There are some books that are harder to categorize, and The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, is one of them. It is part philosophical treatise, part social commentary, and part manifesto.
But let me take a step back. Alex Karp is fairly well known as the founder of Palantir, a company that has leveraged AI to support intelligence gathering in the US military, and now in the private sector as well. His personal story is quite interesting, which I heard more about in an interview with Barry Weiss. He grew up in a very liberal family – his father was an academic (Jewish) and his mother an artist (who converted). He was quite brilliant, though struggled early on with undiagnosed dyslexia. He went on to a successful academic career, ultimately getting a PhD from Goethe University in Germany (and writing his thesis in German!), and then founding Palantir about 20 years ago, a company now valued at over $200 billion dollars.
The argument that Karp and Zamiska (his intellectual sparring partner) make is very much of the intellectual moment: that since the 1970s, ideas that have entered the mainstream culture through academia (e.g. post-nationalism, the sins of the West, post-capitalism, etc.) have come at the expense of what have made the United States such an exceptional place, even with its many foibles. One of the major consequences is a retreat from seeing the value of American power, both for itself and the world, and the deterrent effect it has had on bad actors the world over. This retreat is not just a threat to American power, which it obviously is, but also threatens the values that have made America such an incredible model for human flourishing.
Karp locates a good part of his critique and praise on Silicon Valley and its culture. On one hand, he describes it as counter-cultural, as a place where people can push back against the norms of East coast elite academia and its social constraints. It’s a place where individualism and creativity still flourish. On the other hand, it’s a culture that has adopted that very same notion popular in academia that American power is a negative force in the world; a power that should be avoided as it leads to war and death. This means that much of Silicon Valley, rather than producing great innovations in partnership with the American government and military, as they did two generations ago (e.g. the atom bomb, the Internet, etc.), they create social apps that have little consequences or moral value, and create wealth without consideration for the social consequences of their creations. Karp, therefore, quite intentionally has created, and strongly advocates for the creation of technology not only in partnership with the government, but one that supports the US military. In one of his repeated and blistering critiques, he questions how someone in Silicon Valley can accept that their creation will keep someone on an app for 10 more seconds, but will not create an app that will save the life of a US serviceman?!
I found The Technological Republic an engaging and accessible read. It was not always linear, and sometimes it felt like ideas were piled on or tangents explored without a clear throughline. But as each was interesting, I didn’t really mind. Karp and Zamiska were very good about quoting their sources (most of which seemed to come before 1990 and often earlier, which I found interesting), and had a curious quirk of always telling us when and where the author was born. I wasn’t sure if this was a way of situating their ideas in their time-period or personal background, but I kind of enjoyed it. It’s certainly a book I recommend, and is important in our cultural moment.
Just Because I Liked It: