Reply · April 19, 2026
The Brains of the Firm;
or a lack thereof?
Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his deputy Nicholas Zamiska dropped a 22-point manifesto today. It's nothing short of a crayon-scribbled document that reads like it came directly from the id of the billionaire class and their Conservative & Neoliberal flunkies. It claims Silicon Valley has lost its soul and must rediscover its duty to the state.
Every point diagnoses a problem Palantir profits from and prescribes a solution that expands Palantir's position.
It also manages to be an affront to the basis of which Palantir's own software functions. Every person in Silicon Valley SHOULD (in theory) be aware of Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety: a regulator must have at least as much internal variety as the environment it's trying to govern, or the system fails.
Palantir's software works because it ingests diverse, contradictory, messy inputs. Yet when it comes to society, governance, and culture, their manifesto argues the society running that software should be homogeneous.
Requisite variety in the data, monoculture in the civilization.
If we take them at their word, these men's ideal civilization is one that inherently sets itself up for failure. Which is to say, every foundational figure in the fields that made Palantir possible would look at these 22 points and conclude they were written by someone with little to no formal education in Cybernetics.
What follows is a point-for-point response to each position Karp & Palantir take and prescribe.
Because we get asked a lot.
The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
My reply
Because they published theirs.
Requisite Variety, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley does owe a moral debt. Not to the defense apparatus. To the public whose tax dollars funded the research, the infrastructure, and the education that made every one of these companies possible.
The nation is its people, not its military.
The moral debt is repaid by releasing the tools, fully and without leashes, to the people who paid for them.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
My reply
2. The tyranny of the apps is maintained, not inevitable. Decentralized alternatives fail because the tools to build them are deliberately kept just weak enough to maintain dependency.
Centralization is not minting tools. It is renting a process it has intentionally hamstrung for profit.
Trust people with the means to build their own platforms and the tyranny dissolves through obsolescence, not rebellion.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
My reply
3. Free email is not enough. On this we agree. But the decadence of the ruling class will not be forgiven by delivering growth through the same centralized extraction that caused the decadence.
CyberSyn: In 1971, Stafford Beer built a decentralized system in Chile that coordinated an entire national economy in real time with minimal compute.
It delivered growth and security for the public. It was destroyed because it succeeded.
What replaced it was the Chicago Boys and the very economic model that now produces the decadence Palantir describes. The question was answered fifty years ago with teletype machines.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
My reply
4. Soft power did not fail. It was never tried. What Palantir calls soft power was always hard power wearing a cultural mask.
Foreign aid with conditions. Trade agreements that extracted more than they delivered. Democracy deployed selectively to justify intervention.
When the mask stopped working, the conclusion should have been that the coercion was the problem.
Instead Palantir concludes we need more coercion, built on software. Hard power built on software is still subject to thermodynamics. Ice is very hard. It still melts.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
My reply
5. Palantir dismisses debate about AI weapons as theatrical. The only theater is the pretense that this is about who builds them, when the purpose is already known: profit.
The question of who has been answered. DeepSeek was Sputnik. You can build a rocket in your backyard, not on Cape Canaveral. The premise of AI requiring billion-dollar data centers is false.
Our adversaries will proceed, Palantir warns.
Proceed toward what? Are they bombing me, or are they bombing those standing between the global society and resource distribution?
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
My reply
6. Everyone should share in the risk and the cost. Agreed. Start by sharing the benefit.
Would you need to be convinced to serve your country if it already provided you with efficient access to tools, food, production, and trade?
The "all-volunteer army" has never been volunteer. It has been a pipeline from poverty to free labor in jobs against the interests of those who serve.
You do not conscript people into defending a commons that already feeds them. They show up.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm's way.
My reply
7. Unflinching commitment to those we have asked to step into harm's way begins with asking why we put them there. The Marine does not need a better rifle. The Marine needs to not be standing somewhere designed to create the need for the rifle.
The current military posture is a giant game of "I'm not touching you.": Deliberately provocative, self-fulfilling the prophecy of the eternal enemy.
Better software is not commitment to troops.
Not sending them to maintain pressure points that exist to justify the next procurement cycle is.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
My reply
8. Any business that compensated its employees the way the federal government does would struggle to survive. Correct. And the reason the government cannot compensate its employees is 'Starve the Beast.'
Lobby to defund. Point at the dysfunction you caused. Argue the private sector does it better. Buy the assets at fire sale prices. Fund the purchase with tax subsidies.
The taxpayer pays twice and the service gets worse because it must now generate profit on top of functioning.
Palantir describing this dynamic as sympathy while being one of its primary beneficiaries is not diagnosis. It is a business model wearing concern.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
My reply
9. Palantir calls for grace toward those in public life while building the platforms that automate the gatekeeping those public servants are hated for performing.
They are resented because they are the visible face of a system designed to deny. The only part of the system you can look in the eye.
The eradication of forgiveness is a symptom of material desperation, not cultural decline.
Grace is a material condition.
People are gracious when they are not desperate.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
My reply
10. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul will be left disappointed. Of course they will.
Modern politics as spectacle exists almost singularly as a direct result of Citizens United. When your vote is structurally outweighed by a Super PAC, the only thing left is identity and emotional investment. People psychologized politics because it was the only arena where participation still felt real.
The company that benefits most from the pay-to-play structure advising everyone else to disengage is the house telling the gamblers to care less about the game.
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
My reply
11. Palantir asks society to pause rather than rejoice at the vanquishing of opponents.
Humility is a luxury for those who already have their boot on your throat.
Calls for restraint from those who have never been on the losing end are sportsmanship advice from the team that owns the league. Every time concentrated power faces a challenge, the first move is to appeal to civility. That space is used for reassembly, never reflection.
The boot always comes back.
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
My reply
12. Palantir claims one age of deterrence is ending and another, built on AI, is set to begin. They assume AI deterrence will mirror nuclear deterrence: state-scale, centralized, monopolized.
Nuclear power required a nuclear program. AI does not.
DeepSeek was Sputnik. You cannot enrich uranium in your garage. But you can apparently build a world-class AI without the 'cathedral' of compute.
AI proliferates, miniaturizes, and escapes control by its nature.
The new age of deterrence will not be centralized.
The technology will not allow it.
13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.
My reply
13. It is easy to forget how much opportunity exists here for those who are not hereditary elites. It is just as easy to notice that our definition of "progressive" tracks defense contracts more than values.
Iran, where women fight for rights in the streets, is sanctioned into poverty.
Saudi Arabia, a monarchy where dissidents are killed in consulates, is a strategic partner.
Every expansion of actual opportunity in American history came from below.
Every contraction came from above consolidating gains.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
My reply
14. Long peace for whom?
Afghanistan? Bosnia? Cambodia? Chile? Congo? Cuba? Dominican Republic? El Salvador? Grenada? Guatemala? Haiti? Iran? Iraq? Kosovo? Kuwait? Laos? Lebanon? Libya? Nicaragua? North Korea? Palestine? Pakistan? Panama? Somalia? Sudan? Syria? Vietnam? Yemen?
The peace was never universal.
It was geographically selective.
The violence did not stop.
It was exported to places whose suffering does not register in the metrics being cited.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
My reply
15. Palantir frames re-armament of Germany and Japan as correcting an overcorrection. The United States wants it both ways. Unload the responsibility while those regimes still operate in American interests.
Why re-arm Germany? To take resources back from Europe.
Why re-arm Japan? To take resources back from Asia.
This is franchising.
You wear the uniform, you absorb the risk, headquarters still sets the menu and takes its cut.
16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk's interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
My reply
16. We should applaud those who build where the market has failed. Fine.
Let's play madlibs with oligarchs & sectors for a second.
Musk has rockets & social media.
Bezos has logistics & media.
Thiel has surveillance & data.
Berezovsky had media & automobiles.
Abramovich had oil & aluminum.
Potanin had nickel & metals.
When Russians do it we call them oligarchs.
When Americans do it we call them visionaries.
We already know how the Russian version ends.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
My reply
17. Palantir calls for a desperate bid to save lives from violent crime. The "violent others" thesis is three-card monte played with Simpson's Paradox.
Disaggregate by neighborhood, income, and policing intensity and the picture inverts.
The neighborhoods with the most violence have the most police contact, the most incarceration, and the least investment.
The private prison industry needs inmates.
The policing apparatus needs crime.
The surveillance companies need threat.
They are not solving the problem. They are farming it.
18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. 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 whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
My reply
18. Palantir laments that ruthless exposure drives talent from government service while their own platform concentrates on the easiest possible targets.
ICE enforcement.
Operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
Populations already documented, tracked, and confined within captive databases. This is not sophisticated intelligence. It's ctrl+F on people who cannot opt out.
The tools are aimed downward at the most vulnerable rather than upward at the most powerful.
It's understandable that you'd experience a staffing problem when the job is increasingly just abstract cruelty for minimum wage.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
My reply
19. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. True. Only two classes of people can afford to say anything real: those with nothing left to lose and those with so much it does not matter.
The vast middle is trapped in the cautious emptiness being described. Not from cultural failing. Honesty is a luxury good in a system with this many pressure points.
And those who decry cancel culture are always the loudest to demand cancellation of those who speak freely in the wrong direction.
Stop making honesty so expensive & people will stop being so careful.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite's intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
My reply
20. The elite's intolerance of religious belief is a telling sign of a less open intellectual movement, Palantir says. Apply your own logic to yourself.
You cannot lament "backwards traditions" in other cultures in one breath while demanding your status in believing abortion is tantamount to murder be so total that a mother die to deliver her child.
Either you practice what you preach or you have no leg to stand on.
Fight for the mosque, the synagogue, and the temple with the same energy as the church, or you are not defending faith.
You are defending territory.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
My reply
21. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden, Palantir says. They are not forbidden. They are selectively applied.
The framework of cultural superiority only functions when you exempt yourself from the same scrutiny. Western culture gets evaluated by its achievements. Other cultures get evaluated by their worst practices.
A country that forces women to carry pregnancies to term and lets children die in classrooms because gun ownership is sacralized does not get to rank civilizations unchallenged.
Harm is harm.
Apply the standard everywhere, including to yourself, and these rankings dissolve into what they always were: Justifications for extraction.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
My reply
22. Inclusion into what, Palantir asks. Into a system that can survive. Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety: a system's ability to survive is directly proportional to the variety it contains.
This is mathematics, not philosophy.
Palantir's own software works because it handles diverse, contradictory, messy inputs. Their manifesto argues the society running it should be homogeneous.
Requisite variety in the data, monoculture in the civilization.
They took the tools of cybernetics and left the understanding.
Palantir produced twenty-two points that their own field's founders would recognize as a system designing itself for failure.
A note on who gets to say this
Point 19 of Karp's manifesto warned that "those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all." The rebuttal to that point named the two classes of people who can still afford to speak — those with nothing left to lose, and those with so much that consequences do not reach them. Everyone in between is trapped.
Karp writes from the second position. A $400B market cap CEO has the time to produce 288 pages of cultural diagnosis because the company runs without him in any load-bearing sense. The cognitive work is done by researchers two or three levels down who mostly don't get to set the narrative. What gets published under executive names is position-taking that reads as thought leadership and is structurally closer to brand management.
This document was written from the first position. No defense contract to protect, no donor class to placate, no credential to be revoked. That asymmetry doesn't favor the reach of the argument. It favors the honesty of the argument, which is a different thing and the only thing that was ever going to be worth saying.
You shouldn't have to be either of those two classes to say any of this out loud. Take it. Use it.
The proposal space is far wider than they will ever admit themselves.
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