(Byline Times) In his 2009 essay for Cato Unbound, Peter Thiel declared, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." Seventeen years later, Palantir, seed-funded by the CIA in 2005 and emboldened by its influential embeds across global governments, appears to be intent on dismantling both.

On 18 April, Palantir posted its summary of a book by Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp, and his legal counsel, Nicholas Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.

Palantir's post to its X account began casually, as though it were responding to frequently asked questions: "Because we get asked a lot." What followed was a demonstration that the company is so confident in its position and influence that it believes it can say the unsayable without consequences.

The body of the post, a 22-point manifesto, dispensed with euphemism and presented its technofascist argument explicitly: below, translated below into layperson's terms:

The Palantir Manifesto Decoded

1. "Silicon Valley owes a moral debt… The engineering elite… has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation" – is a direct attempt to convert the private tech sector of unelected engineers and founders into a political class with civic authority. Participating in defence sounds benign, but in practice, it means US dependence on firms whose incentive is the expansion of Palantir's unhinged ideology.

2. "We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps" – is intended to delegitimise consumer tech and give moral status to undemocratic "state-security" tech. For example, in the US, the DOJ demanded that Apple and Google remove ICE-tracking apps as the Government used Palantir to identify targets for ICE.