US tech giant Palantir Technologies posted what it terms a summary of CEO Alex Karp and head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska's book, The Technological Republic, on social media. The 22-point document, shared on Sunday, immediately ignited global controversy — with critics ranging from philosophers to former finance ministers calling it ideologically dangerous, and outright fascist.
What Does Manifesto Actually Say?
The document reads allegedly less like a tech company's communication and more like a political programme. On defence, it is explicit, "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation." On AI weapons, it says, "The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates… They will proceed."
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The manifesto calls for national service to be "a universal duty" and argues that the US should be capable of debating military action abroad "while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm's way." It calls for the "postwar neutering of Germany and Japan" to be undone, warning that pacifism "will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia."
On culture, it states, "Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive," before concluding with a broadside against pluralism: "We must resist 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. But inclusion into what?"
Who Is Palantir, Why Does It Matter?
Palantir Technologies is widely regarded as one of the world's most influential data analytics firms, securing major contracts with governments, militaries and global corporations.
Founded in 2003 by Alex Karp and Peter Thiel, with support from In-Q-Tel — the CIA's venture capital arm — it built its early business on post-9/11 intelligence work and has since expanded internationally.
Under Karp's leadership, Palantir, reportedly, drew heavily on the expertise of former members of Israel's cyber-intelligence unit 8200. After announcing a "strategic partnership" with Israel in January 2024, its involvement in Gaza and the occupied West Bank expanded considerably — integrating intercepted communications, satellite data and other digital sources to help produce targeting databases, effectively "kill lists," for the Israeli military, reports said.
What Are Critics Saying?
The backlash has been fierce and came from multiple directions. Mark Coeckelbergh, a Belgian philosopher of technology at the University of Vienna, described Palantir's messaging as "an example of technofascism", while Greek economist and former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said Palantir had effectively signalled a willingness "to add to nuclear Armageddon the AI-driven threat to humanity's existence".
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins offered a pointed rebuttal to any claims that the manifesto was merely philosophical. "Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration and police agencies," Higgins wrote. "These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating."
Rights group Amnesty International has been similarly blunt, accusing the company of having "a track record of flagrantly disregarding international law and standards, both in the violations of the human rights of migrants in the United States… and its ongoing supply of AI products and services to the Israeli military and intelligence services that are linked to Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza."
What Is 'Technofascism' — And Does the Label Fit?
The word "technofascism" is not being thrown around loosely. Classical fascism, as historians define it, fuses ultranationalism, militarism, cultural hierarchy, and the subordination of individual rights to the power of the state — often driven by a vanguard elite who believe they alone understand what civilisation requires.
Critics argue that Palantir's manifesto maps onto that framework with uncomfortable precision.
What makes critics reach for the word "fascism" specifically is not any single point but the combination: a tech company, as they put it, that controls surveillance infrastructure for governments, militaries and immigration agencies is now publicly declaring a civilisational hierarchy, a disdain for democratic deliberation, and the inevitability of AI-driven warfare — all while its products sit inside those very systems.
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