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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.
I have become increasingly unimpressed by business elites in general. It's pretty safe to say that they are not stupid, but they don't seem to be inclined towards the qualities we would desire in political leadership. They are not brave or principled or wise; in practice they are primarily selected for ambition and acquisitiveness and their ability to please investors (which in turn tends to mean a kind of bloodless and unscrupulous administrative competence). However, their financial success endows them not only with the arrogance to believe their domain expertise generalizes (a common failing of the successful in any intellectual field) but the resources to bend reality to their preferences.
I don't know, maybe those landed gentry complaining about the venal upstart merchants were on to something (they weren't). Karp's attitude seems predicated on the assumption that tech elites have a special claim to being smarter/more capable, but it's not really in evidence (DOGE being a mere embarrassment is the kindest thing you can say about it). As I said, I do not think that they are stupid, but I do think they are fundamentally gamblers who have confused the combination of survivorship bias and mere competence for brilliance.
Why make the point and then immediately deny it, beyond reflexive ideological distaste?
That was indeed the complaint of the landed gentry. People who just made lots of money are not necessarily good caretakers - they are often acquisitive and grasping, they tend to be gamblers whose individual endeavors are disposable, they're not trained to be leaders, and they often don't regard themselves as having obligations to society because they transcended society. The landed gentry had serious, solid holdings that couldn't be moved or got rid of, a clear and specific personal relationship with the people of a certain area (the kind of relationship that MPs / senators (?) are meant to have and don't), and were self-consciously trained for virtue even if it didn't always take.
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