Palantir CEO Alex Karp is a man in charge of one of the most important and frightening companies in the world. Karp’s new book, cowritten with Nicholas Zamiska, is called “The Technological Republic”. After claiming “because we get asked a lot,” Palantir posted a 22-point summary of the book that reads like a corporate manifesto. It evokes both weird reactionary shit and also trilby-wearing Reddit comments from the early 2010s.
Palantir’s summary of the book is ominous. But even the company’s name is unironically ominous. The “palantíri” are crystal balls in “The Lord of the Rings” that let Middle-earth’s worst tyrants spy on the heroes of the story. It’s a fun reference if you have no shame about your company’s mission.
We’ve attempted to translate these 22 points from Alex Karp’s alien words into something more reasonable, like human words from someone who might play him in the biopic. (Hello, Taika Waititi.) In so doing, we’ve become much more sympathetic to why Jürgen Habermas refused to supervise Karp’s research.
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This has to be in purpose, right? Are they just trying to mock us? To tell us they can be nakedly evil and not expect reprisal? No one just stumbles into such a villain monologue unless it’s very much intended to be a threat.