> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 20 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529945393
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

The Technological Republic

Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

  • Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska




From one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his longtime deputy, this is a sweeping indictment of Silicon Valley and treatise on how the West has slid into a culture of complacency - even as we enter a new era of mounting global threats

Our most brilliant engineering minds once collaborated with government to advance world-changing technologies. Their efforts secured the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order. But that relationship has now eroded, with perilous repercussions.

Today, the market rewards shallow engagement with the potential of technology. Engineers and founders build photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms, unwittingly becoming vessels for the ambitions of others. This complacency has spread into academia, politics, and the boardroom. The result? An entire generation for whom the narrow-minded pursuit of the whims of a late capitalist economy has become their calling.

In this groundbreaking treatise, Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition, arguing that in order for the Westo retain its global edge—and preserve the freedoms we take for granted—the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence. Government, in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that has propelled Silicon Valley’s success.

Above all, leaders must reject intellectual fragility and preserve space for ideological confrontation. A willingness to risk the disapproval of the crowd, Karp and Zamiska contend, has everything to do with technological and economic outperformance.

At once iconoclastic and rigorous, this book will also lift the veil on Palantir and its broader political project from the inside, offering a passionate call for the West to wake up to our new reality.

  • Published: 20 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529945393
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

Praise for The Technological Republic

The wizards of America’s digital revolution have produced many shiny consumer products and apps. But they have often remained aloof from engaging in a sense of national purpose or common good. This book is a rallying cry, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence, for a return to the World War II era of cooperation between the technology industry and government in order to pursue innovation that will advance our national welfare and democratic goals. A fascinating and important work

Walter Isaacson

[The Technological Republic] help[s] explain the sudden and extraordinary change of worldview that has seized much of the US tech elite… a fascinating, if at times disturbing, insight into the reassertion of US hard power

Financial Times

A cri de coeur that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies... Likely the only book by a business executive to feature three epigrams (one in German), citations from the Bible, Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, and an outright attack on a market leader

Wall Street Journal

Equal parts company lore, jeremiad, and homily... The primary target of The Technological Republic is not a nation that has failed Silicon Valley. It is more cogent and original as a story about how Silicon Valley has failed the nation

New Yorker

As clear and bracing as reveille... with engaging storytelling... Whether or not Americans can agree on how and why to defend the country, Karp and Zamiska make a stirring call for the tech industry to follow Palantir's path and get involved with the effort

Washington Post

A bold and ambitious work, The Technological Republic reminds us of a time when technological progress answered a national calling. It is essential reading in the age of AI, as the direction of Silicon Valley will help define the future of American leadership in the world

Eric Schmidt

In today's complicated geopolitical, technological, and economic environment, the author's ability to be both well spoken and outspoken in The Technological Republic can help us understand important issues about the future prosperity of the United States and its allies. The book is by turns provocative and insightful, and Alex Karp's resilience, patriotism, and depth of experience in our rapidly changing world provide instructive lessons and intellectual arguments for all of us to consider

Jamie Dimon

This is an extremely important book and a gift to every American interested in the future path of our nation. Alex Karp is a brilliant out-of-consensus visionary who has built one of the most consequential companies in America. His insight into how he did so and how we should allocate future defence spending and what role our leading technology companies should play in helping defend our nation against hostile adversaries is both provocative and invaluable

Stanley Druckenmiller

The Technological Republic should be read by everyone who cares about how technology should contribute to the protection of American values and our security. Karp is a true patriot- a loving critic of his industry and his country who wants them both to be better

General James N. Mattis
penguin pop image
penguin pop image