The Technological Republic on Trial

Alex Karp's argument, set against the record. What his company's software actually does, what happened where it was used, and how the man who analysed a speech that binds a crowd came to praise it.

A course on the thought of Alex Karp.

Philosophy · Technology

What you will learn

  • Describe what Palantir's software does with data an institution already holds
  • Identify the cases where the record supports Karp's claims for his software, and what those cases have in common
  • Explain why commercial customers left and how Steinberger judges Karp's counter-terrorism claims
  • Describe how a Palantir search narrowed 140 million records to 13 people, and what the engineer running it could not say about wrong matches
  • Explain how the LAPD points system created a feedback loop that moved judgement to earlier, less visible decisions
  • Weigh the Los Angeles and New Orleans record against Karp's own test of outcomes and of tolerance for error
  • State, in Karp's own words, his argument that technology companies should not veto how elected governments use their tools, and his principle that the machine must remain subordinate to its creator.
  • Describe how Palantir's denials about its immigration work compared with what the 2017 document and the 2019 Mississippi raids showed.

Course outline

  1. Plumbing — The lesson tests Karp's claims for his software against the record: the Kabul airlift, the Covid response, Airbus and the Army lawsuit on one side, and departing customers, years of losses and…
  2. In the Field — Sarah Brayne's five years inside the Los Angeles Police Department show what Palantir's software did on real streets: it was fast and powerful, it did not know how often it was wrong, and its…
  3. War, Borders and Guardrails — The lesson follows Palantir's software into Ukraine, the Pentagon's drone program, American immigration raids and Israel's wars, and sets each case beside Karp's two principles: that elected…
  4. The Thesis and the Speech — Alex Karp described the same 1998 speech by the novelist Martin Walser twice, in his 2002 doctoral thesis and in his 2025 book, and the two accounts explain how it worked in almost the same words.…
  5. The Drift — Six years of Alex Karp's own words are set in date order, from Palantir's 2020 stock-market filing to early 2026, beside what he told the journalist Michael Steinberger about Donald Trump. The lesson…
  6. The Verdict — The lesson sets the strongest evidence for Alex Karp's argument beside the strongest evidence against it: the history and the field successes on one side, and the critics, the record and the money on…

Works read in this course

  • The Jargon of Authenticity — Adorno's essay attacks a style of elevated, authentic-sounding speech in post-war Germany that let people say frowned-upon things in acceptable form; Karp takes from it his concept of jargon, statements that relieve forbidden urges and bind the speaker to the group, and applies it to Walser's speech.
  • The Abolition of Man — C. S. Lewis's 1943 book, which warned of 'men without chests', people never allowed to develop a life of sentiment and devotion; Karp uses it to describe Western leaders he sees as hollow administrators afraid of belief.
  • The Culture of Narcissism — Christopher Lasch's 1979 book, which describes the 'psychological man' of the twentieth century who seeks peace of mind rather than self-aggrandizement or transcendence; Karp takes the diagnosis and calls that peace shallow, the source of 'fabricated grievances and imagined slights.'
  • After Virtue — Alasdair MacIntyre's 1981 work of moral philosophy, from which Karp takes the line 'success is whatever passes for success' to describe a world he says Palantir refuses to bend to.

Built from

This course was built from 8 books.

  • Michael Steinberger, The Philosopher in the Valley (2025)
  • Sarah Brayne, Predict and Surveil (2020)
  • Alexander C. Karp, Aggression in the Lifeworld (2002)
  • Martin Walser, Experiences while Composing a Sunday Speech (1998), in Kovach & Walser, The Burden of the Past
  • Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic (2025)
  • Palantir Technologies, Form S-1 (2020)
  • Alex Karp, letters to shareholders (2020–2026)
  • Reviews of The Technological Republic in The Independent Review, Providence, Scholar’s Stage and elsewhere

Terms introduced

data integration, the points system, audit log, jargon, delineation

Part of the Simposeum course library.