Palantir CEO Alex Karp is a man in charge of one of the most important and frightening companies in the world. Karp’s new book, cowritten with Nicholas Zamiska, is called “The Technological Republic”. After claiming “because we get asked a lot,” Palantir posted a 22-point summary of the book that reads like a corporate manifesto. It evokes both weird reactionary shit and also trilby-wearing Reddit comments from the early 2010s.
Palantir’s summary of the book is ominous. But even the company’s name is unironically ominous. The “palantíri” are crystal balls in “The Lord of the Rings” that let Middle-earth’s worst tyrants spy on the heroes of the story. It’s a fun reference if you have no shame about your company’s mission.
We’ve attempted to translate these 22 points from Alex Karp’s alien words into something more reasonable, like human words from someone who might play him in the biopic. (Hello, Taika Waititi.) In so doing, we’ve become much more sympathetic to why Jürgen Habermas refused to supervise Karp’s research.
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The “palantiri” reference is even worse than the simplified explanation in the article. They are crystal balls that were intended to be used for good and have been corrupted by an evil tyrant. When initially well-intentioned characters like Saruman and Denethor try to use them to monitor their enemies, what they see is warped by Sauron to be what Sauron wants them to see and the user is corrupted. It results in Denethor and Saruman doing some fucked up shit that they are convinced is for the better good.
So yeah, seems a little too much “on the nose”. Might as well just name your company TyrantCorp.