Date: Wednesday, 22 April 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/if-ww3-happens-this-would-be-the
https://theduran.com/if-ww3-happens-this-would-be-the-ideology-that-motivated-it/
If WW3 happens, this would be the ideology that motivated it:
22 April 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
This would be the ideology of the aggressor-side, the perpetrator — NOT of the defender-side, the responder — in that war:
Expressing this ideology is Alex Karp, the Palantir CEO, and friend of its founder Peter Thiel, at the opening of his 8-minute-long speech, on 5 December 2025:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWiEk_7Pulc
“Alex Karp Opening Remarks | Paragon 2025”
00:05
Well, I always realized I'd be accused of something, but this is the flashing lights.
00:13
Well, delayed to be here, delayed to have you here.
00:17
I'm delighted to be in New York where I was born, in a great city.
00:24
And yeah, we are mercilessly and proudly patriotic.
00:31
That's obvious, but I think one of the things that is often implicit in why we've been in our success
00:39
and that we really came to see as a huge advantage when we moved into commercial, primarily U.S. commercial,
00:45
was when we went to the government, in the beginning it was the FBI, the CIA, and it ended up being Special Operations Command.
00:56
We had this very, very naive idea that because we were patriotic, we would just build things that work
01:05
where we would absorb the value creation responsibility, meaning the risk that we would provide more value
01:13
for these incredibly special people than what they could pay us.
01:20
…
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This ideology is also well expressed in the following articles:
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https://www.rt.com/news/638879-palantir-karp-technofascist-manifesto/
“What’s in Palantir’s ‘Technofascist’ manifesto?”
The defense tech behemoth has set the internet on fire with a tweet likened to the ‘ramblings of a comic book villain’
Published 21 Apr, 2026 20:47
Alex Karp speaks at a discussion in Washington DC, April 30, 2025. © Getty Images; Jemal Countess
American surveillance tech contractor Palantir released a 22-point manifesto over the weekend, calling for a “new era” of AI-enabled US military supremacy. The internet went wild, with the text being labeled a blueprint for “technofascism.”
Posted on X on Saturday, the document goes far beyond the typical mission statement of a Silicon Valley tech company. It outlines Palantir’s positions on the role of technology and military power in the 21st century, stating: “Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation;” “hard power in this century will be built on software;” “national service should be a universal duty,” “the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone.”
Palantir
@PalantirTech
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Because we get asked a lot.
The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
2. We must rebel …
techrepublicbook.com
THE TECHNOLOGICAL REPUBLIC
6:45 PM · Apr 18, 2026
Read 8.1K replies
To understand how a private corporation can feel empowered to demand such far-reaching policy changes from the state, it’s important to understand what Palantir is, and how enmeshed with the ‘deep state’ it really is.
What is Palantir?
Palantir – named after the obsidian seeing-stones from Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ through which the dark lord Sauron keeps watch on his underlings – is a software firm primarily serving the defense and intelligence sectors. The company was established in 2003 by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale (who worked for Thiel’s Clarium Capital), Stephen Cohen (who interned at Clarium) former Sigmund Freud Research Institute researcher Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings, a PayPal engineer.
Palantir was the brainchild of Thiel, who said that he realized “the approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism.” Thiel’s idea was nurtured by the CIA, which invested $2 million in the company in 2005 via its in-house venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel. “I wish I had Palantir when I was director,” former CIA chief George Tenet – who set up In-Q-Tel – told Forbes magazine in 2013. “I wish we had the tool of its power.”
Palantir is currently valued at around $352 billion, a valuation that represents roughly 80 times the company’s annual revenue. This apparent overvaluation is fueled by Palantir’s extensive contracts with the US government and its alphabet soup of defense and intelligence agencies.
What does Palantir sell?
Palantir’s flagship product is an operating system called ‘Gotham’. Not a surveillance system as such, it pulls together and analyses existing data that may otherwise take days to sift through. For example, if US Central Command is planning a missile strike in a foreign country, Gotham can combine maps and satellite footage from that country, data from other agencies, including human intelligence from the CIA and signals intelligence from the NSA, and local surveillance data to present CENTCOM with potential targets.
Gotham and MOSAIC – another Palantir target identification program that pulls digital data including surveillance footage and IP addresses from a target area – use AI to label the most effective targets for military strikes. The US admits that it has used these programs to select targets during its ongoing war on Iran, but insists that humans make the final decision to fire.
Gotham has also been used as a policing surveillance tool. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, uses Gotham to collect data on civilians – including names, addresses, social media activity, personal relationships, and surveillance photographs – in order to trace their connections to known criminals and predict the likelihood that they will go on to commit crimes.
Gotham can “centralize everything an agency knows about a person in one place, including their eye color from their driver’s license, or their license plate from a traffic ticket – making it easy to build a detailed intelligence report,” a former employee told Wired last year.
A group of anti-ICE demonstrators hold a rally in front of Palantir's offices in Washington DC, April 1, 2026. © Getty Images; Celal Gunes
Who are Palantir’s customers?
Palantir’s client list is extensive. In the US it includes the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CIA, FBI, NSA, US Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Special Operations Command, as well as dozens or even hundreds of police departments and other law enforcement agencies. At present, there is no single, publicly-available list of Palantir customers within the US.
Abroad, Palantir’s technology is used by the British Ministry of Defense, Israel Defense Forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as police departments and government agencies in France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK.
Why is a private surveillance tech company releasing a manifesto?
Palantir is at its core a data aggregation company, but one set apart by its clients, its marketing, and the ideological streak of its executives. The company markets itself not as a faceless seller of data collation and analysis software, but – in its own words – a provider of “an Al-powered kill chain” that enables “decision dominance from space to mud.” Palantir refers to its consultants as “forward-deployed software engineers” and its internal emails as “situational awareness” reports. CEO Alex Karp portrays himself as deeply involved in military decisions that he, at least on paper, shouldn’t be.
Palantir’s mission, he said on an earnings call last year, is “to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them.” As the public face of the company, Karp has defended the IDF’s use of Palantir software to plan strikes in Gaza, and called for the US to prepare for a three-front war against China, Russia, and Iran.
The manifesto can be viewed as a continuation of this sales pitch. Adapted from Karp’s 2025 book, ‘The Technological Republic’, the 22 points envision a world in which Palantir’s products will be in even higher demand. Take the following points:
“The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.”
“The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”
“The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. 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.”
“The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin.”
“The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”
“Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime.”
Read more: Peter Thiel has major influence on Trump government – Bloomberg
Karp’s products are implicitly presented as the solution to these problems, and his ‘peace through strength’ message seems tailor-made to please the newly-neoconservative President Donald Trump, whose administration his company will ultimately sign contracts with. After AI firm Anthropic was booted from a Pentagon program over its refusal to enable mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, Palantir’s manifesto is equal parts sales pitch and pledge of fealty.
The remainder of its points delve into culture-war territory, declaring that visionaries like Elon Musk should be applauded for their belief in “grand narrative,” that the “pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted,” and that “some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”
Who are Karp and Thiel and why are they controversial?
These points reflect Karp’s ideological bent – he describes himself as “progressive, but not woke,” and a “tech nationalist.” Karp has also portrayed himself throughout the years as a “socialist” and a “neo-Marxist,” and has consistently voted Democrat, while praising some of Trump’s policies. His only consistent beliefs appear to be that “the West has a superior way of living,” and that this way of living must be defended “by applying organized violence.” Karp is a vocal defender of Israel, and has referred to pro-Palestinian protesters in the US as “an infection inside of our society.”
Thiel, by contrast, is a much more partisan figure. An avowed conservative, he has donated to libertarian and Republican causes, and bankrolled Vice President J.D. Vance’s 2018 senatorial campaign. While Thiel has described himself as a libertarian, he donates to the interventionist Alliance of Democracies (established by former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and sits on the steering committee of the Bilderberg group.
Peter Thiel speaks at The Cambridge Union in Cambridge, UK, May 8, 2024. © Getty Images; Nordin Catic
Thiel funded wrestler Hulk Hogan’s 2015 lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker, almost a decade after the news blog outed him as gay.
What are people saying about the manifesto?
Palantir’s manifesto has garnered an overwhelmingly negative reaction, with commentators describing it as “scary,” “technofascist,” and “the ramblings of a comic book villain.”
“The manifesto’s vision...is that of a US government and its tech allies as dominant players, unconstrained by accountability,” political scientist Donald Moynihan wrote. “A world where soft power has real and lasting impact is simply less profitable for a company like Palantir relative to a world where we blow a lot of stuff up.”
“If governments were actually doing their job, this Palantir document wouldn’t be a manifesto they proudly boast about, but a clear sign of the urgent need to purge its software from the public institutions it has infiltrated,” French entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand wrote on X. “They’re effectively saying ‘our tools aren’t meant to serve your foreign policy. They’re meant to enforce ours’.”
Alexander Dugin
@AGDugin
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Palantir Manifesto is much more important than Trump. Trump is insignificant pawn on the serious chess board. His role is total destruction. The preparations stage. Palantir is much more serious. It is the plan to safeguard the declining dominance of the West by radical means.
1:26 PM · Apr 19, 2026
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The manifesto is more significant than any action by Trump, Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin argued on X. “Trump is insignificant pawn on the serious chess board. His role is total destruction. The preparations stage. Palantir is much more serious. It is the plan to safeguard the declining dominance of the West by radical means.”
By RT newsroom, a team of multi-lingual journalists with over a decade of experience in Russian and international reporting, delivering original research and insights often missing from mainstream coverage
ONE OF THE READER-COMMENTS:
JT13 England
4/22/2026 at 6:35 AM
I guess this is why the zionists target hospitals and the school in Iran on the first day of bombing. IT WASN’T A MISTAKE. Palantir and AI would have pointed out that is better (more efficient) to target the GIRLS school, instead of the nearby military training camp, because by killing 170 girls, you are effectively killing 2 or 3 times that number of future Iranians (up to 680 total). So, they gave the school the ‘double tap’ to make sure. So, human rights and war crimes etc mean absolutely nothing to today’s zionist Americans and Israelis and nothing will be done about this crime because they control the UN. I hope the World understands this.
——
BY JASON MA
WEEKEND EDITOR
August 17, 2024, 1:28 PM EDT
The U.S. military has long prioritized being able to fight two wars simultaneously in different parts of the globe, similar to its efforts in the Pacific and European theaters during World War II.
But Alex Karp, CEO of the data-mining software company Palantir, which is known for its work in defense and intelligence, warned that the U.S. may have to wage war in three different theaters in the future.
He told the New York Times that he thinks the U.S. will “very likely” find itself in a three-front war with China, Russia, and Iran. As a result, he said, the Pentagon should continue developing autonomous weapons at full speed, pointing to big mismatches in how far the U.S. would be willing to go while fighting a war compared with other countries.
“I think we’re in an age when [a] nuclear deterrent is actually less effective, because the West is very unlikely to use anything like a nuclear bomb, whereas our adversaries might,” he added. “Where you have technological parity but moral disparity, the actual disparity is much greater than people think.”
Karp continued: “In fact, given that we have parity technologically, but we don’t have parity morally, they have a huge advantage.”
He also said the military is very close to the threshold where “somewhat autonomous drones” that can kill become the most important weapons.
“You already see this in Ukraine,” Karp noted.
Elsewhere in the sprawling Times profile, which also covered his personal life, business practices, and opinions on a range of people and issues, he urged Democrats to show more strength.
“Are we tough enough to scare our adversaries so we don’t go to war? Do the Chinese, Russians, and Persians think we’re strong?” said Karp, who supported President Joe Biden and is now backing VP Kamala Harris in the election. “The president needs to tell them if you cross these lines, this is what we’re going to do, and you have to then enforce it.”
Waging war on three fronts at once would likely require more troops, notwithstanding any increased reliance on drones or other autonomous weapons.
After years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military’s size has dropped, while the Pentagon has turned more attention to the Pacific and a possible conflict with China.
While on a separate train of thought on race, class, and affirmative action, Karp told the Times he is also “pro draft.”
“I think part of the reason we have a massive cleavage in our culture is, at the end of the day, by and large, only people who are middle- and working-class do all the fighting,” he explained.
Representatives for Palantir didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Palantir has come under criticism for supporting Israel during its war with Hamas, and Karp previously has acknowledged some of his employees will keep quitting over that stance.
He told the Times he won’t apologize for what he believes in and whom Palantir supports: “I’m not going to apologize for defending the U.S. government on the border, defending the special ops, bringing the people home. I’m not apologizing for giving our product to Ukraine or Israel or lots of other places.”
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MY COMMENT:
Alex Karp, like Adolf Hitler and other extremist ideological conservatives or far-rightwingers, is nationalistic but perceives himself to be instead a “patriot.” On 19 February, in the first month of Trump’s second term, one of the Democratic Party’s “think” magazines, the New Yorker, headlined a review of Karp’s book “The Palantir Guide to Saving America’s Soul: Alexander Karp, Palantir’s philosopher-C.E.O., thinks that a restored military-industrial complex can make our country great again.” and said:
Karp supported the campaigns of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and “The Technological Republic” was manifestly intended as an intervention in the status-quo context of a Democratic victory. The book imagines a more active government, not no government at all [or the “anarcho-capitalist” “libertarian” Republican Peter Thiel advocates]. Karp’s political aim reflects an attempt to resuscitate what is now frequently disparaged as Cold War liberalism, or the belief that we fought for freedom and comfort on two fronts — that the struggle for equality at home was tied to the struggle against Communism abroad. The atomic program, which was a win-win contribution to both overseas deterrence and domestic progress, is Karp’s model for how we might approach the dual-use technologies of artificial intelligence. The A.I. arms race, like its nuclear precursor, is poised to reshape the global order, and we cede first-mover advantage to China at our peril.
So, both the liberal fascist-imperialist-supremacists such as Karp, and the conservative fascist-imperialist-supremacists such as Thiel, view themselves as “patriots” but are (like the conservative fascist-imperialist-supremacists Hitler and now Trump were/are, and like the liberal fascist-imperialists Obama and Biden are) nationalists, not patriots: they want their country to conquer the world — they do NOT want to improve their country and if possible the world, but to conquer (subordinate) the world, “because ‘we’ are superior, ‘we’ DESERVE to control — or even exterminate — them.”
This distinction can be expressed simply in the terms of game-theory: Whereas an actual progressive seeks win-win games, and a liberal favors win-lose games, a conservative (especially of the extreme or fascist-imperialist-supremacist type) is so driven by hatred of one’s opponent (such as Karp’s being proud of his “maximum lethality”) as to be satisfied wth nothing less than extermination of an opponent as a ‘moral’ necessity, in which even a lose-lose game might be acceptable if the opponent is moving toward a win and the only way to prevent that is to produce the destruction of BOTH sides — which definitely characterized both Hitler and Trump, at least until Trump had his blow-up conflict with his Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on April 18th (General Dan Caine tried to persuade Trump NOT to carry out his April 7th threat “A whole civilization will die tonight”); and, today, on April 22nd, Trump/Hitler did say, “People approached me four days ago, saying, ‘Sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait, immediately.’ But if we do that, there can never be a Deal with Iran, unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included!” (Look at the reader-comments there: Even Republican New Yorkers now find Trump “delusional” “insane” “deranged” “demented” “predatory” and “pathlogical.”) And Trump had already previously (as had Biden and Harris before him) displayed oneself as being an exterminationist in regard to Gaza. Both Karp and Thiel support that same extremist ideology — as do all U.S. political megadonors, since BOTH U.S. Parties actually represent ONLY them. This — fascist-imperialist supremacism — is the ideology that could produce WW3. It’s the aggressor’s ideology, and it is (and ever since 25 July 1945 has been) the U.S. Government’s ideology.
That ideology was used to ‘justify’ aggression that started World Wars One and Two, and that is rising again to threaten to produce WW3.
NOTE: Plain fascists, such as were Pinochet and Franco, were less extreme than this, because their ambition was merely nationalistic, not internationalistic — not imperialist. They certainly weren’t patriots. But they WERE nationalists. And so they were less dangerous fascists than America’s leaders are. Heads-of-state who are merely fascist do not present a danger of initiating a WW3. They are vastly less dangerous than America’s leaders are.
Patriots in every country are determined to defeat fascist-imperialist-supremacists everywhere. Any patriot knows that one’s own country is gravely endangered by a major world power that is fascist-imperialist-supremacist, and that fascist-imperialist-supremacists everywhere — but especially in any major world power — pose a threat to the entire world.
America’s mainstream news-media hide these facts because these media are controlled likewise by billionaires, who benefit from further expanding the empire — which is why they fund and promote such fascist-imperialist-supremacist politicians.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
