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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.
This list reads empty to me. Yes, I get it, the United States. But what is the point of the United States? Why does the United States deserve the best weapons, the best economy, and an universal conscription army? Why should anybody want to die for the United States? As far as I'm concerned, any decent man should refuse to put his life on the line for the United States. It's lost any heavenly mandate it once had due to lack of meritocracy and feminism. It doesn't give men, not even many very high quality men, good wives, and it actively interferes with this through many of its laws, so it is essentially a reproductive enemy, and therefore something of a genocidal threat, to the majority of good men.
Basically, the manifesto comes off as you must die for Buttsex in Botswana, peasant. No thanks. And I know that's what it is because the guy who owns the company has no interest in wives but lots of interest in buttsex. Oh, also can you imagine what that frizzy haired CEO of Palantir would say if the United States suddenly became a radically anti-Israel state? Yeah, it would be the Great Shaytan over night. So the United States is the defender of Israel and the purveyor of sodomy. Yay.
It's definitely missing the grandiose promises that it should feature.
But those are easy to come up with on the spot given American history: space colonization is the manifest destiny of the United States.
That and something about the lot of the common man improved by technology or something. Though the issue is that industry doesn't have the easy and inherent positive valence it used to have. The SV people need to have something better to sell than higher dopamine injection through attention control. Meaningful jobs?
But that would be boring, soulless, egalitarian slop drivel. Wow, the United States let the common man degenerate to an even lower state with antibiotics and keeps him entertained with a technology stack ultimately stolen from Europe and its early European settlers, who are now a persecuted minority. What could make that better? Oh, I know, what if we do it on a cold, desolate shithole planet!
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