Palantir CEO’s new book says Silicon Valley has ‘lost its way’

The co -founder and CEO of Palantir, Alexander Karp, opens his new book with a provocative explanation: “The Silicon Valley has lost its way.”

In the past ten years, Karp, when the data analysis company was present with its work for US military and secret services, has largely remained out of the spotlight. Last year in A rare interview with the New York TimesHe described himself as “progressive, but not awakened”, with “a consistently pro-Western view”.

Well, in “The technological republic: hard power, soft belief and the future of the West”(Moutory with Nicholas Zamiska, Palantir’s head of corporate matters and legal advisor to CEO), Karp wrote something like a manifest. In fact, he and Zamiska describe it as the “beginnings of the articulation of the theory” behind Palantir.

In her knowledge, Silicon Valley’s early success was created by a close alliance between technology company and the US government. They argue that this alliance has splintered, with the government “the challenge of the development of the next wave of path technologies to the private sector”, while Silicon Valley “has turned inwards and focuses its energy on close consumer products and not on projects, They speak and projects that speak of our greater security and our well -being. “

The couple criticizes the issue of Silicon Valley, which is dominated by “online advertising and shopping as well as social media and video sharing platforms”, which indicates that this is the result of an industry that valorizes the structure of things, Without asking what it is worth, to be built up or why.

“The central argument that we are progressing on the following pages is that the software industry should rebuild its relationship with the government and to redirect its efforts and attention to the construction of the technology and artificial intelligence functions that deal with the most urgent challenges, with whom we are faced together. ” Write Karp and Zamiska.

They also argue that Silicon Valley’s “engineering elite” has a positive obligation to participate in the defense of the nation and the articulation of a national project – what is this country, what are our values ​​and what we are? “

Reviewers were not fully won. In Bloomberg John whole complained That “The Technological Republic” “is not a book at all, but a piece of company sales material.”

And in the New York Gideon Lewis-Kraus recommended That the book is an “anachronism”, probably written in the elections in November 2024, probably ahead of Donald Trump’s victory. Now Lewis-Kraus wrote: “The vision of a mutual relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley has been made almost picturesque in the meantime.”

One thing that Karp and Zamiska criticize is “the reluctance of many managing directors, in a meaningful way and apart from occasional and theatrical foray, the most consistent social and cultural debates of our time.”

Of course, we now see that at least one company manager takes this guideline to get involved in politics when Trump Ally Elon Musk tries to redesign the federal government through his department for government efficiency.