Palantir’s Manifesto Is A Threat To Democracy

Do you remember when multinational corporations used to influence political decisions discreetly, behind closed doors? Nowadays, tech elites have changed the approach: they publish manifestos, directly engage with governments, and openly question the value of democracy.

On April 18th, Palantir posted on X a 22-point summary of The Technological Republic, the book recently written by Alex Karp, the company’s CEO ^{1 2}.

The post has sparked a huge debate across the political and technological circles, as it constitutes a real political manifesto of Palantir. On a wider note, it represents the ideology behind many billionaires leading tech companies in Silicon Valley. Belgian philosopher of technology Mark Coeckelbergh wrote that Palantir’s manifesto is an ‘example of technofascism’ ³. 

But before analyzing in-depth the content of the summary, it’s worth briefly recalling what Palantir does. The defense-tech firm sells an AI-powered software that allows to analyze public and private data, including profiles on social media, personal information, and physical attributes ⁴. It is sold to military, immigration enforcement, and law enforcement agencies to be used for predictive modeling, making decisions that are based on pattern recognition and automated suspicion.

Last March, Palantir Technologies was chosen by Trump’s administration to analyze the data collected from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and all other agencies of the federal government, which are required to share after an executive order signed last March ^{5 6}.

What’s Inside the Manifesto

With this premise, we can delve deep into what Palantir’s post contains and identify the points that sparked more controversy and concerns.

One of the core arguments is the view of AI as the new determinant of military advantage. A war-focused rhetoric is present throughout the manifesto, with Silicon Valley that owes a moral debt to the United States, and with tech companies that should participate directly in defense, policing, and public order.

The manifesto is also vocal about the rearmament of Germany and Japan, whose ‘defanging’ is said to have weakened Europe and Asia. It’s not surprising that a company with deep interests in the military and surveillance industry openly shares these views on the global order.

What’s interesting and worrying is the take expressed on free and democratic societies, on which it is said that ‘their ability to prevail requires hard power more than moral appeal, and hard power in this century will be built on software.’
America and the West are called out for having indulged in ‘vacant and hollow pluralism’, sacrificing national cultures and interests. 

Regarding cultures, there’s another point that generated controversy: it is implied that a hierarchy among different societies exists, with ‘some cultures that have produced vital advances, while others remain dysfunctional and regressive.’

We can already see how Karp’s – and Palantir’s – manifesto is not the usual corporate communication, but a real political agenda of a private company.

The Ideology Of Peter Thiel

To understand the agenda of Palantir, we have to look at who’s behind the firm. And along with Alexander Karp, there is Peter Thiel. He co-founded Palantir and PayPal, was the first outside investor of Facebook, and is a key figure behind the rise of the techno-authoritarian movement.

Already in 2009, Thiel was writing that he ‘no longer believed that freedom and democracy are compatible’. In the same essay, titled The Education of a Libertarian, he argued that increasing welfare beneficiaries and expanding the suffrage to women in the American 1920s had rendered ‘capitalist democracy into an oxymoron’ ⁷.

In a 2021 interview with Time, Max Chafkin, author of Thiel’s biography The Contrarian, said that Thiel’s ideology borders on fascism ⁸. In his book Zero to One, Palantir’s co-founder writes that having a single decision-maker has made private companies run better than governments ⁹. According to Chafkin, Thiel believes that the figure of a dictator is more suited for effective leadership (Luscombe, 2021).

In Thiel’s vision, tech billionaires should be the legitimate rulers of society. Control is obtained through code and capital, and is privatized: elite rule is the real bastion against chaos ¹⁰.

His economic views mirror his politics in terms of the concentration of power. In a notorious quote, he said that ‘competition is for losers’: monopoly is seen as the ideal environment for fueling innovation and entrepreneurship ¹¹.

Tech Billionaires And The Attack On Democracy

The ideology behind Palantir’s manifesto and its co-founders, Karp and Thiel, has to be seen in the wider context of the rise of tech billionaires. This new elite is exerting its influence not only on the economy but also in politics, as displayed by Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 ¹². 

A recent UN study warns that the increase in automation brought by AI is favouring monopoly and first-mover advantage – i.e., accumulation of capital and influence ¹³. In addition, the digital divides created by uneven technology adoption deepen existing inequality.

The same impact of AI on the job market risks further reducing the bargaining power that workers have in democratic societies, such as strikes or contract negotiations. If a large swath of the population loses leverage, the democratic process is weakened ¹⁴.

In fact, the erosion of democracy is happening both in the halls of power, where tech CEOs are now invited to sit, and in the global economy, where the accumulation of wealth is in the hands of an increasingly restricted number of individuals ¹⁵.

And when figures like Thiel and Musk publicly express their aversion to democracy, it becomes harder to see this process as incidental rather than ideological ¹⁶.

Yet, technology is not anti-democratic by nature; it is ownership and governance that determine the outcome. And if Silicon Valley has given birth to a class of oligarchs willing to sacrifice democracy, other places in the world have shown that a different path is possible ¹⁷.

In Taiwan, the government has built a digital platform where citizens can file petitions, participate in policymaking, and collaborate directly with institutions ¹⁸. Democratic participation has been successfully strengthened with technology ¹⁹.

The real question here is whether governments worldwide are willing to regulate ownership and defend democracy from the growing influence of private-sector power.

References

Thanks to Salvador Rios on Unsplash for the Header Image

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3. Coeckelbergh, M. (2026, April). Palantir’s manifesto: Technofascism in plain sight. Medium. https://coeckelbergh.medium.com/palantirs-manifesto-technofascism-in-plain-sight-c160ca377e9a
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