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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
The new so-called manifesto of the technology company Palantir proposes a governance model that dehumanizes people and validates the new US National Security doctrine. The scope of the manifesto went far beyond the usual corporate goal of pursuing defense contracts, proposing the introduction of a mandatory US national service, suggesting a more muscular role for tech companies in fighting “violent crime,” and denouncing the “ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures.”
Palantir, the company specializing in software for managing and analyzing large volumes of data for governments and private companies, published a manifesto that, in 22 points, summarizes the project presented by its co-founder, Alex Karp. In the manifesto, Karp urges the technology industry to “renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence” and calls on the US government to “embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that has propelled Silicon Valley’s success.”
The document addresses topics such as the development of AI-based weapons, the limits of soft power, the absolute necessity of conflict, and the end of the nuclear deterrence era and the birth of AI-based deterrence. Furthermore, it ludicrously claims that “American power has enabled an extraordinarily long period of peace” and draws a dividing line between what it calls cultures that “have produced vital advances” and those it labels “dysfunctional and regressive.”
From his beginnings in Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel, the other co-founder of Palantir, aspired for all companies involved in creating technology to have cross-investment funds. This vision is based on the so-called “neocameralism” promoted by the American blogger Curtis Yarvin, who, inspired by the feudal aristocracy, advocates a government composed of businessmen who would allocate resources to other administrators, who, in turn, would control all the producers of well-being: data, technological innovation, patents, server centers, and engineers who develop platforms.
This ideology, with certain modifications to the manifesto, proposes new aristocratic governments and a techno-feudalism that monopolizes resources and globally controls trade relations.
Founded in 2003 with investment from In-Q-Tel—the CIA’s venture capital fund—Palantir has established itself as a key provider of national security, intelligence, and data analysis for various US government agencies, portfolios, and departments. According to publicly available data from the firm, revenue from government contracts totaled $4.475 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Palantir has the capacity for institutional and national penetration, to determine how people think, what they see, what they prioritize, what they do not prioritize, and what they pay attention to. Because of the intensive use people make of these devices, Palantir can extract data and information from them and model it using these software technologies. As a result, Palantir can penetrate the innermost parts of people and provoke behaviors, through what some authors call the economy of action.
At the same time, Palantir’s manifesto validates the new US National Security doctrine, which promotes the imposition of so-called “peace through strength,” as United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly said.
Palantir is building and reinforcing the stance that the US must now act by force, not through soft power. This point stems from an ideological consideration and a geopolitical reading that maintains that the international institutional framework served China more than the US. Accordingly, Washington’s position now is that it is necessary to break with that world through military force, moving away from the soft power it historically promoted through the cultural industry and humanitarian aid. Now, military superiority will dominate, and it will be defined by AI, not conventional weapons.
Palantir’s manifesto outlines a process of dehumanization in which it considers some populations expendable, capable of being killed, and, as Israel does in Palestine and other Middle Eastern countries, suitable for experimentation with these technologies. This articulates a dehumanizing vision that casts others as potential enemies and does not regard them as equal to Americans on the same line of humanity. For example, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used Palantir software to crack down on migrants.
In light of these postulates, the manifesto demonstrates that liberal democracy, as understood in the context of globalization, is worn out and insufficient to guarantee a world with new opportunities. In that sense, the manifesto emerges as a solution to the erosion of liberalism and proposes that, faced with the limitations of multilateral organizations and human rights, techno-oligarchs should take the reins of the global order.
In Palantir’s view, it cannot be the States or public officials, because they are not good at making decisions. According to its worldview, technology has proven that it is what changes people and societies. Therefore, whoever leads development should govern the world, a complete process of dehumanization and validation of the new US National Security doctrine.
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