The Technological Republic
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  • Published: 20 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529949926
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $40.00

The Technological Republic

Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

  • Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska
Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
15 Apr 2025
EBook
20 Feb 2025
Audiobook
20 Feb 2025
Hardback
20 Mar 2025
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From one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his longtime deputy, this is a sweeping indictment of Silicon Valley and treatise on how the West has slid into a culture of complacency - even as we enter a new era of mounting global threats

Silicon Valley has lost its way. From the founding of the American republic through much of the twentieth century, our most brilliant engineering minds and the democratic state collaborated to advance world-changing technologies. The partnership ensured the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order. But that relationship has now eroded, with perilous repercussions.

The modern incarnation of Silicon Valley turned its focus to the consumer market, including the construction of elaborate online advertising and social media platforms. The market rewarded shallow engagement with the potential of technology, as startup after startup catered to the whims of capitalist culture with little interest in constructing the technology that would address our most significant challenges. A generation of extraordinarily talented engineers, insulated from the geopolitical threats of the moment, built photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms at the expense of projects with the potential to serve a more pressing collective or national purpose.

In this groundbreaking and provocative treatise, Alexander C. Karp, co-founder and chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies, and Nicholas W. Zamiska, head of corporate affairs at the company, offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of creative and cultural ambition. They argue that in order for the West to maintain its geopolitical advantage—and the freedoms that we take for granted—the software industry must redirect its attention to our most urgent challenges and rebuild its relationship with government.

It will be the union of the state and the software industry—not their separation and disentanglement—that will be required for the United States and its allies to remain as dominant in this century as they were in the last. The public will forgive many failures of government and the political class. But the electorate will not overlook a systemic inability to harness technology for the purpose of effectively advancing our welfare and security.

Karp and Zamiska argue that a democratic public’s commitment to free speech, in particular—to preserving space for ideological confrontation and a rejection of intellectual fragility—has everything to do with technological and economic outperformance. An entire generation is at risk of unwittingly becoming a product, a vessel for the ambitions of others, deprived of the opportunity to form authentic and independent beliefs about the world. At once iconoclastic and rigorous, the 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.
  • Published: 20 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529949926
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $40.00
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Praise for The Technological Republic

The wizards of America’s digital revolution have produced many shiny consumer products and apps. But they have often remained aloof from engaging in a sense of national purpose or common good. This book is a rallying cry, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence, for a return to the World War II era of cooperation between the technology industry and government in order to pursue innovation that will advance our national welfare and democratic goals. A fascinating and important work

Walter Isaacson

[The Technological Republic] help[s] explain the sudden and extraordinary change of worldview that has seized much of the US tech elite… a fascinating, if at times disturbing, insight into the reassertion of US hard power

Financial Times

A cri de coeur that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies... Likely the only book by a business executive to feature three epigrams (one in German), citations from the Bible, Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, and an outright attack on a market leader

Wall Street Journal

Equal parts company lore, jeremiad, and homily... The primary target of The Technological Republic is not a nation that has failed Silicon Valley. It is more cogent and original as a story about how Silicon Valley has failed the nation

New Yorker

As clear and bracing as reveille... with engaging storytelling... Whether or not Americans can agree on how and why to defend the country, Karp and Zamiska make a stirring call for the tech industry to follow Palantir's path and get involved with the effort

Washington Post

A bold and ambitious work, The Technological Republic reminds us of a time when technological progress answered a national calling. It is essential reading in the age of AI, as the direction of Silicon Valley will help define the future of American leadership in the world

Eric Schmidt

In today's complicated geopolitical, technological, and economic environment, the author's ability to be both well spoken and outspoken in The Technological Republic can help us understand important issues about the future prosperity of the United States and its allies. The book is by turns provocative and insightful, and Alex Karp's resilience, patriotism, and depth of experience in our rapidly changing world provide instructive lessons and intellectual arguments for all of us to consider

Jamie Dimon

This is an extremely important book and a gift to every American interested in the future path of our nation. Alex Karp is a brilliant out-of-consensus visionary who has built one of the most consequential companies in America. His insight into how he did so and how we should allocate future defence spending and what role our leading technology companies should play in helping defend our nation against hostile adversaries is both provocative and invaluable

Stanley Druckenmiller

The Technological Republic should be read by everyone who cares about how technology should contribute to the protection of American values and our security. Karp is a true patriot- a loving critic of his industry and his country who wants them both to be better

General James N. Mattis

Not since Allan Bloom’s astonishingly successful 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind — more than 1 million copies sold — has there been a cultural critique as sweeping as Karp’s

Washington Post

Timely and unsettling

Observer

The Technological Republic sets out their [Karp's and Zamiska's] vision – compelling, contentious, flawed – for how to meet that challenge [of AI]. It is far too important to ignore

Times Literary Supplement