From one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his longtime deputy and advisor, a sweeping indictment of Silicon Valley, showing 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 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.
The focus of tech companies drifted to consumers, as they constructed elaborate online advertising and social media platforms. The market rewarded this shallow engagement with the potential of technology. The result? An entire generation of talented engineers and founders built photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms, often unwittingly becoming vessels for the ambitions of others and depriving themselves of the opportunity to form independent beliefs about the world.
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 renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence.
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. Achieving this will entail preserving space for ideological confrontation, a rejection of intellectual fragility, and leaders in Silicon Valley, universities, and government unafraid to articulate their beliefs about the world. A democratic public’s commitment to free speech, Karp and Zamiska argue, has everything to do with technological and economic outperformance.
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.