Is it an Oppenheimer world? Palantir Technologies co-founder and CEO Alexander Karp and Palantir Head of Corporate Affairs Nicholas Zamiska call for Silicon Valley to realign itself with the government, marshaling in a public-private partnership that harnesses software, especially artificial intelligence, to protect Western democracy. Beckoning the Manhattan Project model, they contend that without robust collaboration, the West risks ceding the high ground to rivals, principally China. The book valorizes DARPA-like projects as both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity for self-preservation.
Though not its foremost purpose, The Technological Republic includes many highlights of the Silicon Valley success story that would surely interest those who care about political economy or American history. The authors likewise paint a compelling case for why it is worth caring about China, a country led by a sect determined to have a strong, powerful state. However, the authors do not adequately address the economic and political science criticisms of top-down central planning and control. Namely, all the reasons that it would be counterproductive to the West to follow the prescriptions set forth in the book.
Karp and Zamiska’s view of the market is best summarized in the book’s preface. They write, “The market is a powerful engine of destruction, creation and otherwise, but it often fails to deliver what is most needed at the right time” (xiv). For the authors, “Silicon Valley,” used here both literally to refer to the region of the Bay Area and contextually as a stand-in for the tech sector broadly, has devolved. The industry went from ensuring American geopolitical dominance to making sock-delivery apps and equally trivial things.
In a commentary published by The Atlantic, Karp and Zamiska (“Why Silicon Valley Lost Its Patriotism,” February 12, 2025) succinctly summarize one of their theses, which they develop more at length in the book:
Silicon Valley’s earliest innovations were driven not by technical minds chasing trivial consumer products but by scientists and engineers who aspired to address challenges of industrial and national significance using the most powerful technology of the age. Their pursuit of breakthroughs was intended not to satisfy the passing needs of the moment but rather to drive forward a much grander project, channeling the collective purpose and ambition of a nation.
However, they overstate the effectiveness of government-led innovation and understate the dynamism and creativity brought by decentralized work in the long run. Government projects as founts of innovation seem like quite the stretch and The Technological Republic prescription risks throttling as much innovation as it could prompt. At scale, this would likely reduce American welfare, not protect it.
The authors argue that private-public partnership is important, not only for Western hard power, but also because it drives innovation that benefits the public. The implied promise is that defense-related research will eventually spill over into the civilian economy. Such an argument ignores the intrinsic inefficiencies of government-directed endeavors. Investing huge amounts of money effectively centralizes risk and reward, thereby shielding such companies from price signals and competitive pressures that would otherwise drive innovations in a more organic market setting. Public partnerships are susceptible to misallocating talent and capital, crowding out entrepreneurial ventures beyond national security interests and distorting academic-industry collaborations in the direction of strategy dogma. Such an innovation ecosystem is directed toward military-specific uses instead of being exposed to a market process whereby consumer demand, iterative testing and the price of competition turn concepts into scalable and high-value products. This can gum up innovation that would be beneficial to defense.
Consider Edwin Mansfield’s work investigating industrial innovation, finding that projects relying on government funding took longer than when firms financed the research themselves and that competitive pressures pushed innovation (1961, “Technical Change and the Rate of Imitation,” Econometrica 29, no. 4 [October]: 741–66). Or consider how the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s reactor program to research nuclear power went nowhere, despite a team of top PhDs and incredible funding. Private firms went in the direction of light-water reactors and gas turbines and overtook the nonviable Commission’s reactors (Nick Touran, 2020, “Nuclear Reactor Development History”; Comptroller General of the United States, 1975). Readers are told how the internet and satellite technology are examples of important technologies that made their way into the hands of everyday people because of defense research. DARPA projects have indeed led to important downstream effects, but this point suffers from placing too much weight on a few outliers and tends to presuppose that innovations would not have entered the market otherwise.
It appears, however, that initial versions of defense-budget-subsidized technologies are frequently kept from the public by way of being encumbered by export restrictions, exclusive licensing agreements and classified development paths, resulting in a lag or a diversion of their application to broad commercial use. Though often counted as a government success, GPS technology was kept out of the hands of the public for more than two decades due to restrictions. Civilian device variants were even kept purposefully inaccurate. According to GPS.gov,
SA [Selective Availability] was an intentional degradation of civilian GPS accuracy, implemented on a global basis through the GPS satellites. During the 1990s, civil GPS readings could be incorrect by as much as a football field (100 meters). On the day SA was deactivated, civil GPS accuracy improved tenfold, unleashing a worldwide revolution in civil and commercial applications. (National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, n.d.)
Aside from economic weaknesses, Karp and Zamiska surmise that the West’s survival hinges on an innovative nation and a collaborative state, making what amounts to an “asymmetric power” capable of deterring rivals, a fair argument. Nevertheless, it is not adequately explained why the classic security-dilemma dynamics that can accompany arms build-up, digital or otherwise, would not occur. When the West accelerates its cyber-arms race, could geopolitical competitors interpret every new offensive capability as a potential threat, prompting reciprocal escalations that spiral well beyond initial intentions? Karp and Zamiska imply that the arms race is a given or a constant and that this would be overcome by the pure strength of deterrence if the race is won.
In the latter part of the book, Karp and Zamiska shift from innovation strategy to cultural commentary, particularly focusing on culture wars on college campuses. The authors rightfully decry the culture of moral relativism and worry that Gen-Z is being conditioned to believe in valuelessness, not only by institutions, but also reinforced by their peers. Within this context, the authors again emphasize the need to defend the West, but at this point, “the West” becomes very amorphous. Granted, it is somewhat difficult to pin down. Is it an ethnic or geographic category? What about relatively liberal capitalist nations like Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, or the Republic of Korea? The authors do not pin down what the West is, but rather, they muddy the waters by suggesting it is none of the typical answers. The ethos of the West is not necessarily geographic, institutional, or cultural, nor is it tied to capitalism, liberal values, or a shared sense of justice, according to Karp and Zamiska. Their contention is that at least one of the key features of the West is its comparative advantage in inflicting violence. This only raises more questions and concerns and does not paint a convincing picture of a system that must be preserved.
The Technological Republic succeeds in drilling home the point that the next generation of warfare will likely rest on software; perhaps autonomous drone swarms will take the place of air squadrons, killer robots will become tomorrow’s tanks and quantum computing that can rip through encryption could be the next atom bomb. Given the developments in the Russo-Ukrainian War, that appears plausible. For this reason, the theme that Silicon Valley is imperative for survival merits attention, but its secondary assumptions require more rigorous scrutiny. Instead of providing a compelling policy prescription, addressing and overcoming counterpoints, the book reads like a soliloquy.