its adversaries can mount an effective attack that actually cripples the country. And this seems to be part of the thrust of the manifesto but what does it say we do? Are we rejiggering the constitution to function in this new era, or just ignoring it where convenient, and where, precisely, do they want the ultimate balance of power to end up, with regard to sovereignty over the territories that compose the U.S.?
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