Journalist Hamilton Nolan dismantles Palantir's manifesto, giving CEO Alex Karp as much respect as he deserves.

[highplainsdem]

And I was very happy to run across this. First, Nolan's Bluesky post about it:

Wrote about Palantir and Alex Karp's whiny bullshit. GROW UP DUDE.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/grievance-...

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social) 2026-04-19T16:06:00.597Z

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/grievance-poisoning-in-the-first

-snip-

Which brings me to Palantir. Evil surveillance company from hell. You all know it. Alex Karp, the lapsed academic who became Palantir’s loudmouth CEO/ Satan, published a book last year called The Technological Republic. The book is not just an attempt to situate Palantir as the solution to The West’s various social crises; it is also a self-conscious effort to position Alex Karp as a public intellectual of the first order, a man who is both thinker and doer, who has systematically diagnosed the ills of our economy and culture and built the terrifying, capitalist totalitarian private market solution for them.

-snip-

Anyhow, today, Palantir has gone mildly viral by posting on Twitter, “Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief.” Followed by 22 bullet points that sum up the book’s arguments. At last, a version of the book that tech people can read! The instant reaction to this bullet point list among non-tech people was “Wow, this is some fascist shit.” Which is true. But I want to make an even more rudimentary point that is, I think, a very important piece of context: This is not a coherent set of arguments at all. It is not a philosophy. It is not a set of intelligible ethics. Rather, it is a list of angry reactions to being yelled at—given a somber voice and dressed up as some sort of wondrous work of intellect.

-snip-

Seen like this, Alex Karp’s self-serious techno-fascist listicle becomes more preposterous than scary. Is this really a bold and sweeping “cultural critique” deserving of great public respect? Or might it more accurately be described as “Alex Karp putting his own insecurities, craving for approval, and lust for money into bullet point format?”

It’s a list a child would make! “MY PHILOSOPHY: 1. You must be NICE to me. 2. My hunger for candy shows that I am SMART.” It’s embarrassing! Have some self respect, dude. You are a right wing billionaire weapons merchant. You are the human face of technological totalitarianism. You are the embodiment of just how close America is to a horrifying public-private partnership of fascism. You are the closest thing that we have to Dr. Evil. Stop acting so thirsty. It’s unbecoming. Your job is not to grovel for praise from Silicon Valley people who have not finished a book in the past 14 years. Your job is to keep doing cartoonishly evil shit until a hero finally vanquishes you. We all know you’re awful. Don’t work so hard to be awful in new and more tedious ways.

Much more at the link. I really loved the "more honest groupings" Nolan put Karp's 22 bullet points into, starting with "I WANT TO BE FAMOUS AND POWERFUL BUT ALSO I WANT PEOPLE TO STOP SAYING MEAN THINGS ABOUT ME."

And if you haven't seen any news or posts about Palatir's manifesto, see this LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143653103

[eppur_se_muova]

1. I felt my "Point 23" was more succinct. nt

[DET]

2. Never Heard of Hamilton Nolan

But I like the way he writes. I can hear John Oliver reading that essay, with his usual sardonic wit.

[highplainsdem]

3. From Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Hammer.html?id=AqDCEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_author_description

About the author (2024)
Hamilton Nolan is a labor journalist who writes regularly for In These Times magazine and The Guardian. He has written about labor, politics, and class war for The New York Times, the Washington Post, Gawker, Splinter, and other publications. He was the longest-serving writer in Gawker’s history, and was a leader in unionizing Gawker Media in 2015. Hamilton is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America, East. He lives in Brooklyn.

Article on him from his alma mater:

https://www.flagler.edu/news-events/news/flagler-alumnus-hamilton-nolans-hammer-power-inequality-and-struggle-soul-labor

For Flagler alumnus and award-winning journalist Hamilton Nolan, ‘03, a career following and reporting on labor unions has now led to the publishing of his first book, “The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.”

-snip-

“I’m a labor journalist,” he stated. “I’ve been a journalist for about 20 years… I went through my own union campaign at the place where I was working in 2015. It was called Gawker Media, and we were the first online media company to unionize.”

In 2021, while reporting on labor for In These Times, Nolan was covering the “intertwined crises and opportunities” that faced workers in America in the wake of the pandemic. Before that, he had spent five years reporting on labor.

-snip-

Since its release in 2024, the book has been written up in Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The New York Times. The Times called it “a lively account of the current landscape of American labor organizing … 'The Hammer' offers an impressive array of scenes from the front lines of the 21st-century economy.”

-snip-

[yellow dahlia]

4. Alex Carp is a twisted and dangerous person.

Another off-balance egomaniac...a la Musk model.

[Initech]

5. Palantir can go shove their illegal surveillance bullshit up their ass!