Palantir backs return of US military draft, slams – Business News
Palantir and its CEO Alex Karp known as on the US to pursue AI-powered weapons, reinstate the military draft and draw back from “regressive” cultures in a buzzy 22-point manifesto.
Billed as a abstract of Karp’s 2025 ebook “The Technological Republic,” the wide-ranging, 1,000-word post on X outlined the AI software program company’s positions on how Silicon Valley and the US authorities ought to adapt to the rise of artificial intelligence. Palantir stated it shared the post “because we get asked a lot.”
“The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” the post said. “Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.”
Karp and fellow Palantir government Nicholas Zamiska, who co-wrote “The Technological Republic,” additionally argue that national service, together with obligatory military enlistment, “should be a universal duty” for US residents.
“We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost,” they wrote.
Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp speaks onstage during the 2025 New York Times Dealbook Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Dec. 3 in New York City. Getty Images
The Palantir execs criticized what they described as society’s embrace of “dysfunctional and regressive cultures” in addition to “the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism.”
“We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity,” the duo wrote.
The post additionally weighed in on the present geopolitical surroundings, asserting that democracies can no longer depend on “soft power” to control the worldwide order. Palantir claimed the “atomic age is ending” and can be changed by a “new era of deterrence bult on AI.”
Elsewhere, Karp and Zamiska argued that the “neutering of Germany and Japan” within the aftermath of World War II “must be undone.”
“The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price,” they wrote. “A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”
Elon Musk and Palantir co-founder CEO Alex Karp attend a bipartisan AI discussion board on the US Capitol on Sept. 13, 2023. REUTERS
Shares of Palantir sank about 1% in Monday trading.
Karp, 58, cofounded Palantir in 2003 alongside billionaire Peter Thiel. The company has fostered close ties with the Trump administration, together with work with the US military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Karp took an unorthodox path to operating a tech company, incomes a PhD in neoclassical social concept from Goethe University in Germany earlier than coming into the business world.
In January, Karp made headlines with a warning that AI “will destroy” jobs based mostly on school levels within the humanities, whereas boosting the market for vocational careers.
