Palantir’s project is literally reactionary, as it intends to prevent the advent of multipolarity.
The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas passed away on March 14th this year, just three months shy of his 97th birthday. Known as a prominent second-generation thinker of the Frankfurt School, he developed a notably dull theory of democracy. His dense and soporific prose effectively quelled rebellious impulses by lulling even the most fervent revolutionaries into passivity. Like Fukuyama, Habermas can be identified as a philosopher of the End of History, believing that democratic capitalism marked the ultimate stage of political and social development. Yet, with this unipolar system unraveling before reaching even half a century, it seems Habermas’s philosophy may outlast his lifetime.
Nonetheless, a potential champion emerges: Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, who earned a doctorate in Social Theory from the Frankfurt School and regarded Habermas as a mentor. A month after Habermas’s death, public attention turned to a synopsis of Palantir’s manifesto authored by Karp and Nicholas Zamiska. Their manifesto, a book named The Technological Republic, is slated for release in 2025 and was not initially presented as company propaganda. Hence, when this influential US arms contractor posted a summary of The Technological Republic on its official Twitter as a declaration of its political stance, it gained considerable significance. The unusual step of a corporation publicly adopting a political manifesto is compounded by Palantir’s origins with CIA funding and its role in government surveillance, now attempting to market itself as “efficient” and popular.
The manifesto can be interpreted as an attempt to establish a demagogic technocracy. While technocracy as rule by experts is often accepted as a given, here the innovation is the invitation to demagoguery: “We have made the mistake of allowing a technocratic ruling class to form and take hold in this country without asking for anything quite substantial in return. What should the public demand for abandoning the threat of revolt?” Karp and Zamiska question, pointing to Silicon Valley. “Free email is not enough,” they argue, a phrase significant enough to appear as the third item in their Twitter summary.
The core message suggests the technocracy must offer the populace concessions to quell unrest. In this framework, the central aim of the ruling elite’s public face is to prevent uprisings. Their primary focus lies with profits or other corporate priorities governing the United States. Subsequently, as a prudent measure to protect these interests, the elite must placate citizens sufficiently to avoid revolt. In essence, it is a strategy of appeasing potential insurgents.
Habermas is referenced in the manifesto in his role as a democracy theorist: “Jürgen Habermas has suggested,” Karp and Zamiska note, “a failure by leaders to deliver on implied or explicit promises to the public has the potential to provoke a crisis of legitimacy for a government. When emerging technologies that give rise to wealth do not advance the broader public interest, trouble often follows. Put differently, 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.” The italic emphasis is theirs.
The term “economic growth” appears just once, save for a few footnotes and references. Given Palantir’s offerings in artificial intelligence and the prevailing narrative that AI will supplant middle-class jobs, it’s unsurprising that economic growth is notably absent from their political discourse. If any growth occurs, it benefits the corporations rather than the population.
Another commodity Palantir can provide is security, central to its business model. Yet, security is inherently relative: a fence shields the homeowner while limiting the thief’s safety. Should Palantir and its rivals scan every individual’s face and iris worldwide, intercept all smartphones, establish checkpoints to track movements, and compile vast datasets, this capability could curb crimes like murder and theft—but also suppress the revolts Palantir fears. The Palestinians know this well… Furthermore, Western public safety has declined compared to past eras. Prior to neoliberal policies, it was unusual to slash funding for asylums and prisons—leaving vulnerable populations and criminals uncontained—nor to devalue First World labor by mass-importing undocumented workers.
Since Frankfurt School alumnus Alex Karp invokes Habermas to justify his authoritarian political vision, we must question whether Habermas’s democracy is merely a prelude to tyranny. It’s noteworthy that Habermas advised Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a racist anarcho-capitalist advocating a model of private enclaves enforcing Apartheid under democratic guise. This indicates Karp is not a lone eccentric who found Habermas a rationale for his right-wing anarcho-capitalism. (Clarification: this is not redundant, as Wokeism represents a left-wing anarcho-capitalism, seeking “social justice” through corporate power, even at the expense of the state’s integrity.)
Habermas’s democratic theory is largely a speech bureaucracy designed to uphold constitutional order and create the illusion of legitimacy among citizens. It avoids confronting objective realities, prioritizing perceptions amenable to manipulation by propaganda—exactly the approach Silicon Valley adopts, regardless of political leanings. This nihilistic framework allows Habermas to openly acknowledge paradoxes and continuously prolong dialogue ad infinitum. Yet, when opinions deemed anti-democratic arise, police intervention is deemed necessary to prevent the “return of Hitler.” Habermas, a second-generation Frankfurt School thinker, builds on the first generation’s post-war mission to preserve a “democratic” order under threat, upheld by the refrain: “otherwise Hitler will return.” This justification has evolved such that in the 21st century, even asserting biological facts about gender can summon accusations of fascism, as trans people have become the new Jews targeted by an obsessively counter-majoritarian legal system.
Within the manifesto’s summary, Palantir implicitly signals intentions to expand its arms trade into Germany and Japan: “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.” This reveals a strategy leveraging Germany and Japan to counter Russia and China, the primary forces challenging the unipolar world. Thus, Karp aims to enforce the End of History militarily.
Addressing Fukuyama, Karp and Zamiska state: “We must not, however, grow complacent. 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.”
Therefore, Palantir’s initiative is explicitly reactionary, designed to forestall the rise of multipolarity. The only suggested remedy is a halt to Wokeism and the promotion of politically incorrect values favored within Silicon Valley, often linked to social Darwinism. This is reflected in item 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.” Wokeism, generating widespread opposition, is supplanted by a visible alliance between believers and atheists, especially notable in Zionism.
Here lies the vision shaped by Habermas and other Frankfurt School intellectuals: a world where the constraints of practical reason, confined to constitutionality, enforce themselves globally by force, replacing figures like transvestites with Zionist churches to secure legitimacy.
About the Author
