A certain Mr Dick Shit, of Palantir, has published The Technological Republic, which is a thing.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
Silicon Valley owes the nation its education, people, infrastructure, well-being, opportunity and a whole host of other things too. Why choose defence? What industry is most lucrative for Palantir? Defence. Ah, I see.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
If you honestly think that the iPhone is the greatest creative achievement of a civilisation, small wonder that you think it’s limiting. Go to a museum, an art gallery, listen to some music or the laughter from kids when they hear a joke. Then compare any of those experiences with your phone.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
Ew, get an editor. OK, so, ignoring the email thing, let’s work this one through. “A civilisation’s decadent culture will be forgiven if it can deliver economic growth and security.” No, there’s no forgiveness for the current level of your decadence. Sorry about that.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
Aye, there’s nothing like someone bombing my house to make me come round to their way of thinking. Moral appeal has to be presenting something appealing to people to win them over. Are you whining that not everyone shares your values and morals? Why might they not share them, d’ya think? So, bombing folk is next, you say? That’ll learn ’em to like your particular flavour of capitalism.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
You’ll build weapons on AI? Do you mean large language models? Good luck with that, then. Other machine learning algorithms exist of course, and no doubt they’ll be used to kill people more efficiently. You want part of it? Yep, ya probably do. I’ll take my chances.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
OK, let’s see the ruling class of the ‘decadent civilisation’ sign up first. Or will you all weasel your way out of it with, I dunno, a hurty knee? What’s happened here, historically? Many hurty knees caused by the burden of carrying heavy wallets. National service by example of those who espouse it, that’s what I advocate, and let’s see how it goes.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
Military action abroad and taking taxpayer contracts to build soldiers’ (without hurty knees) weapons. That’s a business, I guess.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
Ah, the overpaid public sector! Look at the local government ministers in their Ferraris and superyachts! Cut their funding. Call Elon Musk and his DOGE boys! Wait, what, you have? Oh.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
Has someone said hurtful things to you? Do you want to talk about it?
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
Politicians, you don’t like them, then. Were they the ones to say all those hurtful things about you? Bad politico, bad, bad, naughty politico!
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
Ah yes, the zen moment of calm while standing on the fallen bodies of your vanquished enemies. Is your life a cut scene from a video game? I think it may have all the moral depth of one. And if you mention The Art of War, I will likely do a little sick in my mouth.
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
AI deterrence? Hahhahahaha! The Chinese are scared of Ask Jeeves on LSD?
13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.
Yep, you can be lucky and rise from the gutter. But you may not. Ah, shucks, it sucks to be a failure, especially an un-housed, ill failure.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
Read. A. Fucking. Newspaper.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
Ah, history. The things we can learn from it. So, so, many things. Europe is paying a price for Germany being hobbled? And which is Europe’s biggest economy again? And what happened in the world economy during the 80s and 90s? Japan did really rather well, as I remember. You’ve been hanging out with the German right too much, mate.
16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
No, we’re not scornful of Elon because we want to dismiss what he’s bought, sorry, created. We’re scornful of him because he’s a fascist with a big mouth, too much money and a drug problem. Mostly because he’s a fascist, tho’.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
Ring doorbells scanning the faces of passers-by in the street – that sorta thing? The militarisation of the police? Money to be made there, is there?
18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
Public figures in the US are there because, generally, they’ve done well in business. They’re not experts in everything. Shallow and petty assualts are generally directed at those with lots of attention who think they’re more than business dorks. Sorry about that.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
I think this means that those who say lots of wrong things are saying the opposite of “nothing much at all.” Ergo, saying wrong things out loud is meaningful, and knowing when to shut the fuck up is overvalued. Might I suggest a little pub I know in my city, where you’re welcome to broadcast your favourite opinions fortissimo. We can sell tickets to that, maybe give the money to the ambulance drivers who’ll come and scrape you off the walls.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
Which religion would Sir like politicians to espouse? I vote for more Rastafarians in the Senate, and Shi’ite Muslims in the House of Representatives. Is that what you mean?
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
Name some of those cultures you refer to – which is which? We’d love to know. But, were I a betting man, I’d guess that you think regressive and harmful cultures are represented by people who don’t have the same broad spiritual faith or economic ideas as you. It’s just a guess, mind.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
For starters, can we keep the West out of the same camp as America for now? Thanks. Anyways, is what you’re saying that you don’t like immigrants coming to America? Come on, just say it! Be brave about what you really, really mean. We promise not to say anything hurtful.