The surveillance technology company Palantir posted a manifesto on X (Twitter) outlining its position on everything from national service to the post-Second World War international order.
The AI-driven software giant – best known for supplying analytics to the U.S. Army, the New York Police Department, and ICE – was co-founded in 2003 by a collective of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel and Alex Karp.
Its 1,000-word post essentially summarises 22 points raised in the 2025 book The Technological Republic by Karp and Nicholas W Zamiska, and, as Engadget saw it, “reads like the ramblings of a comic book villain.”
Palantir’s post opens by suggesting it has “a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible,” hailing the United States’s championing of “progressive values” in comparison to other countries, and arguing that “American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace” since the end of the Second World War in 1945, giving no credit to NATO.
In the same breath, it argues that the “post-war neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone,” calling the “defanging” of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as part of that same peace process “an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price,” which could “shift the balance of power in Asia.”
It then argues for a return to compulsory national service to maintain American military might, calling it “a universal duty,” while also appearing to challenge President Donald Trump over the present conflict with Iran, which he failed to consult Congress before commencing.
“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,” Palantir states.
There are more general pronouncements about the coming of artificial intelligence, including a declaration that the atomic age is over and the AI era has begun, another that “hard power in this century will be built on software,” and another that frames the prospect of warfare without humanity as an inevitability.
“The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” the company posits.
Among the science fiction prophecies are some disapproving remarks about the ordinary citizen’s tendency to be too judgmental towards public figures.
“We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life,” the manifesto argues, adding that there is too much schadenfreude expressed when the misdeeds of famous people are revealed and that a lack of forgiveness and compassion “may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.”
“The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service,” it adds, overlooking the possibility that such “exposure” might be justified if actual wrongdoing is uncovered and the perpetrators forced to answer for their abuses and misconduct.
Having already celebrated progressive values, it goes on to hit out at religious intolerance, only to then accuse “some cultures” of being “dysfunctional and regressive.”
There is also a caution against the reactionary scorn sometimes expressed towards Elon Musk’s far-flung ambitions like his dream of colonizing Mars, as well as some more grounded commercial pronouncements, including an insistence that “Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime” and a questioning of whether Apple’s iPhone continues to merit its market dominance, suggesting the product could now be “limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.”
Thiel, Palantir’s most prominent public face, is no stranger to odd public statements and last month delivered a four-part lecture series in Rome attacking the “woke” Pope Leo XIV and outlining his own idiosyncratic theories on the coming of the Antichrist.
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