Topics
Latest
AI
Amazon
Image Credits:BERTRAND GUAY/AFP / Getty Images
Apps
Biotech & Health
Climate
Image Credits:BERTRAND GUAY/AFP / Getty Images
Cloud Computing
commercialism
Crypto
endeavor
EVs
Fintech
fundraise
Gadgets
Gaming
Government & Policy
Hardware
Layoffs
Media & Entertainment
Meta
Microsoft
Privacy
Robotics
Security
Social
infinite
Startups
TikTok
Transportation
Venture
More from TechCrunch
Events
Startup Battlefield
StrictlyVC
newssheet
Podcasts
Videos
Partner Content
TechCrunch Brand Studio
Crunchboard
Contact Us
Palantir Colorado - founder and CEO Alexander Karp opens his young book with a provocative declaration : “ Silicon Valley has lost its way . ”
Over the preceding decade or so , as the data analytics ship’s company rose to protuberance with its work for U.S. military and news , Karp has largely stick around out of the spotlight . Last year , ina rare audience with The New York Times , he trace himself as “ progressive but not woke , ” with “ a consistently pro - Western view . ”
Now , in “ The Technological Republic : Hard Power , Soft Belief , and the Future of the West ” ( co - author with Nicholas Zamiska , Palantir ’s head of corporate affair and legal counsel to the CEO ) , Karp has write something of a manifesto . In fact , he and Zamiska describe it as “ the beginnings of the articulatio of the theory ” behind Palantir .
In their telling , Silicon Valley ’s early success was create by a close alliance between technology companies and the U.S. authorities . They debate that this alliance has sliver , with the government “ ceding the challenge of develop the next wave of pathbreaking technologies to the private sector , ” while Silicon Valley has “ plow inwards , focusing its energy on minute consumer products , rather than project that verbalise to and accost our greater security and social welfare . ”
The couplet criticize Silicon Valley ’s end product as dominated by “ online advertizing and shopping , as well as societal medium and video - share platforms , ” suggesting that this is the result of an industriousness that valorizes building things without asking what ’s deserving building or why .
“ The central argument that we supercharge in the Sir Frederick Handley Page that take after is that the software program industriousness should rebuild its relationship with government and redirect its feat and attention to constructing the engineering and contrived intelligence operation capabilities that will come up to the most urgent challenges that we collectively look , ” Karp and Zamiska write .
They also fence that Silicon Valley ’s “ engine room elite ” has “ an affirmatory debt instrument to take part in the defense of the nation and the juncture of a national task — what is this area , what are our value , and for what do we stand . ”
Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
commentator have not been entirely won over . In Bloomberg , John Ganzcomplainedthat “ The Technological Republic ” is “ not a book at all , but a piece of collective sales fabric . ”
And in The New Yorker , Gideon Lewis - Kraussuggestedthat the book is an “ misdating , ” presumptively compose before Donald Trump ’s victory in the November 2024 election . Now , Lewis - Kraus write , “ its imagination of a mutually supportive relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley has in the interim been render almost quaint . ”
Indeed , one thing that Karp and Zamiska criticize is “ the hesitancy of many business leader to hazard into , in any meaningful way and aside from the occasional and theatrical maraud , the most eventful societal and ethnical debates of our clock time . ”
Of course , we are now see at least one business drawing card take this directive to get involve in politics quite seriously , as Trump allyElon Musk attempts to remake the federal governmentthrough his Department of Government Efficiency .
