Corporation of Monsters: Alex Karp's Manifesto as an Echo of Western Ideology in Crisis

Volume 1: The Fellowship of the Ring

In September 2025, the market capitalization of the company—whose name references the magical seeing stones from the Lord of the Rings universe that allow one to observe events from afar— surpassed $400 billion. Palantir Technologies shares have risen more than 130% this year, making them the top performers at that point in both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 indices. In August, the company reported that its revenue grew 48%, exceeding $1 billion. Quarterly revenue reached its highest level since going public five years ago.

What does this company—which is posting such outstanding results even against the backdrop of widespread euphoria in the American market, yet remains largely unknown in that very same market—actually do for money?

It's worth starting with the fact that Palantir was founded in 2003 by a group of investors led by Peter Thiel. Thiel is one of the first major business CEOs to come out in support of Trump. A man who declared that the Antichrist will soon descend to earth in the form of excessive regulation of AI, science, and technology. The former employer of the current U.S. Vice President JD Vance, as well as the author of the once-controversial essay "The Education of a Libertarian," an openly gay man and longtime critic of Silicon Valley for its unwillingness to actively participate in developing breakthrough ideas that could ensure unequivocal U.S. technological sovereignty in the world. 

Looking ahead, it's worth noting that this very idea is echoed by Palantir's current CEO Alex Karp in his new book "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West", which will be discussed later in this essay.

So what does the company do, whose first outside investor was the venture fund In-Q-Tel—the investment arm of the CIA.

In short, Palantir is a software provider for American security agencies. Whether it's the CIA or the Pentagon. The latter, for example, this past August signed a contract with the company worth $10 billion to develop extensive software including artificial intelligence and digital combat systems. Palantir's technological solutions are also used by the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Marine Corps, and the Special Operations Command, among other U.S. defense and security agencies.

Palantir develops software (including neural networks) that analyzes unstructured data arrays, transforming them into a visualized and interconnected product. A picture is worth a thousand words—better to see it once than to attempt describing in thousands of characters what such software roughly looks like and what tasks it can solve.

In Q2 2025, Palantir's revenue from government contracts with the U.S. government grew 53% and reached $426 million.

This is the most concise possible background on the company, the necessary foundation to move forward. But doesn't the reader find it at least curious that in order to proceed to a review of a book by the head of one of the most successful companies in today's American market, one must first simply explain what this company actually does? And can such a circumstance be called yet another sign of an AI bubble in the American stock market, at the forefront of which stands Nvidia?

Volume 2. The Two Towers

Perhaps we simply don't realize that there's an unspoken requirement from the CIA itself for heads of major American technology corporations to write at least one political manifesto.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, worked with Henry Kissinger on writing two (1; 2) books about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity.

That same Peter Thiel decided not to think small and simply founded a libertarian-conservative publication Stanford Review during his student years.

Alex Karp himself, author of the book under review today, "The Technological Republic," earned a doctorate in philosophy in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University in Frankfurt.

And his book aspires to be nothing less than a full-fledged manifesto or treatise on the political theory of the modern West.

"Silicon Valley has lost its way"—these are the very words that open the book. According to the authors (Karp's co-author is Nicholas Zamiska, who serves as general counsel and head of corporate affairs at Palantir), American technology companies have become too preoccupied with satisfying market demands instead of meeting the needs of American authorities, and therefore (in the authors' view) the needs of American society as a whole, which those authorities represent.

Down with utilitarianism. That's exactly what Alex Karp is calling for. In his view, there's a full-blown crisis of meaning and purpose among Western states today. And to survive amid this mortal love affair (read: in competition with China), a course correction is necessary.

There is no national idea. That's what Alex Karp states plainly. In his opinion, capital-centric culture as a system has proven its failure due to problems with self-regulation. This has led to Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs creating a social cocoon around themselves, focused—as the authors write—on "narrow consumer goods rather than projects that address and solve our greater security and prosperity." 

"The Technological Republic" calls for a "merger of business" and "national development goals" in society's interests. Doesn't this idea strike readers as reminiscent of something more familiar and closer to home?

The book frequently uses formulations like these:

Determining when the right time arrives and what exactly is most needed, Karp proposes based primarily on left-wing ideological considerations. Or more precisely—using them as cover to boost his own company's capitalization. And it would be strange if he called for the opposite.

The "reinvention of a national project" that Karp writes about is nothing more than cover to justify his own company's activities among its high-tech competitors, who are so far less willing to cooperate with the CIA and NSA.

Silicon Valley should work for defense—that is, de facto, millennials in the person of Karp are proposing to reinvent the "mailboxes" of the USSR era. This may be an exaggerated interpretation, but it doesn't diminish the essence of the author's thinking. How long until sharashkas made of OpenAI engineers at American supermax prisons...? Let commentators from the future write how long America has until that point, considering that Alex Karp's senior partner—Peter Thiel, as mentioned at the beginning of this essay—is the former employer of the current vice president and quite possibly future U.S. president JD Vance.

Volume 3. The Return of the King

"We've come to see you, Professor, and here's what it's about."

First off, who is this "we"? Society as a whole? Or the American government in the persons of Karp and Thiel? Or Silicon Valley specifically? And how could we have prevented the "technocratic ruling class" from forming and consolidating its position? And how could we have demanded anything in return, given our status as what, exactly?

"Our boot is sacred"—but without a trace of irony.

The "Technological Republic" as envisioned by Karp and Thiel looks more like a technological empire, where the White House with its current administration takes the place of God's anointed—generously awarding contracts to Palantir—while Silicon Valley plays the role of prophet. Not today's Silicon Valley, mind you, but the Glorious Silicon Valley of the Future, where corporations labor primarily for the benefit of the Pentagon and CIA. Because according to the authors, it's precisely these institutions that matter far more than the invisible hand of the market in these "challenging" times.

In Closing

Despite this pseudo-manifesto's lack of novelty or literary merit, it's worth reading if only to understand what ideas are becoming mainstream in the American deep state today.

Which, in turn, with the right maneuvering by the current administration, will continue consolidating its position after J.D. Vance's victory as Trump's successor in the 2028 presidential election.

How old will the reader be in 2036? What will become of the United States—and therefore all of us—in an era when figures like Karp and Thiel increasingly represent the American deep state mainstream? And how capable will their creation be of resisting that one remedy prescribed by Karl Marx to shorten "the birth pangs of the new society"—all under the guise of national security concerns, with the pleasant bonus of yet another massive government contract worth tens of billions of dollars?

"The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West" by Alexander C. Karp, Nicholas W. Zamiska.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760945/the-technological-republic-by-alexander-c-karp-and-nicholas-w-zamiska