Palantir and its CEO Alex Karp called on the US to pursue AI-powered weapons, reinstate the military draft and shy away from “regressive” cultures in a buzzy 22-point manifesto.
Billed as a summary of Karp’s 2025 book “The Technological Republic,” the wide-ranging, 1,000-word post on X outlined the AI software company’s positions on how Silicon Valley and the US government should adapt to the rise of artificial intelligence. Palantir said it shared the post “because we get asked a lot.”
“The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” the post stated. “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.”
Karp and fellow Palantir executive Nicholas Zamiska, who co-wrote “The Technological Republic,” also argue that national service, including compulsory military enlistment, “should be a universal duty” for US citizens.
“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,” they wrote.
The Palantir execs criticized what they described as society’s embrace of “dysfunctional and regressive cultures” as well as “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,” the duo wrote.
The post also weighed in on the current geopolitical environment, asserting that democracies can no longer rely on “soft power” to govern the international order. Palantir claimed the “atomic age is ending” and will be replaced by a “new era of deterrence bult on AI.”
Elsewhere, Karp and Zamiska argued that the “neutering of Germany and Japan” in the aftermath of World War II “must be undone.”
“The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price,” they wrote. “A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”
Shares of Palantir sank about 1% in Monday trading.
Karp, 58, cofounded Palantir in 2003 alongside billionaire Peter Thiel. The company has fostered close ties with the Trump administration, including work with the US military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Karp took an unorthodox path to running a tech company, earning a PhD in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University in Germany before entering the business world.
In January, Karp made headlines with a warning that AI “will destroy” jobs based on college degrees in the humanities, while boosting the market for vocational careers.
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