I read the Palantir book so you don't have to
The Technological Republic resonates widely in Silicon Valley. Its important to understand why, and also where it goes wrong.
When The Technological Republic came out last year, I knew that even though I would hate it, I needed to read it. Understanding Silicon Valley’s rightward turn requires understanding the worldview of its most influential figures and how they justify the direction they are taking it. Having read it after putting it off for a year, here are my thoughts.
Written by Alexander Karp, Palatir’s CEO and founder, and Nicholas Zamiska, the company’s chief legal officer, The Technological Republic opens with a simple phrase that is difficult to disagree with: Silicon Valley has lost its way. The American tech industry—the two authors see it—as squandered its talent, capital, and ingenuity on the wrong things: social media platforms, consumer applications, and the extraordinarily lucrative business of tracking and monetizing human behavior online with ads. This has led to an industry that has produced fabulous wealth for itself but at the cost of abandoning its purpose. There is hardly anyone who would disagree with this diagnosis. And it is worth dwelling on before turning to the book’s own explanation of how the Valley lost its way—and their deeply misguided prescription for fixing it.
The Technological Republic does not pinpoint a precise moment at which the industry went awry. What one can infer from the authors’ frustrations is that the rot set in with the rise of the smartphone, or more importantly the internet, when the industry turned away from harder, more consequential problems and toward high-margin, fast-profit applications that came to define Web 2.0. At the time, however, none of this was obvious. In the years after the financial crisis, tech emerged as the country’s darling industry, standing for something that Wall Street did not: a mode of capitalism that made things (apps), connected people, democratized authority, and—at least on its own telling—sought to improve the world.
But as the industry matured, its reputation soured. The revelations of Edward Snowden in 2013 made clear that the largest American tech companies had become infrastructure for mass government surveillance. The Cambridge Analytica scandal that followed showed that social media data was being harvested and weaponized for political manipulation. Meanwhile, as the world got hooked on the many platforms with which we now interact, it became clear that Silicon Valley’s deliberately addictive design of the internet was creating a crisis in mental health—with teenage rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm rising in lockstep with the spread of phone usage. By the end of the decade, it was apparent that the seemingly benign consumer model on which the industry had made its riches was for the public deeply problematic.
These problems are only second-order consequences of what Karp and Zamiska see as Silicon Valley’s deeper failure: a lack of ambition. The tech industry, as they see it, gave up on producing genuine technological breakthroughs, settling instead for juicing the economy for short-term profits. Citing the economist Robert Gordon, Karp and Zamiska argue that the digital revolution—for all its shininess—produced surprisingly little in the way of broad-based productivity growth. The internet excelled at transforming the production and distribution of information; it was far less impressive at bringing about much change to the “real” economy that actually affected how most people lived; manufacturing, housing, healthcare, education, transportation remained expensive, slow, and inefficient. Few captured this more acutely than—or as early as—Karp’s longtime friend and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, quipping in 2011: We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
This critique of the consumer internet is one that Chinese government—which the book makes out to be the ultimate adversary—appears to share. In late 2020, the Chinese state launched a sweeping crackdown on its own internet giants—suspending Ant Group’s would-have-been record-breaking IPO, fining Alibaba tens of billions for antitrust violations, and imposing sweeping restrictions on other giants like Tencent in Didi. The crackdown no doubt had multiple drivers, including concerns over the political influence of celebrity-entrepreneur figures like Jack Ma. But there was also deeper discontent with the direction of the country’s technological growth. As the state produced a full-on attack on the tech industry, it made explicit that it wanted hard tech and not the consumer-oriented internet (which Xi Jinping characterized as the “disorderly expansion of capital”) to lead the economy. Notably, tech companies involved with hard tech—companies that produced physical things—were unscathed in the crackdown. Rather than following the American path of a consumer-driven, asset-light, and financialized economy, Xi talked about following the German model instead: one centered on industrial production, value-added manufacturing, and hard tech.
Scholars on the left have made similar critique of Silicon Valley: that tech’s internet-era consumer turn represented a failure of public purpose. The work of progressive economist Mariana Mazzucato, among others, showed that the foundational technologies of the digital economy—the internet, GPS, the touchscreen—weren’t the products of garage tinkerers or private firms but of sustained public investment, most of it routed through the defense research apparatus. The narrative that Silicon Valley was built on free-market entrepreneurship was, on this account, a dangerous myth that allowed the tech industry to privatize the fruits of internet’s core technologies and channel them into high-margin consumer applications—advertising, social media, e-commerce—that contributed little to the public that had underwritten them.
The technological class
To their credit, Karp and Zamiska—somewhat surprisingly for executives of a defense-tech contractor—draw on Mazzucato as well as a whole line up of progressive scholars, spanning anarchist anthropologist David Graeber to sociologist Manuel Castells to the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, to lay out how American technology failed the public. But where they take it is quite different. Whereas progressive scholars have highlighted Silicon Valley’s roots in the military to argue that the tech sector owes a debt to the public, Karp and Zamiska argue that the industry’s obligation is not only to the public but specifically to the military.
Their book is explicit about this. Karp and Zamiska write with admiration of the close collaboration between scientists, technologists, and the military during the Second World War—the Manhattan Project being their most frequently invoked example. This, they argue, was technological progress at its finest: ambitious, consequential, and in service of the nation. What they do not elaborate on is the moral anguish that the project’s scientists actually felt; many were in fact deeply troubled by what they had helped bring into the world, and a number even attempted to halt the weapon’s use after seeing how devastating the effects of the bomb would be.
As such, the tragedy that the book is premised on is that Silicon Valley has since drifted so far from this tradition of building technology for national security that its top firms have not only abandoned national purpose for self-enrichment but have even openly resisted any relationship to the military:
The technological class instinctively rushes to raise capital for video-sharing apps and social media platforms, advertising algorithms and online shopping websites. They do not hesitate to track and monetize our every movement online, burrowing their way into our lives. Yet these same engineers, and the Silicon Valley giants they have built often balk when it comes to working with the U.S. military. The irony, of course, is that the peace and freedom that those in Silicon Valley who are opposed to working with the U.S. military enjoy are made possible by that same military’s credible threat of force. (p. 46)
What’s most unique about this passage is not their lament of Silicon Valley’s consumer turn—that critique, as I’ve shown, belongs to many. It is the more specific contempt aimed at the technological class: the engineers (and also the designers, the data scientists, the product managers) who, as the authors see it, have spent their careers building the infrastructure for tracking behaviors, manufacturing addiction, and monetizing user data, and have yet arbitrarily drawn the moral line at working with the Pentagon. To patriots, which the two authors are, this hypocrisy is at the heart of their frustration.
The two authors don’t hold back on this line of critique. They chronicle a case of internal resistance at Microsoft to a defense contract with the US Army; they also document Google’s decision to withdraw from a Pentagon initiative called Project Maven (which Palantir later took over). In both cases, these companies are portrayed as entitled and ungrateful:
The wunderkinder of Silicon Valley—their fortunes, business empires, and, more fundamentally, entire sense of self—exist because of the nation that in many cases made their rise possible. They charge themselves with constructing vast technical empires but decline to offer support to the state whose protections [...] have provided the necessary conditions for their ascent. They would do well to understand that debt, even if it remained unpaid. (emphasis mine; p. 34)
Truth be told, I buy this criticism. The foundational technologies of the digital economy were largely developed with Pentagon funding. And the stability of the global market order that has allowed American tech companies to operate around the world was guaranteed by the unrivaled military power of the United States. The technological class did not build its commercial empires in a vacuum; but in conditions that the American state made possible. On this point, Karp and Zamiska are not wrong.
The problem, however, is that the two authors are blinded by their contempt for the liberal values of Silicon Valley that they can only understand the industry as a single ideological bloc. This myopia has prevent them from seeing that within the tech sector, class remains an important distinction. The people with “fortunes and business empires” are not the same people protesting the military contracts. In collapsing the two into a single entitled liberal elite, Karp and Zamiska seem to have missed the basic fact that the executives who stood to profit most from these military contracts were actually perfectly willing to pursue them. Google’s withdrawal from Project Maven, for instance, came only after its workers forced management’s hand. And once the company had eliminated internal dissent, firing a series of outspoken employees in 2019, it wasted little time rehabilitating its relationship with the Pentagon, securing new contracts with the military just a couple of years later.
Its clear that what Karp and Zamiska are actually most upset about is that the industry’s employees had come to realize they had the ability to discipline Silicon Valley’s biggest companies into far more progressive (and anti-military) positions than they would’ve liked. Without saying so explicitly, this collective uprising in the late 2010s from the industry’s workers was to them, and many other tech executives, the tip of the spear of an increasingly anti-tech public that had soured on Silicon Valley’s promises. Their answer—which they spend the next few chapters on—is to blame the wokeism of progressives and cancel culture that have, in their telling, silenced tech leaders and made working with the military politically toxic.
Cancel culture and wokeism
This is where the book becomes especially bad. At the center of their explanation for why Silicon Valley has lost its way is the claim that American society have become so scrutinizing of public figures that even truly ambitious and talented leaders have become afraid to speak their truths. Its not that Silicon Valley founders have no sense of mission. Karp and Zamiska do say that “the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley do not lack idealism; indeed, they often appear brimming with it.” The problem, however, is that their their conviction “wither(s) under even the slightest scrutiny” (p. 214). Cancel culture, as they see it, will silence even the most ambitious founders; and has already deprived a whole generation of tech executives from forming their own views about the world.
A broad swath of leaders [...] have for years often been punished mercilessly for publicly mustering anything approaching an authentic belief. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels [...]. (p. 60)
The book cites Google’s objections to building military software as on such case of this. The company knows what they oppose but not what they stand for. As their longtime motto “don’t be evil” suggests, the company is only opinionated on what not to do, but not what ought to be done.
Karp and Zamiska even compare the tech elite’s fear of being cancelled to George Orwell’s 1984, likening it to the protagonist Winston Smith’s paranoia of being surveilled by the novel’s all-powerful authoritarian state. This comparison it set up to describe how the progressive environment is Silicon Valley is so pervasive that it disciplines everyone into behaving the same way: “The speed and enthusiasm with which the (cancel) culture skewers anyone for their perceived transgressions and errors—with which we descend on one another for deviations from the norm—only further diminishes our capacity to move toward truth” (p. 80). (Remember, “truth” for Karp and Zamiska means having a national purpose and building technology for the military.)
According to the book, what’s driving this lack of purpose—and this inability to find one’s truth—is the instrumentalization of American universities. Universities have become factories for technically proficient but ideologically hallow engineers: people who can code but have no framework for thinking about history, power, or national purpose. “We need engineers who are engaged with and curious about the world,” they write, “[understanding] the movement of history and its contradictions, not merely skilled at programming” (p. 76). It is difficult, seeing that sentence in isolation, to disagree. But reading between the lines, what Karp and Zamiska actually mean is that American universities have failed to teach a particular sort of humanities that cultivate loyalty to the country (e.g., the study of Western civilization).
What about capitalism?
The problem with these explanations is that there are far less conspiratorial ones that the authors have not even bothered to explore. The far more convincing explanation is that Silicon Valley founders are, despite having their roots in the US military, simply profit-maximizing capitalists. With the rise of the internet, the consumer platform became an immensely profitable business model. Compared to the business of building military software, it had lower startup costs, could scale faster through network effects, and did not depend on slow-moving procurement agencies. During the era of zero interest rates—roughly 2009 to 2022—cheap money amplified these incentives further, flooding the market with risk-tolerant capital that was hungry for fast-growing platform businesses that could attain monopoly markets.
The global context is also critical. Tech’s consumer turn unfolded during the era of unchallenged American hegemony. In a world of open markets and unrivaled American military power, there was no compelling reason for private capitalists to invest in military tech; and certainly no reason for private actors would could operate as globalists to act with national purpose. The rational response to Pax Americana was in fact to embrace globalism and extract as much value from both foreign and domestic markets alike—and that is precisely what Silicon Valley did. Expanding globally meant speaking a nation-agnostic language: this included DEI, commitments to global trade, and, importantly, operating beyond the interests of any single nation-state. Tellingly, the same firms were also quick to speak a new language of nationalism when globalization was no longer the most profitable path.
Part of the book’s problem is indeed its timing. Karp and Zamiska’s central grievance is that Silicon Valley has distanced itself from the military—a claim that may have held some truth in the early 2010s, but bears little resemblance to the tech sector of today. Anyone following American politics has watched as executives of practically every single significant tech company kowtowed to Trump. This trend was in fact underway long before. Six years ago, I wrote an essay for Foreign Policy titled “Big Tech Embraces New Cold War Nationalism,” documenting the many contracts already binding tech to the military. What’s been apparent for years now is that Silicon Valley has been in the business of war.
That Karp and Zamiska completely overlook these more plausible explanations in favor of cancel culture and wokeism reveals that their grievance is, in no small part, a personal one. The authors write with nostalgia for an era in which scientists and technologists who served the state were revered as heroes. They recall Albert Einstein as a public intellectual of towering cultural stature; they describe how Vannevar Bush, one of the key architects of the Manhattan Project, was celebrated in a Collier’s article as “the man who may win the war” (p. 7). It is clear in their writing that these men—among whom Karp no doubt counts himself—were celebrated not only for their innovations but for putting their talent in service of the nation. Today’s tech leaders, by contrast, are disliked across the political spectrum. For Karp especially—ostracized by his own liberal-leaning industry—this book is as much a critique of Silicon Valley as it is a plea for why figures like himself deserve respect.
In the end, The Technological Republic offers a characterization of Silicon Valley’s failures that is striking and hard to disagree with—but built on explanations that are ultimately incorrect and deeply ideological. In embracing consumer tech and distancing themselves from the military, American technologists did not lack ambition. Their ambition has and always will be to maximize profits. Karp and Zamiska cannot admit to this simpler and far more convincing account because doing so would mean that there is nothing noble about what Palantir does. It is just another firm chasing the money.
Better, then, to blame cancel culture that has disciplined Silicon Valley’s leaders into purposeless profits. Better, then, to blame wokeism that has deprived the industry from the courage to build with purpose. The Technological Republic is not a misguided book. It is a very deliberate one, and one that is careful to frame not capitalism but the industry’s workers and a scrutinizing public as the rot that led the Valley astray.
A final thought about Silicon Valley’s rightward turn…
Not officially part of my review—but as I was reading the book, I kept puzzling over where it sits against the broader spectrum of Silicon Valley’s rightward turn? To a progressive, this book may read as the manifesto of the tech-right, or the broligarchy as some have called it. But I think there’s actually meaningful variation among this coalition. When we look at other figures like Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and Elon Musk, the vision that this book advances for the future of American Technology is indeed quite different from those of the industry’s other titans. In particular, it diverges sharply on one fundamental question: what should technology’s relationship to the state be? There are three tendencies that I’m seeing.
The first tendency is techno-industrialism—or Muskism, as Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s recent book calls it (which Henry Farrell also wrote a nice response to). In some regards, Musk would win the approval of Karp and Zamiska because he deals in hard infrastructure—physical, defense-adjacent, and capital-intensive. However, the important distinction for our purposes is the way Musk has throughout his career been adept as using—rather than serving—the state. This is what Slobodian and Tarnoff call sovereignty-as-a-service. Musk promises to help governments fulfill their sovereign functions through reliance on his infrastructure, e.g., SpaceX. But he’s also willing to sell sovereignty to rich individuals who want the means to protect themselves in evermore uncertain times. Tesla is an example of this “household sovereignty”: its home battery storage and its vehicles (which are increasingly armored e.g., the Cybertruck) promote autonomy and safety in an era of increasing unrest, national disasters, wars, and supply-chain fragility. This first tendency is thus about selling sovereignty itself, to whoever will buy it, state or otherwise.1
The second tendency we can think of as techno-clientelism. Here, I’m thinking of people like Marc Andreessen and David Sacks. But there are also milder variants—Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Jeff Bezos aren’t fully aligned with Trump’s politics but they have nevertheless made their accommodations. Cook’s gift to Trump (a glass plaque with a 24-karat gold base) is an example of this calculated realignment. These figures are less interested in the state as a vehicle of national power than as a political opportunity for capital accumulation. To them, Washington and the White House is a place to be managed, or better yet, captured. What this tendency typically advocates for are less regulations, and even political insulation. Their rightward turn then is less ideological than it is instrumental: they know that for their bottom line, Trump offers Silicon Valley a better deal than the Democrats. They are political power-brokers who have aligned themselves with the administration first and foremost out of commercial self-interest.
This book and its writers belong to a third tendency, what I call techno-nationalism. Here, I would also include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who since leaving the search giant has become deeply involved in policymaking and has worked to advance the perspective that China’s rapid advances in AI poses an existential threat to American life. As we’ve already seen, this tendency believes that the nation-state—specifically western states—must be preserved and its instruments of power modernized. Palantir’s entire business is in this sense an expression of this tendency. The company has spent two decades embedding itself within military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, selling the infrastructure of state coercion as a software service. And more so than the other tendencies, thinkers of this one tend to think in civilizational terms. They are endlessly fascinated by the Roman empire, drawn to prophecies of Western decline, and fond of invoking the tales from the world wars as lessons for the present. And unlike adherents of the other tendencies who are willing to do business in China, this group would see building technology for the Chinese market—however profitable—as antithetical to their purpose.
This simple taxonomy is by no means complete—it leaves out many important figures and also the more radical (though perhaps less influential) variants of the tech right, figures like Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land. Though it is hopefully enough to make clear that Karp and Zamiska aren’t only justifying Palantir’s existence in writing this book, but are trying eagerly to impress upon a radicalizing Silicon Valley that their vision of American technology is the one to rally behind.
Techno-industrialism captures only the dimension of Muskism most relevant for us. Slabodian and Tarnoff go much further in laying out the political economy underpinning Musk’s empire—and their book is worth reading in full.