Palantir is overplaying its hand. Plus: Tim Cooks's real legacy
The defense tech giant's controversial manifesto actually reveals it's more vulnerable than its bravado lets on. Plus, how departing Apple CEO Tim Cook will really be remembered.
Greetings all. In today’s newsletter:
Palantir’s pugilistic, race-bating manifesto has sparked controversy. But this latest bit of ‘cartoon villainy’ is actually a sign of its growing weakness
A horrifying chart on AI-generated linguistic trends
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO of 15 years, is leaving. His real legacy probably isn’t what you think it is
But first, a little housekeeping. My friends at the AI Now Institute have a couple items I want to share: They’re running a series of trainings on data centers, and how to resist, organize, and enact good policy around them. There’s a digital toolkit, too. Also, the critical tech researcher and author Katie Wells, with Maya Pinto and Funda Ustek Spilda, has a report out on the gigification of healthcare called “Uber for Nursing.” Check it out, it’s great work. And if you missed it earlier this week, I reported on the first city in California to ban data centers. Finally, thanks to all who have applied to the podcast producer position; I’m grateful to have heard from so many of you amazing folks. More on that very soon. OK! Onwards.
Palantir’s X account published a 22-point distillation of The Technological Republic, CEO Alex Karp’s 2025 book, and because most people don’t bother to read long books written by defense tech executives, those points took many by surprise. They include but are not limited to Nazi flirtations like “The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price,” calls to reinstate and expand the draft like “National service should be a universal duty,” and dull overt racisms like “Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”
The post was immediately met with much disgust and ridicule. “Palantir released a 22-point manifesto on X and people are horrified,” as Fast Company’s headline put it. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde called it “one of the scariest things I have seen in a while,” calling it “technofascism pure.” The fallout from the statement has already been pretty widely discussed; WIRED reports that the manifesto is the latest development—after Karp’s erratic, warmongering public persona, mass surveillance of Americans, and central role in supporting ICE—that is causing Palantir employees “to wonder if they’re the bad guys.” (To this question, I’m afraid, the answer is, unless you are actively leaking information to the press, attempting to organize the workplace to oppose abuses outline in the manifesto, or sabotaging outright its operations, yes, you are. But you can always quit.)
Yet, repulsive as the thread and its contents, as abhorrent as Karp’s rank technofascist aspirations are, as nakedly, and apparently successfully, self-serving, there’s much about all this I actually find encouraging. Karp’s “comic book villain” posturing shows us precisely the ways that Palantir executives—and perhaps even the broader tech oligarch cohort—are overplaying their hand.
