The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

From the Palantir co-founder and The Economist’s ‘best CEO of 2024,’ and his deputy, a sweeping indictment of the West’s culture of complacency. ONE OF FINANCIAL TIMES’ MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR Our most brilliant engineering minds once collaborated with government to advance world-changing technologies. Their efforts secured the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order. But that relationship has now eroded, with perilous repercussions. In this groundbreaking treatise, one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his longtime deputy offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition. Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska argue that in order for the West to retain its global edge—and preserve the freedoms we take for granted—the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence. Government, in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that have propelled Silicon Valley’s success. Above all, leaders must reject intellectual fragility and preserve space for ideological confrontation. A willingness to risk the disapproval of the crowd, Karp and Zamiska contend, has everything to do with technological and economic out-performance. At once iconoclastic and rigorous, this book will also lift the veil on Palantir and its broader political project from the inside, offering a passionate call for the West to wake up to our new reality.