Palantir's Manifesto with June and Caleb from KTC

Summary

Better Offline Podcast: "Palantir's Manifesto" with June and Caleb from Kill The Computer Episode Date: April 29, 2026 Host: Ed Zitron (Cool Zone Media) | Guests: Juniper & Caleb (Kill the Computer)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Juniper and Caleb from the podcast Kill the Computer to dissect and critique the much-discussed Palantir "manifesto" attributed to CEO Alex Karp. The conversation explores the political ideology, philosophical inconsistencies, and perceived dangers underlying Palantir’s public stances and AI ambitions. The trio scrutinize the company’s worldview, especially as revealed through Karp's 22-point manifesto, and connect it to broader trends in Silicon Valley, militarism, and reactionary politics in the tech industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Palantir and Why the Manifesto?

• Ed and guests debate Palantir’s true business model, noting its close ties to government agencies (notably the CIA) and describing it as:

  • "It's evil Salesforce. The best I can get to it." – Ed [02:36]
  • "It's just Oracle… Their first client was the CIA." – Ed & Juniper [03:00]

• Ed frames the manifesto as a desperate attempt at self-justification:

  • "Who is… constantly at Palantir, 'Hey, have you come up with like, oh, I don't know, 22 different points to explain who you are?'" [02:13]

2. On Karp’s Ideological Shifts and Sincerity

• Caleb traces Alex Karp’s intellectual background, connecting his worldview to German philosophy (Jürgen Habermas, intellectual traditions post-WWII), noting Karp's shift post-October 7th toward hardline, anti-woke, pro-military stances:

  • “He’s kind of going into midlife crisis, divorced dad… I don’t know what I believe anymore.” – Caleb [06:36]

• Despite self-positioning as a progressive, Karp’s actions and writing show deep belief in aggressive social cohesion through militarism:

  • “[He] wrote his whole dissertation about how, like, war and hate towards others is like a societal glue.” – Caleb [08:43]

3. Satire and Critique of the Manifesto’s 22 Points

• The episode proceeds, sometimes line by line, through Karp’s points, lampooning the high-minded rhetoric and frequent self-referential justifications for military tech.

Notable Points Analyzed:

Point 1: Silicon Valley’s “moral debt” is conflated with a duty toward military defense.

• “You do owe society money. You owe them a debt of gratitude. And then the second part, it's like, oh, so you just care about war?” – Ed [04:23]

Point 2: “We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps…”

• The group laughs at the grandiosity and vagueness:
  • “What are you fucking talking about?” – Ed [09:41]
  • Caleb contextualizes this with Karp’s (mis)use of Frankfurt School social critique. [10:18–11:45]

Point 4: “Hard power… will be built on software.”

• “Very self serving… They’re drinking their own Kool Aid.” – Ed & Juniper [17:55–19:14]

Point 5: AI weapons inevitability.

• “It’s not a question whether AI weapons… Yeah, they’re being built already. That happened already. And it’s nothing to do with generative AI.” – Ed [19:43]

Point 6: Universal national service/drafting everyone.

• Juniper identifies the Israeli IDF model as inspiration, warning of normalization of a wartime economy for the benefit of tech contractors. [24:14]
• “Palantir should be viewed as an enemy of modern society.” – Juniper [25:20]

Point 14: American power has secured “an extraordinarily long peace.”

• The panel rebukes the sanitized notion of “peace,” given decades of American foreign wars and global interventions.
  • “What peace? Peace for who?” – Juniper [50:14]
  • “The amount of terror we have rained on the world… It’s terrorism across the world.” – Juniper [50:32]

Point 15: Undoing the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan.

• “What are you talking about? … Everyone knows why they cannot have military.” – Ed & Juniper [51:35–52:35]
• The discussion touches on Karp’s philosophical roots in postwar Germany, and the current American fragment of unapologetic, aggressive tech gurus.

Point 17: Silicon Valley’s role in combating violent crime.

• Ed sees this as a cover for expanding the surveillance state, decrying the lack of empathy and practical social support embedded in such “solutions.” [61:04–63:31]

Points 19–22:

• The last points are broadly condemned as excuses for bigotry, culture wars, and calls for American cultural and political dominance under a progressive veneer.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Palantir Manifesto:

  • “It’s a series of incongruent points written by somebody that can’t choose whether they want to be a convenient or inconvenient fascist.” – Ed [71:54]

• On tech culture and therapy:

  • “I know it’s really generic to be like these people need therapy, but like these people need friends.” – Ed [07:00]

• On institutionalized empathy as weakness:

  • “If you care so much about other people, you will shrink the majority white, like, rights, essentially.” – Juniper, referencing “suicidal empathy” rhetoric [32:49–33:44]

• On Elon Musk and hype cycles:

  • “He says something will happen, and then it does him. And then he’s like, well, it’s delayed until the year of the base tiger.” – Ed [55:39]

• On Silicon Valley’s new religious turn:

  • “It’s one of the most fascinating new narratives to come out of Silicon Valley… while they talk about how we need more bombs to kill people.” – Juniper [66:59]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:12] – [02:49]: Defining Palantir’s business and mystique
• [03:11] – [08:43]: Alex Karp’s background, sincerity, worldview
• [09:14] – [19:14]: The first 5 points of the manifesto, major themes
• [24:14] – [26:00]: Universal service, Israeli military system comparison
• [32:49] – [36:55]: Empathy as a “bug”, cancel culture, right-wing victimization
• [41:17] – [45:49]: AI era as new deterrence, America’s supposed “progressive values”
• [50:14] – [54:43]: Notions of “peace” post-WWII, the role of Germany/Japan
• [61:04] – [63:31]: Surveillance, crime, and social services
• [66:59] – [69:13]: Tech industry revival of religion, culture war as marketing
• [71:08] – end: Final points, panel’s summary, and close

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Tone & Style

Ed and guests blend irreverent humor with caustic critique, often using sarcasm and dark analogies (e.g., “Hitler Salesforce,” “evil Oracle”). The conversation is peppered with expletives, jokes, and pop culture references—including movies, comedians, and other tech figures—for both comedic effect and pointed criticism.

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Final Takeaways

• Palantir’s manifesto is seen as a window into the tech elite’s aspiration for political, social, and military influence—often cloaked in progressive-sounding language but fundamentally about power, defense contracts, and control.
• The hosts find the document cynically self-serving, intellectually inconsistent, and dangerous in its implications, especially as it promotes the normalization of constant war, surveillance, and tech-enabled authoritarianism.
• The episode ends with a call to recognize the real social needs ignored by such manifestos, and a plug for Kill the Computer, which offers further exploration of how tech and politics are reshaping society.

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For more analysis and episodes, check out Better Offline and Kill the Computer at their respective websites.

Transcript

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Callzone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitro, and I have lost the. I've lost the plot. Anyway, we're back. Download a T shirt, log on to the newsletter, send me $4,000 in cash. That's the only way you could get onto the premium. It's cash. But today I am joined by two of the powerhouses from Kill the Computer. Of course, I've got Juniper and Caleb here. How you doing, you two?

[Juniper]

Really great. I'm doing wonderful.

[Caleb]

Awesome.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. So I was just reading what appears to be a school shooter manifesto that was posted on Palantir.

[Juniper]

Radical AI centrist. Doesn't want data centers built, but really loves talking to ChatGPT about all of his plans.

[Ed Zitron]

But I like the first line of it the most, by the way, which is because we get asked a lot. No, you don't. Who is. I'm constantly at Palantir. Hey, have you come up with like, oh, I don't know, 22 different points to explain who you are? Because another great thing about this is it does still does not explain what Palantir is. Yeah, still don't know.

[Juniper]

So true.

[Ed Zitron]

It's evil. Salesforce is the best I can get to it. Like, it's just like they send Forward deployment engineers to your business. They charge you a bazillion dollars. And sometime, I mean, it's just Oracle. Actually, now that I say that out

[Juniper]

loud, my understanding is that it's like an app layered on top of, like, databases, essentially. Is like, what, it's for different companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just Oracle. I was going to say evil Oracle, but I think that that's Oracle. That's just Oracle. I mean, their first client was the CIA. Yeah, first client of Oracle was CIA. We love it.

[Caleb]

It's very funny. Back in, Peter Thiel did a Reddit AMA like 10 years ago, and he called the CIA a front for Palantir in that email. I thought it was very fun.

[Juniper]

Come on, dude. I hate these people. They are like, they're, they're stunting on all of us all the time. They think they can just, like, do this shit.

[Ed Zitron]

And I mean, they love it, but it was like, come on. Literally stunting in the. To the extent that they're doing stuff with confidence that they shouldn't have.

[Juniper]

Exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

Because it's like they're trading at some ridiculous earnings multiple. This is exactly the kind of thing that goes away. Also, really, like, the problem with government contracts is when you have them, they're awesome. When you have them, they're great. When you're, like, going to guarantee money. But if the government is ever just like, I don't know if I want to work with the manifesto brothers over here. I don't know if like, like Donald Trump.

[Juniper]

22 points. That's a lot of. That's a long manifesto.

[Caleb]

The 22nd, the 23rd point that he only sent to a couple people was, some of you are cool. Don't come to school tomorrow.

[Ed Zitron]

I thought point 14 would be a little more racist, though. American power. Let's actually go through these, shall we?

[Juniper]

Ok.

[Ed Zitron]

Number one, Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley is an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. So, first bit I might agree with, you do owe society money. You owe them a debt of gratitude. And then the second part, it's like, oh, so you just care about war?

[Juniper]

Yeah.

[Caleb]

So I think it's really just for context here. I've been kind of racking my brain for the first blog that we're doing over on our Kill the Computer news website. I think it's really easy to interpret this as, like, him being cynical and be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, holding his hat out. Money. You might think Elon Musk, if he said this, he's just asking for more taxpayer money or something. It's important to remember that Alex Karp believes in this very sincerely. All this stuff that he's saying. There's probably some cynicism too because he obviously is. His whole business is making money off the federal government in some ways. But he does believe all 22 points are sincere.

[Juniper]

I mean I think specifically this point 14:2 especially like he does believe these things. Peace for who this long. Peace for who?

[Ed Zitron]

Sure.

[Juniper]

In the imperial core here in the United States. In the air quotes, west, of course it feels peaceful. But we like, we just started a war in Iran. That's not peace. That's like the common thing where it's like, oh yeah, Israeli IDF soldiers get killed by terrorists, but Palestinians, they just, you know, they, they died. It was, who knows what happened.

[Ed Zitron]

Bomb involved killing.

[Juniper]

Yeah. No source on that one. You don't know where that came from.

[Caleb]

Karp is interesting in that like his entire life he has, you know, he's this like a progressive Democrat that since October 7th really is kind of. Yes, absolutely. He's, he's, you know, he voted against Trump and he fought with Peter Thiel about his support of Trump as recently as like 2024. Seriously. Yeah, it was October 7th. That really kind of. And then some like anti woke stuff. I still think that he does believe in some of these things. He's just kind of going into like, I don't know, midlife crisis, divorced dad. Like, I don't know what I believe anymore.

[Juniper]

Mode sort of burnout type thing. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But I, he's. Every interview I watch with him, I feel like if I had his number I'd be like, hey man, call me.

[Juniper]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Doing all right, man. Yeah. A little too much coffee this morning. You know what I mean? A little too much espresso. It makes you, makes your face itch and makes you feel a little crazy. A little too much espresso, mate. Because you see a guy like this bouncing around on stage and it's like, how miserable, how miserable? Like being alive must really fucking suck for you. That's the. I know it's really generic to be like these people need therapy, but like these people need friends.

[Caleb]

Yeah.

[Juniper]

Like just wonderfully one guy outside of themselves too. Because they're all friends with each other. Of course. They all talk to each other.

[Ed Zitron]

They don't, they don't care about each other. No one's doing a brother check in.

[Caleb]

I don't think Peter Thiel is in any place to give Karp, a brother check in in any case, you know, he's like, hey, man, I just interrupted my antichrist conference to see how you're doing. Saudi Arabia. Are you all right?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. You're doing okay. You seem a little. You seem a little off the rail. Sorry I didn't call you back. I was just writing a 62,000 word screed about why woman must change. But let's continue with the manifesto. Actually, another thought with point one. It's like the moral debt that Silicon Valley owes the country. It's only in its defense, not in making it better, not in making people happier, but just war, but anyway, military.

[Caleb]

Just one more quick point on what Carte believes. His dissertation. I mean, this is all part and parcel of his entire worldview. He genuinely believes so. Even when he was still anti Trump, he would say stuff like, well, I believe some of his policies in the Middle east are good. His dissertation, a big part of it is the idea that aggression towards others is the great social glue for a nation state.

[Ed Zitron]

Christ.

[Caleb]

Yeah, it's very strange for like a, you know, this supposedly progressive guy who I genuinely do believe think he does economically want better things possible when you consider, like, the. Where he came from and stuff. Intellectually, he does believe some of this stuff. But yeah, he wrote his whole dissertation about how like, you know, war and hate towards others is like a societal glue.

[Ed Zitron]

It's also. I don't mean to attack people's physical ability, but, like, am I meant to be scared of you, mate?

[Caleb]

I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

Just.

[Juniper]

It looks like his bone will snap if you just, like blow at him.

[Ed Zitron]

Also, he seems sickly. All right, so number two, we must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative, if not crowning, achievement as a civilization? Fucking hell. Get an editor, mate. The object has changed our lives. It may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. What?

[Caleb]

Yeah, I can.

[Ed Zitron]

I think what's great. Like, what are you fucking talking about? Like, yeah, the iPhone was a huge deal. Is your argument that social networking is scary and bad because kind of agree. Is your argument that it. Oh, it's limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. I'm guessing this is an AI thing, right?

[Caleb]

Sort of. So he don't. I do not recommend doing this. I recently just listened to an interview of him at the utax with Barry Weiss, friend of the show.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, really good mind Masters thought to the death.

[Caleb]

It was. It was very, very fun to listen to two geniuses.

[Juniper]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Two geniuses last night in the middle of the Dr.

[Caleb]

Awesome. But in that he kind of expounds on this idea. And his. His thing is basically, and actually I kind of agree with this, we have the best and brightest minds in the tech world working on, you know, apps that where's the nearest sandwich or something, right? These are people that could be doing something that kind of goes back to his original point of civic duty. His interpretation of what civic duty or what could better this country is, is probably different from mine and yours, but it is logically congruent. I also think that if you understand the tradition that he came up intellectually, he goes to study under Habermas, a German philosopher that is connected to the Frankfurt School. He understands these kind of like social theories and frameworks that he kind of appropriates a little bit. And Haberbus whole thing was he's like the first forum guy in history. His whole point was we can only reason through the world by arguing. And that's the guy who Karp wanted to have mentor his dissertation. He didn't. Of course, that's kind of a misunderstanding, but that's the framework through which he's viewing everything. So Hopimus also would say early technology takes people's ability to argue, to go to cafes and talk about and participate how society should look and work. So that critique of technology is also part of what Karp is trying to say here.

[Ed Zitron]

But I'm just going to say something that's very woke but wow, is that a dude's opinion? Wow, is that just like, can you imagine a woman walking around just like arguing with people and not being killed within like one week? I don't mean this. I mean this just like based on every conversation I've had with a woman, like, it appears that like the world that a woman lives in and people of color as well, like this very white guy thing to expect. Like, if you just go around arguing as a woman, you're framed as emotional and crazed. If you're a person of color, you're violent and argumentative, but a white guy, while you're just. It's the marketplace of ideas. Fuck it.

[Juniper]

He just wants to be a great man. It's just the great man thing.

[Caleb]

Father was a Haberless. Father was an advisor to the Nazi party and he himself was Hitler Youth. Now he wasn't.

[Juniper]

Alex Karp, you said, studied under him or tried to.

[Caleb]

He goes, not good enough. It's actually very funny. Maura Weigel, who founded Logic magazine, I believe is what it's called. And she's a very brilliant writer. She kind of like dissected his. His whole career because for a lot of a long time a lot of people thought, oh, he studied under, under Habermas. He's like this, he's connected to the Frankfurt School and this and that. Well, that's like, partly true. He did go there and he did have many conversations. But he tried to write this dissertation about aggression. A bunch of other things too, that it's very jargony, literally. And Haberbus said explicitly to him, he faxed him a three page takedown of his. One of his first drafts of this dissertation that said, you are not like, interesting enough to ever be taken seriously on this. You won't even be able to compete with like literary critics. And it was so bad that Habermas said, I will not mentor you for your dissertation. And that is Alex Cargo. Yes, Alex Karp.

[Ed Zitron]

And that is so funny. Yeah, that's so good. Holy shit.

[Caleb]

And this definitely is a sticking point for him. He did eulogize, almost died recently. And he did talk about that, how the pain of that, like, stuck with him. Of course it stung, but he was like. I was actually grateful because it was like, you know, this foundational moment for me for like realizing that I would never be like an academic and I had to become a builder or something like that.

[Ed Zitron]

You know, it's just. I don't know, I'm like, I. The other thing is, is you hear something like that. Every great artist story you hear like that usually ends with them continuing that. They're like, yeah, I believe in Michael

[Caleb]

Jordan didn't make the team, but he did, you know, go to the Bulls or, or Brian Wilson got the F in music class, but wrote Pet Sounds. He decided to make like Hitler Salesforce,

[Ed Zitron]

just a very specific period of time as well. Gino Smith said, they wrote me off. I didn't write back.

[Caleb]

Let's not think about 18 months.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, let's not think about the next part there. Anyway, let's move on to point number three. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization and indeed its ruling class will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. I was with him right up until that word security moment. I hear the word security. I'm like, oh, you don't mean social services, do you?

[Juniper]

No, no, no, no, no, no. I do find this one interesting overall though, because I think you're right up until that last moment. But I think it's like a sort of Admission on some level that he knows that there is like some sort of level of revolt against the like techno, like techno billionaire class and that they're like, you know, I think it's interesting that he is at least aware that something has to be done like a little bit more than just like oh, you can talk on chat, GPT or whatever. But, but again, of course, I think especially as we continue to go through this, I think a through line of all of this is how military, like how militaristic minded it is and like hard power and like sort of like I would say techno fascist or techno feudal or whatever you want to, like whatever word you want to use for this is.

[Caleb]

Yeah, I'm not trying to, to like. Well actually June, a lot of people will say techno fascism and like if you were to like, I don't know, use Umberto echoes, you are fascism framework for this. It checks boxes for sure. I would just say that like maybe the way I think the better way to frame this is for Alex Karp's thinking is like a Cold war style liberal.

[Juniper]

Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, expand on that.

[Ed Zitron]

So, yeah, go on. I think I might know what you

[Caleb]

mean, but because he's essentially saying the tech industry needs to become the new defense sector and we have great enemies in China, you know what I mean? I think that there is very serious concerns and I'm not saying it's good or better, it's just, you know, when you think of like what fascism is and what he's arguing for, I just think that if you are interested in having a clear out understanding of what he's saying so you can take it down better. It's. I think that's maybe a little better of a framework as a whole.

[Juniper]

I mean, I think you're right. I think it's in this as well. Later on he talks about explicitly how the previous like era is ending, the post atomic era is ending, and how this is like the new AI era. And of course he wants to be on the ground floor of that. He wants to have that control on that level with him and his buddies.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, so number four, the limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone have been exposed. 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. Very self serving. Yeah, just like, you know, something's not working. But this other thing that I make, what do you think? What the fuck? That one is just like. Yeah, that one is Built to be that. It reminds me of every college philosophy student I've ever made where they say things that are built to kind of tweak your brain and go, damn, that guy's smart. When you actually think about them don't mean a single fucking thing. What do you mean, soft power? Because if the argument was. See, I'm falling into the trap here. If the argument was that decorum alone doesn't work. Yeah, that's true. If your thing is just, someone will obey the rules always. Yeah. Trump has proven that isn't the case. So just ignore him. I don't think that's what he means. I think what he's saying is that saying you have guns isn't enough. You need evil salesforce.

[Juniper]

Like, that's.

[Ed Zitron]

That really doesn't feel to be. And yeah, I don't know. I just, I read this sentence, I'm like, this guy's fucking stupid.

[Juniper]

It's like, the interesting thing about this too is because most people generally don't like Palantir and they never say what the company itself is. If you read this and don't quite know what this is, it makes it sound like they're like a weapons manufacturer. Like the way they're talking about, like, hard power. This will be the hard power that we need to rule the next century. And it's like, I mean, obviously they work with the CIA, they work with Israel. They do have these connections in these very hard power states where they are just very fine with triple tapping children's elementary schools in Iran. And they're like, I mean, ethics. I don't know about that. Who cares? We shouldn't care about that. That's weak thinking. That's soft thinking. So I think that's a part of it there too. But it's also like, no one knows what this is. No one knows. This isn't. I think on a level, they're sort of drinking their own Kool Aid in a sense of just like, how much of this will be like the next atomic era. I do think a lot of this is dangerous, especially with propaganda. You know, like the amount of propaganda you can do, just like blast out with AI generally or some of this stuff. But I think they're. I mean, he's trying to huff. He's trying to get everyone to huff his own glue at the same time, together.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, it's funny you'd mention the AI weapons thing because the next one, number five, is the question is not whether AI weapons will be built, it's who will build them. And for what purpose? 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. So what's great about this is we do know who's building them. And Jeril, we do know how that's going. Poorly, badly enough that Anduril had to pull out of Ukraine. Sorry. I mean, they were kicked out.

[Juniper]

I didn't know that.

[Ed Zitron]

And also, yeah, numerous government agencies, Wall street journalists report this also. They lose billions of dollars. But that's cool. I guess. It's just like. It's like. It's not. It's not a question whether AI weapons. Yeah, they're being built already. That happened already. And it's nothing to do with generative AI. It's nothing to do with large language models. If you had a large language model try and control something, it wouldn't move because they can't do it. It would be a fucking huge pain in the ass.

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The story I've told myself about love or relationships can then shape my behavior. And that can lead me to Sabotage the possibility of connection.

[Debbie Brown]

This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply well with Debbie Brown and explore the journey of healing, self discovery and returning to yourself. We explore higher consciousness, emotional well being and the practices that help you find clarity, peace and self mastery in a world that can feel overwhelming. The world is becoming lonelier. We're not becoming more social and connected, we're becoming more individualized. But we actually need people in connection. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you. To hear more. Listen to Deeply well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

Hey, I'm Gerard Adonno. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out help on the Internet.

[Ed Zitron]

Help somebody please.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

But there's so much more to me than that. I'm an actor, I'm a comedian, and recently I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions. Psych. I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant and recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary. Cream of chicken soup.

[Caleb]

Hey Cream.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Cream of chicken soup.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

This is help from a hypocrite. The worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to help from hypocrite as part of the Mike Kultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

But let's move on to number six. National service should be a universal duty. 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 cost. What are you fucking talking about? We do share in the cost. Also. Also, we do share in the cost. We pay taxes. Yeah, that's what teachers do.

[Juniper]

I think it's even sinister though. I think he's talking the Israeli IDF conscription system. He wants everyone, I think that's what he's saying here, to be involved in the military or like auxiliary to it in the way that Israel is. Because like, you know how it is whenever you talk about like, I keep bringing up Israel because I think, I think a lot of this, at least when I read this, I'm like, oh my God. This, this is like Israeli playbook on so many different levels here. Especially this one where it's like everyone is involved in the war crimes. So like, if you talk to any person from Israel, most of the they'll be like, well, my family was on the idf. You can't hate all of the idf. You can't hate all Israelis. But they were all in the idf. It's like that's sort of, I think the buy in that he wants the country to have. This is the point. I think a lot of this was really bad when I was first reading this, but I got the point six and I was like, okay. Palantir is sort of like, they should be viewed as an enemy of modern society. They want us to go to like a wartime economy. They want us to like move towards this idea that every like war time is normal and it should be good because it benefits their bottom line.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the thing. I've read a decent amount of people heard, a decent amount of people are saying that Silicon Valley is trying to jump into defense because they're running out of shit to sell.

[Juniper]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Google just signed a deal with, I think some part, I think there's, there's, there's some part of the government. Maybe I need to look if it's CBP or whatever. But like they just signed a secretive deal and 500 people signed a petition. Yeah.

[Juniper]

Oh, I saw that. They were like, it's like, we're not in the business of surveillance. And it's like, bitch, what do you think this is?

[Ed Zitron]

Google Maps? Other than every Google Ad product.

[Juniper]

Yeah, other than that. They're fine with that surveillance.

[Ed Zitron]

But this surveillance number seven's a classic. If a US Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it. Which is really funny if you know a single thing about the government's relationship with gun companies. Considering that I forget. But there was a specific, specific gun built for the military that just did not work out. Like, that's happened many times before. Yeah, it's like. But also, we should try as a company. Sorry. We should try as a country. We should, as a country. Jesus Christ. Be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm's way. Sure.

[Juniper]

I mean, he's so stuck in there. He's like, we can do it. We'll do better. We'll be just like the military.

[Ed Zitron]

Public number eight. Public servants need to need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. All right, what do you mean?

[Juniper]

My interpretation here is do you remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter and it was this sort of pandemonium and he was like, you guys have to work for 12 hours. You have to sleep here. If you don't do these things, we're laying you off. This is like, this is, this is going to be hard. Actual real work. Like no more sitting around on bouncy balls anymore. No, no bouncing on those bouncy balls in the office anymore. This is like, this is what you do to get real. Chase. It's like basically what he's. I think, I think what he's trying to say is that's just going to be the norm. That should be the norm in maybe tech companies, but more broadly that, that should be like the, the line of thinking for people that own companies at the top. This should be the like top down approach to run a company efficiently.

[Ed Zitron]

But I think he might also be saying that public servants are underpaid, which I kind of agree with.

[Juniper]

See, I think he's.

[Ed Zitron]

As long as you're not in Congress and have stocks, in which case you're overcompensated.

[Juniper]

I think he's sort of low key shitting on the government as a whole here.

[Caleb]

He's doing that. He's also targeting academia. He talks about. He has a. Since like the. I think his like schism from a lot of things comes from like the campus protests after post October 7th. Incredible. He has since. I mean if you listen, don't. But if you do listen to that Barry Weiss conversation, you know, he talks about, you know, this a lot to the, you know, a bunch of farm animal sounds from the crowd because they

[Ed Zitron]

recorded it live

[Caleb]

about how like, you know, we can't college. He's basically his. Oh well, you can't have like queer interpretive dance therapy classes if the government's going to pay for it. And you know, these college professors are trying to, you know, if we're giving them public funds we have to kind of hold them to a different standard and stuff like that too. So I think it definitely applies to bureaucrats. But just it's important to remember that he hates, he's. He hates woke college campuses or whatever.

[Juniper]

I, I knew he was like sort of nominally pro Israel. I mean they've Palantir's worked with Israel for, since 2014.

[Caleb]

So I knew that extreme Zionist.

[Juniper]

I didn't realize he made such an explicit turn from like, sort of, I guess it sounds like a liberal Zionism to a very hard line sort of far right type Zion. In the last couple of years, I was not aware of that shift of his.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I support Irish Zionism from Conor o'. Malley.

[Juniper]

I started. Don't worry. I started doing my own blanket tours a couple of weeks ago. Don't worry.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, so moving on. Number nine. Number nine, we should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness, a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions the human psyche may leave us with a cast of characters, the helm we will grow to regret. Just to be clear, last year Alex Karp suggested that analysts that disagree with Palantir should be sprayed with fentanyl laced urine from drones. It's just the same guy. What is this about?

[Juniper]

It's so hard with cancel culture, you

[Ed Zitron]

know, it's really hard with these big fucking tough guys who go, like, I'm so fucking tough. I'm so strong and big and tough. Don't hurt my feelings. Don't be mean to me, okay? Have some forgiveness, you piece of fucking shit.

[Juniper]

You know, it's really hard on us when we press the button that kills 180 schoolchildren. Have you thought about us? Have you really thought about that? When you criticize us for doing that, how that makes us feel?

[Ed Zitron]

Have you thought about the fact that I'm worth so much money and I make money constantly? The things I make money for kill people. And I go out and I say noxious, horrible things all the time. And the people that I pal around with are horrible, too. And they say equally noxious, if not more noxious things. And I'm disgusting and mean and cruel in everything I do and say. I encourage people to act in the same way. Have you considered for a second that if you were not mean to me, things would be better?

[Juniper]

It drives me crazy how all of these people are simultaneously tough guys, but the whiniest babies of all time. I saw someone online talk about, like, yeah, wow, ever since Trump became elected, I've noticed that, like, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, right wingers whine a lot. And it's like, motherfucker, they've always been like this. Like, this is. They're operating like, this is how they operate. This is what they do. They whine. They whine until they get what they want and then they whine about getting what they want.

[Ed Zitron]

I forget what I think it's Caleb Pitts maybe. He has a great stand up comedy thing where he's walking around, he's bald guy, and he has I eat shit tattooed in his head. And he looks at the camera, goes, guess who just got kicked out of a cafe for being white?

[Juniper]

And you guys did being white. Yeah, I love that.

[Ed Zitron]

Just that every day.

[Caleb]

Yeah. I think that this one and into the next point too, are kind of connected in that kind of hob sense of like, you have to be able to, like, discourse. You have to be able to debate and fight on the forums with people that you disagree with. And like, if you cancel your opponents, you'll have no one left to argue with. Right. And that argument is. I'm not, I'm. I'm joking a little bit. But that is, like, essential to his, like, core ideological belief.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Juniper]

It's amazing how many people get Twitter psychosis and bring it out into everything they do in real life. It's astounding.

[Ed Zitron]

So point number 10, as we've kind of hit it, the psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life, finding expression in people they have never met, will be left disappointed. Well, I mean, I give him that one, but also, I'm not sure he realizes the actual problem

[Juniper]

when I read this. Have you guys seen this new phrase that's been. That's Elon Musk helped blow up in the last, like, year or so? The suicidal empathy thing. Have you seen? It's basically this concept where that if you care too much about other people, you will always like. Like the way it' traditionally used is like, oh, you care about Palestinian people, you think that they should have rights. But have you thought about white people? Like, you're, you're sacrificing white people for, like, thinking about, like, trans rights. Trans rights are taking so much away from, like, CIS people. It's basically the concept of if you care so much about other people, you will shrink the majority white, like, rights, essentially.

[Ed Zitron]

Obviously, completely everyone would have equality. I think not. You're suggesting that the people who have too much and the people who have too little would have similar amounts of stuff. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Juniper]

But what if I want this? It's so adjacent to, like, white supremacy and like the great replacement theory. It's like super adjacent to all that type of shit. But I just can't help but think of this. It's like, you know, I think Caleb, you're 100% right. It's adjacent to number nine in that same way that you were outlining before. But I also think it's sort of this thing where it's like we can't really care about people too much. We really can't care about the consequences that might hurt. Like I don't know, gay people or whoever. Like that's like sort of that's missing the forest for the trees, for them is like what they're thinking.

[Ed Zitron]

11.11 is our society has grown too eager to hasten and is often gleeful at the demise of its enemies.

[Juniper]

Exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

All of these are punishing of an opponent. Is a moment to pause, not rejoice. Well, have you talked to your customers about this? Have you, have you, have you done a little bit of customer experience work, Alex? I'm not sure customers would agree. It's also just like very funny because this is someone who laughs at his enemies suffering. He laughs. He takes glee in the suffering of those he disagrees with.

[Caleb]

In that same Barry Weiss interview, he. I think the term that he used, and I may be wrong, but no one's going to listen to this to correct me anyway, so I'll just say it. He said something along the lines of like America should take pride when it uses force because we're a just nation or something like that.

[Juniper]

Oh my God.

[Caleb]

Jesus Christ.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, I feel like that word pride probably not something that come out of his mouth.

[Juniper]

It's also just wild. Especially this year as recent as of like three months ago. And I think the reason for this is he doesn't view these people as enemies. Even though, you know, the way that ice. I'm talking about the way that ICE uses Palantir to like find people to deport scans regions. And I think they use like some face scanning system in their database that ICE has as well. Where it's like people are so gleeful whenever people get deported, they're fucking over the moon. They post about it. The government accounts on social media post like epic aura. Gen Z Brainrot edits about deportation.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so embarrassing.

[Caleb]

I am not saying to them, but

[Juniper]

I think to finish this thought, they don't see that as like demise of enemies. That is not what I think they think. But go on. Sorry.

[Caleb]

Yeah, yeah, you're totally fine. I'm not saying I agree with Carp, but specifically about ice. His point was, you know, if you are somebody who's concerned with this, you would want Palantir to succeed because then that means we only Deport people who deserve it, who have done crimes. I mean, so again, I, I'm just saying, I'm not saying I agree with. What I am saying is it matters because he does believe he's high on his own supply.

[Juniper]

No, I think you're so right. I, I always go back and forth on what, whether these tech people truly believe the things that they say. I, I musk probably on most degrees does. I think he bullshits a lot, but I think, I think you're right. I think just in this recording, I think you've completely convinced me that Alex Karp absolutely does believe.

[Caleb]

There are some elements of cynicism to this, but most of this I think he does believe. And I would say I would agree with you on Elon when he's talking about how like empathy is a bug or something like that.

[Juniper]

Yeah.

[Caleb]

I'm not a psychologist and I'm not even frankly that smart, but he has this kind of like an attachment style because of his abusive father that I think necessitates that he, he sort of intellectualize or abstracts concepts like empathy to such a degree that he would say, you know, I have empathy for mankind, but not on the individual. And it's a societal bug. Right?

[Juniper]

Yeah, it's a weakness, a sign of weakness to have empathy.

[Caleb]

Yes, correct. Because, because he can't, he can't negotiate with or engage with empathy. Like a person who hasn't experienced abuse from a terrible father could. Right.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't know. I, I don't feel like Elon believes in anything. I genuinely think that he always go back. I think that, oh, I think he has deep seated racism. I truly like. And he's a sexist. Absolutely. But I don't think he's sitting there and is like, could explain all sorts of deep, sincere thoughts. I think it's whatever would get him what he wanted. If there was a Democrat in power giving him everything he wanted, he would

[Caleb]

be the best friend of Obama.

[Ed Zitron]

He'd be. Well, I mean, I said Democrat. Ooh, we're getting political, aren't we?

[Juniper]

Very political episode.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, there we go. No, it's just, it's just I've watched this, this guy for years and just. He used to be an epic bacon science guy. Yeah, he was an epic bacon science guy. And he's, he's now just like, he sits online with too much money being like, I will. Yes, yes. Horse idiot. 52. I agree. It is time for the great cleansing. It's just. And even with this list, it's like Alex Karp you run a software company, mate. You're not president. You're not even a politician. You got like, you didn't get into racism school. Like I like what it. Like who gives a fuck what you think you make evil salesforce. Like so okay, number 12, this is

[Juniper]

maybe a better question for the end. But I've just been thinking why we're only halfway through through. But like why did they post this? Like it's a like they're trying to

[Ed Zitron]

make like you from the. I can actually tell you. So from a client perspective, this is some shit that you're sent at five in the morning on a Sunday or a Saturday. Like a Sunday morning. You get this and the client's like I'm going to put this up on Monday. Put this, I'm gonna put that. So Wednesday, April 18th, this is posted. Let's see what day this was. Okay. Oh fuck. Yeah, this is posted on a Saturday. Saturday on a Friday. So Yeah, some poor PR person got a, an email Friday at like 7:00pm 8:00pm and he's at, he's like with his wife and kids trying to eat dinner. He's like, I'm gonna post this tomorrow. I'm gonna post this. It was posted at 11:45am okay, so, so okay, so you're talking like was that 8:45am Eastern Pacific. Anyway, anyway, putting all that aside. So this was just. I'm going to post this tomorrow. And the guy was probably like, well, Alex, it's not got any formatting or numbers. It's just a block of text. We should at least put it in a numbered list. Go. Well, okay, okay, I need to post this now. Post it tomorrow. And it was probably the thought was okay, this guy on a Saturday, I can convince him. Yeah, you should post it immediately on the Saturday. So everyone misses. Except the problem is is the. Everyone saw it because it's the fucking Hunter account. But it's just. No, this is a. This is clients gone wild. This is client. Client has an idea that they are 100. You could not. A client sends you something like this, you could not talk them away from it. You put a gun to their head. They'll. They'll say, kill me. I was post a blog.

[Juniper]

Isn't this just a summary of the main points of Alex Karp's book that came out like a year ago like this? Yeah, this is a summary. This is a summary of one of his books. Essentially all the.

[Ed Zitron]

A book. Oh yeah, he did. He co wrote Odd Power, Soft Belief. Enough about it's.

[Juniper]

Do you know who that guy is Caleb, have you ever looked into the Nicholas Zins Zamiska?

[Caleb]

Yeah, he's. He's that like legal counselor.

[Ed Zitron]

He's their lawyer.

[Juniper]

Oh, damn.

[Ed Zitron]

He's the fucking lawyer. Honestly, if I was. If I worked at Palantir and I was thinking, who should co write this? I would say a lawyer. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you should have a lawyer read every word.

[Juniper]

Just.

[Ed Zitron]

Just in case. Especially every 14th word, if you know what I mean. But okay, we move on. Number 12. The Atomic Age is ending. Once an age of deterrence, the atomic age, once one age of deterrence, the atomic age, comma is ending, comma, and a new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin. No, it is not.

[Caleb]

Just.

[Ed Zitron]

No, yeah, no, it's not. What are you talking about? What do you mean, chatbot? Because if we're talking about AI powered databases, if we're talking about like databases of people pre crime and that we have fucking Compass. Since the 80s we have had algorithms for pre crime. Since the 80s we have had the fucking promise software was the underlying thing. Backdoor story. Israel. Like, it's a crazy story. You should look into the promised software. You've got.

[Caleb]

Don't do it. It'll ruin your life.

[Ed Zitron]

It will ruin your life.

[Juniper]

I have a hobby for the rest of my day.

[Ed Zitron]

It'll fuck you up big time. Big up to my girlfriend for telling me on that one. That what? Like, we have had this already. Like, if we're talking about AI pre crime surveillance, we've had this already. What are we talking about? But because AI is the new bing bong that everyone must jerk off. It's like, okay, yeah, well now it's a. You know what? That's a classic client point as well. That is actually. It's like we need to get. This is a really good point. Yeah, we should add AI at the end. What do you mean? What do you mean, AI? I'm not really sure how that. What does the AI deter? How does it deter? What's it deterring? And like, is the idea that we'll be able to generate more nudes. Like, but the Chinese already have seen

[Caleb]

undetectable deep fakes of Kim Jong Un or whatever. Like, what's the. What are we doing? Like, what's the point of this?

[Ed Zitron]

We'll be generate epic bacon memes of our adversaries.

[Caleb]

Despite this, timing wise, it was not that far after when you remember. You guys remember this. This is a really small blip on the radar. But it stuck with Me was when they. When RFK was like, oh, the Department of Health or whatever, we're releasing our own, like, health AI bot. Do you remember that?

[Juniper]

No, I missed that. Oh, my God.

[Caleb]

Yeah. The first thing I did on there, I was like, I asked it, what kind of rocks are the most nutritious to eat? Smiley face. And it gave me a list of rocks.

[Ed Zitron]

What are you talking about?

[Caleb]

The atomic age of AI Come on.

[Juniper]

No, I think. I think this. Yeah, this gives the game away that they're like, actually, can we have the spotlight now, please? Like, it's like, if we get the spotlight, we'll survive as companies, like, just keep funneling us all of this money. Keep. Keep. Keep shoveling it over. Keep shoveling.

[Ed Zitron]

Price high.

[Juniper]

Yeah, like, we need that. Yeah, keep. Yeah, keep.

[Ed Zitron]

This next point is the funniest. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

[Juniper]

God damn, dude. I guess if you're maybe talking about Russia currently, maybe like, if that's the only other country in the world, sure.

[Caleb]

He defines progressive values in this statement as, like, non hereditary elites becoming CEOs. That's not what most people would define as like, a progressive value, right?

[Juniper]

Definitely not.

[Caleb]

It just. That kind of gives away the game

[Ed Zitron]

a little bit also. Just, like, what does he mean? Based on the history of America, I wouldn't say. I think it was more defined as a battle against progressive values in some cases. Like, history of Portland, for example. Look into the Portland Police Department. I don't know. Look at the current police department of pretty much every city.

[Juniper]

And I mean, not even just the police department, just the government active, currently trying to erase history of like, like black history, like, LGBTQ history. Like, erasing it off of monuments and taking, like, taking away monuments, in some cases, erasing school systems. And like, I don't think it's true. Like, Like, I don't. Yeah, it's just not necessarily true. Like, we. We are still. A lot of people love to be like, wow, like, we. Like, whenever you talk about, like, Palestine, it's like, oh, well, you're. You're gay and you support Palestine. They'd throw you off roofs. False, first of all. Second of all, illegal. You could not gay marry in this country until 10 years ago. It's like, yeah, like, what are we talking about? People were killed for being gay on the streets 30 years ago in this country. Like, what are we talking about here? Like, sure.

[Ed Zitron]

A police force arresting people of color arbitrarily.

[Juniper]

Yeah, it's like, we are. Sure. Like, I guess I'll hand it to him. We are far from perfect, but I think we're further from perfect than we've

[Ed Zitron]

done progressive incest things, but we also seem to be trying to undo those. Anyway, don't worry, we've got another really smart port coming up.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show [e-mail] that's iheartadvertising.com.

[Sanjanah Bhasker]

why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like everyone, your co worker who quote unquote doesn't read read. Is reading romance your mom?

[Tyler McCall]

Book talk? The entire Internet.

[Sanjanah Bhasker]

I'm Sanjanah bhasker.

[Tyler McCall]

I'm Tyler McCall.

[Sanjanah Bhasker]

And this is Radio 831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse, and what all of

[Tyler McCall]

it says about how we actually love, yearn and obsess.

[Sanjanah Bhasker]

We're going to Wuthering Heights, which for

[Tyler McCall]

the record, is not a romance novel.

[Sanjanah Bhasker]

And yet it is has haunted the romance genre for 200 years.

[Tyler McCall]

We're getting into dark romance age gaps, certain Russian hockey players and sentient objects

[Sanjanah Bhasker]

in love, which is a thing.

[Tyler McCall]

That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast starting on May 7th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

Hey, I'm Gerard o'. Donnell. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out help on the Internet.

[Ed Zitron]

Somebody please.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

But there's so much more to me than that. I'm an actor. I'm a comedian. And recently I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Psych.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant and recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary. Cream of chicken soup.

[Caleb]

Hey, Cream.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Cream of chicken soup.

[Gerard O'Donnell]

This is Help from a Hypocrite. The worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Kultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

The story I've told myself about love or relationships can then shape my behavior and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection.

[Debbie Brown]

This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply well with Debbie Brown and explore the journey of healing, self discovery and returning to yourself. We explore higher consciousness, emotional wellness, being, and the practices that help you find clarity, peace and self mastery in a world that can feel overwhelming. The world is becoming lonelier. We're not becoming more social and connected, we're becoming more individualized. But we actually need people in connection. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you. To hear more, listen to Deeply well with the Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Number 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps taken for granted the nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power. Military conflict. What the peace? Peace for who? Peace for who? For generations, billions of people and their children and now grandchildren have never known a world war.

[Juniper]

Literally, those are the only wars that have happened in the last hundred years. There's like a. There's a trillion of them. We've, since we've started. The United States alone have started what, like 10, 12, 13 wars since World War II. We've killed so many people.

[Caleb]

Read the Jakarta Method. That's all I have to say.

[Juniper]

A million people, Like a minimum a million people in Jakarta. Like the amount of terror we have rained on the world. It's like, sure, it's not war for us. It's not war on our territory, it's not war on our ground, but it is war. It is devastation. It is terrorism across the world.

[Ed Zitron]

So it's perpetual. There's been war everywhere. Yeah, if you're a fucking ignorant monster. If you want to pretend that like America has been in a war the whole time is, yeah, anyway, here's another great point.

[Juniper]

There's also different countries also doing wars. Like I Don't know, like there is not long peace. Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

They don't matter none. You know, what's the little. Oh, it's over there. And anyway, number 15, post war, the post war 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. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

[Juniper]

I'm like this idea that if Japan could have a military, their, their problems, they're, they're like everything that's going wrong in Japan right now would be fine.

[Caleb]

Well, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a counterbalance to China is what he's getting at.

[Juniper]

I do, I do agree with that, but I just don't understand what a military of the size of Japan could do to like at this point especially like even just giving him like let's say today they could, you know, build up military. What, what are they going to like, how is that going to change the current situation? I don't, I think it's just like the word overcorrection to it I think is very telling. It's like, okay, you don't really have. It's interesting he came from a progress. Yeah, Germany. I think it's interesting that you have laid out that he's sort of come from like a more left leaning sort of history because this is not something I would imagine someone. And again he changed more recently. But like Germany and Japan especially, it's like, it's like I feel like everyone knows why they cannot have military.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Juniper]

What happened?

[Ed Zitron]

Why did that happen? Alex?

[Juniper]

Yeah. What happened in the 40s?

[Caleb]

I can't speak to Japan despite, you know, the obvious kind of surface level that's a counterbalance to China thing in his, you know, his history. And I don't know if the book, I haven't finished the book yet, I'm still reading it. But in his life he did go to Germany in. I think he moved for school in the 80s or early 90s when he was studying there. And a lot of his politics and the things that he believes in are a sort of direct confrontation of like post war Germany and the things that he saw in that society. It's very interesting and just I think that he saw, he really. And this is a Habermas thing too of like what kind of national identity should Germans have in the wake of this, you know, existential death of humanity that informs Karp's thinking quite a bit. And when you think about his whole idea is, like, aggression is social cohesion, it starts to make sense when he says, well, maybe Germany should be allowed to have a military. It's kind of. To be clear, I don't. He's not a Nazi. He's Jewish. But it's still very kind of crazy to think about this, especially when you think about how openly he engages with fascist and Nazi ideals. You know, again, from the point of argument, as. As a reasoning tool, but still, it's

[Juniper]

like, I mean, I think we're gonna get up to a point fairly soon. Sort of related to this in that way. But, like, I think it's interesting that a lot of tech people in the United States in, like, the last couple of years have started doing this thing where it's like, we unapologetically do this. We unapologetically believe this. Like, they're like, there's, like, this shame, like, where this. Like, you cannot have shame for anything you ever do. You cannot be introspective. Like Marc Andreessen, he was talking about. About, like, oh, you know. Yeah. It's like, it's so. It's. It's. It's a weakness to have introspection. I think that's sort of linked to that in that way where it's like, we can't apologize for our, like, actions or whatever, you know?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's. I. Isn't that Roger Stone thing as well, like, never apologize? Yeah.

[Juniper]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Caleb]

No, explicitly, it is.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Juniper]

Probably came from him, to be honest.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. They don't have ideas, but let's go on to one of the other ones they claim to have, number 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to. The culture almost snickers at Musk's interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves. Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn that would suggest he's created something.

[Caleb]

Now, Ed, I'm not an expert in this field, maybe this is a question for you, but wasn't Elon Musk forced to purchase Twitter because he made an epic meme?

[Ed Zitron]

Because he made. He was epic and based and said, I will buy it this. And then when he tried to pull out, they were like, no, you agreed to buy this fucking website. Shit.

[Caleb]

Give us the money, Dr. Karp. Excuse me.

[Ed Zitron]

Also, let's talk about some of the things that Elon Musk has talked about. Robots doesn't exist. Robo taxis doesn't exist. Tesla Roadster with rockets on it doesn't exist. Just like the reason people snicker and jeer at Elon Musk is he says something will happen, and then it does him. And then he's like, well, it's delayed until the year of the base tiger. It's just like. And everyone just goes, okay, well, if we had a functioning business in tech media, they would stop printing what he says, my God. But they would just go like, oh, yeah, this guy is lying. But it's funny because this is. This only ever comes from incurious Dalits. It's never people who create a lot of stuff who are like, hey, Elon Musk's fucking trying, okay? He's trying to create something where you sit, hear from the peanut gallery. It's never, like, artists or writers who have, like, written meaningful shit or, like, authors. It's always guys like this, executives of software companies who could be replaced with anyone. Like, let's be honest, like, what makes Alex Karp uniquely the person to run palantir? There's probably 18 different Lockheed Martin gargoyles or fucking former Hanwha executives who could be slotted in and we would never know the difference other than the fact that we wouldn't have to fucking hear from them. Them all the time. Because, you notice we don't hear from fucking Lockheed Martin's CEO. We don't hear from the CEO of rtx, Nay, Raytheon. We don't hear from these people. We don't know who they are, because they don't.

[Juniper]

They.

[Ed Zitron]

Raytheon is not sitting around being like, what's our. So. Well, they actually have a social strategy. It's very funny. And they love to post, like, LGBTQ awareness, which is really fucking crazy.

[Juniper]

But I love when they're like, we're the greatest company for gay people out there. We're rated number one. And it's like, all right.

[Ed Zitron]

But nevertheless, like, you don't have RTX's CEO going around being like, and here's what I think about social justice. They just. They're like, we make bombs. We make bombs. And the software behind bombs. And if you need to kill someone, call rtx. We will blow them up big time. What's it going to cost? More than you think and more than we say.

[Juniper]

It's been really interesting, Palantir, especially in the like, in the last year, sort of make this bigger presence of themselves with, like, this manifesto and Alex Karp going on these, like, speaking tours. And I believe it was a New York Times page ad where it was a couple of weeks ago that was. Was like, palantir supports Israel. They are purposefully, like, putting themselves in the limelight and getting all of, like, all of this attention and attention. It's attention economy. It's the attention economy. Yeah.

[Caleb]

It's interesting, too, because he's been the CEO, I think, for 18 years, and nobody had ever heard of him until recently. He's actually been quietly, I would say, smartly, just building relationships with various governments and Alphabet agencies around the world and so such. And kind of kept to himself. And I. I've often thought that his proximity and relationship to academia has been able to sort of ingratiate himself with these types of people that are in these positions. And that's how he's been so successful. I don't know what it is. I'm still kind of trying to. To.

[Ed Zitron]

I can explain. He saw all the attention that Elon Musk got and the Peter Taylor Scott by saying, like, yeah, the Antichrist, right? Or like, what if we ban woman? Like, whatever they're saying. And he was like, yeah, cool, cool. I want to do this. Like, I want to be popular, too. And also, now's the time, because all these people want to be statesmen. SBF, Sam Bankman, Mr. Bankman freed. He was kind of early in that he wanted to be a statesman. He wanted to be seen as, like, an elder statesman. And you kind of seen it with Elon, Except I say this with no respect to government officials. He lacks the decorum. He lacks the grace. He just. He doesn't function or talk like a politician, and he doesn't know how to do it. They don't know how to dress as well. This is such a really small thing, but go and find the picture from the dinner with Trump. And look at Elon Musk's shoes. And look at the breakaway.

[Caleb]

He wore a shirt backwards when he was doing his little ex joke or whatever. You remember that.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's just like, don't look at their shoes. Look, I'm not even being the menswear guy here. Look at the break on their pants. It's really uneven. This is something that you can solve when you have a billion dollars. You go to Savile Row in London and you go, here is my credit card. Don't worry about whatever you put on it. Just give me the perfect looking suit and they'll fucking do it. You will find anyone. You can find them in New York. Find them any city, everywhere. You have enough money, you could probably just have them fly. Like they could do one in a day. They could buy the factory, you could do it. But they just don't really give a fuck. What they want to do is skip all the hard part of, you know, learning and being a person and growing so they can just be famous and they've realized that that works. You can just go out and be like, blah, blah, racism, Pax Americana, Manifest destiny. I've learned these terms yesterday from Wikipedia and I forgo what they mean. And it's. They will do that enough times. The problem is the reason they seem so frantic and tired is because there's nothing behind it. They don't give a shit about this. We're even on in this fucking list. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Point 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime. Banding any serious efforts to address the problem problem or take on any risk with the constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

[Juniper]

Surveillance state. Yay, surveillance.

[Ed Zitron]

Also, this is a person that does not believe that social services are part of that. The violent crime in San Francisco comes from Ronald Reagan emptying the fucking homeless people. People that became homeless, I should say, from mental asylums that exist. Watch Deadly Class. Great show.

[Juniper]

Have you ever watched the Southland Tales, either of you?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yes, of course.

[Juniper]

Do you remember throughout the movie there just will be points where just different things will pop off and it'll cut two military people on roofs with the machine guns and they'll just shoot people from the roofs. That's what he wants. He wants the machine guns on the roof with just soldiers always watching. That's what this point is is Sapling Tales, that movie.

[Ed Zitron]

Sarah Michelle Geller is in it as a porn star. And the one thing I remember is she has in a movie called cock chuggers 2. Cock chuggin, to be clear. Sarah Michelle Gellar, amazing actress, but just like fucking hilarious. Everyone should watch Southland Tales, by the way. It is a insane movie.

[Juniper]

Panned at the time, but I think especially these days, it is very prescient, I think very. You'll be like, goddamn, people didn't like this back in the day. It's a very camp. Oh no.

[Ed Zitron]

I can get why people didn't like it. It is insane. It is Insane scene between scene. You're like, what is happening? Anyway, Anyway, if only his worldview was that coherent. Because what he believes is that he wants to put the homeless people in the embrace of God. He wants to shoot them, he wants to jail them. Which I'm sure will solve the prison population issue we have. Wonder how he feels about prisons, by the way. I don't know. I don't know. He probably loves them, I'm guessing, because the solution is always more software, more jail, more gun. It's never like more home. Because that's a really good way of dealing with homeless people. You give them a path out of transience because they have mental health issues caused by the fact they don't have a place to sleep or a place to go to the bathroom other than their trousers. And these people are suffering and they're hurting and the way that people deal with them is to hurt them more versus and oh, it costs a lot of money. Yeah, it does. To pull someone out of hell. And if you are someone listening to this, by the way, who has a view of homeless people where it's like, oh, they need to be moved away, you're a fucking asshole and a loser and a coward. Howard, homeless people are victims of society. Society owes them a debt, not the other way around. And the idea that someone needs to work enough for social services is a joke. Anyway, that's my little sandbox there. Really pissed me off.

[Juniper]

Caleb, what were you going to say?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, sorry, yeah, go on, Caleb.

[Caleb]

It's hard to say what he believes in since his sort of schism, but I do think it's worth noting that he has talked about social services and these programs pretty extensively in the past. He just thinks that. That Palantir specifically will make them better, for whatever that's worth.

[Juniper]

Of course they will.

[Caleb]

Yeah, I think that he does believe because again, he has over the years described himself as various times a social something, Democrat, liberal, this neo Marxist, whatever. He does believe in these things. I just think that he's sort of this eccentric megalomaniacal freak that's I alone can improve the these problems.

[Ed Zitron]

Like Boris Balkan of the Ninth Gate, I alone am worthy. But let's move.

[Juniper]

Bitcoin will fix this.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, well, let's go to point 18, which is a real banger. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves has become so unforgiving that The Republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. And that is exactly how that's written. He just got let that typo go right through. If there were any genuine belief structure. Look, I don't know. I, I, I, this is about a mate of his. Well, this is like, yeah, this is.

[Caleb]

Don't look at the Epstein files. Yeah, like this way to say to not do that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, don't look at the Epstein files. Don't look whether Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn endorsed Jeffrey Epstein, which he did. We don't know what for. I've asked, I haven't got a comment back. But anyway, let's move on.

[Juniper]

I just want to say really quick, really quick, just that like it's so funny to say this but also be like virulently anti Zoran Mamdani. He's like Zoran Mamdani, none of this, none of the things you want will ever work. He's bad, he's evil, he's bad. So it's like he already like within just like one second of looking at some of his new opinions even like a couple of days later or like a couple of months after this or before this.

[Ed Zitron]

Sorry, are you suggesting a conservative leader is a hypocrite?

[Juniper]

Yeah. Hypocrite much? It's just, it's just, it just drives me crazy how all of this, none of, none of these people like he, I think he does believe this stuff but he's just so, he is not self aware in any capacity to where it's like he says things that can directly contradict some of this manifesto.

[Ed Zitron]

Well 19 the caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. At all. So that's just about racism. That's just about saying the arsler. That's like, it's real like this. He's going to frame this as oh, it's a philosophical debate but it's like no it's not. It's actually just someone said the Osler and he wants to protect them. But we got to keep. We've let this one go a little long so we're going to move on a little faster because number 20 is a real banger. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be existed. The elite's tolerant intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that it's a political project, that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. I would say that there are definitely ways in which religion is pushed out. I don't think those are the ones he's talking about, though.

[Juniper]

I. I've found it so fascinating in the last 2 ish years how a lot of these Silicon Valley tech people have really, whether they actually really embrace it or not, have outwardly embraced religion as this new thing that everyone needs to. You're like a deeper person for re embracing religion. Like Peter Thiel, all of these people. I think it's one of the most fascinating new narratives to come out of Silicon Valley is how they're all Christian all of a sudden and all really love God and all really think that that's more valuable than anything else. While they talk about how we need more bombs to kill people, they've seen the value of.

[Caleb]

Of appealing to people who already have, like, proclivity to dogma baked in. Right?

[Juniper]

Absolutely. It's. It's super beneficial for them. You, if, like, I mean, Russell Brand, you sexual assault, you. You. You pick up a Bible, everyone. You get a lot. All sorts of money.

[Caleb]

Was so funny, by the way.

[Juniper]

Oh, my God. Just flipping through the Bible, two minutes.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. It's like. I think it's this one. I think.

[Juniper]

I can't, I can't.

[Ed Zitron]

I can't find. I can't find the. And Piers Morgan is like gym facing. Like, it's just. And I watched the whole thing, and all I could think of was, no American would have the balls to do this. No American journalist. I don't love Piers Morgan, but, like, no American journalist would ever have the balls to just sit there in complete silence for two minutes as Russell Brand went. Is it Isaiah? Is it? Is it Isaiah? Is it? Is he? Is. He Is. Is this the one with the wall in it? Is this the one with the angels that have sex with each other? I haven't really. I use Grok to read this to me, and it's just. It's like, no. Anyone who suddenly becomes religious is extremely suspicious. Never trust anyone. In fact, I know some very spiritual, deeply religious people, people with great faith, and the way they talk about it is just completely different to anyone else who talks about. It's never.

[Caleb]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

It's something for them, not for you. And the moment it becomes something outward is when I get very fucking suspicious.

[Juniper]

Absolutely.

[Caleb]

All right, any of you guys know this? You know, you guys both know I go to church every Sunday, right?

[Ed Zitron]

That's cool.

[Juniper]

Do you really? Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

What kind of church?

[Juniper]

I didn't know that.

[Caleb]

I. I have been going to a Universalist Unitarian church.

[Ed Zitron]

So it's like fake church, but there's nothing fake about it. It's what your faith is. No, I've. I'm. I am, like, agnostic. And I. I have some spiritual. I think my writing's quite spiritual, the process, but it's like nothing with a God or anything. I think people are dismissive of religion in some ways ways. But this is referring to school protests. This is just. This is just college campus protest. This is what he's talking about. All right, we've only got two more of these fucking things. All right, 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances. Others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yes. This new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures have produced wonders. Others have proven middling and worse, regressive and harmful.

[Juniper]

My God.

[Ed Zitron]

What are you fucking talking. I assume he means Islam. Like, I just. I assume he's referring, like.

[Juniper]

It's just like. It's like those brown countries. You go a little south. The darker than brown, the black countries. Is there really any wonders there? There's no wonders there.

[Caleb]

My. My challenge to anybody listening to this is if anybody ever says this to you, and I've seen this framing come up quite a bit more and more increasingly. If somebody says this to you, ask them what they mean and smile, smile on their face. What do you mean by that? And make them say it.

[Juniper]

Yeah, I mean, it's so obviously, like, rooted in that. Like, oh, the West, Western values. It's like. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, final one. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and horlo pluralism. We in America and more broadly in the west have for the past century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? We need more racism. We need more racism.

[Juniper]

We need transphobia. We need homophobia.

[Ed Zitron]

We need more bigotry. That's the only way we'll be multicultural.

[Juniper]

Yeah, yeah. No, this yet again is sort of like cancel culture bullshit. This is like suicidal empathy because, like, oh, what? Like, if we're tolerant of everyone, like, what? Like, lose so much the society that'll lead to societal decline.

[Ed Zitron]

Intolerant of everyone. What if someone's intolerant of me being intolerant? Fucking assholes. Well, I will say. And this ends by saying it's an excerpt from the book, so couldn't probably should have known that before going into it myself. I will say that if I was made to read this book, I would try and poison myself. I don't want to know what these people think. Think. But I think that this kind of. This kind of proves that this is a series of incongruent points written by somebody that can't choose whether they want to be a convenient or inconvenient fascist. Like, they don't want. Like, they aren't really sure what they believe in other than the fact that someone they like is being oppressed, but the people they don't like aren't being impressed enough. Oppressed enough.

[Juniper]

It's also like, give us more contracts, give us more money. We want a full wartime economy focused on giving AI companies more money. It's like both of those things sort. It's sort of this, like, techno fascist sort of like, give us money, please. Also, we agree with you on culture war, so please give us more money for that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Well, now that we've gone through that horrible series of points, I want to thank you both for joining. Where can we find you?

[Juniper]

You can find us at. We do a show called Kill the Computer. You can find [e-mail] or just any other amazing website. Yeah. Be our community. The person that sort of, like, helps with our community also made the website. She's amazing. She built. I think I'm biased. It's a website for our show, but I think it's one of the most, like, if you love what the Internet used to be, what it could be. Obviously it's a website for a podcast, but I think it just has the spirit of what the Internet still could be.

[Caleb]

It's got games on it. My phone has games on it.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so sick.

[Juniper]

There's a leaderboard. It's fucking dope. Kill the Computer. Yeah. It's a show about just, like, how Internet and culture and politics sort of intertwine and sort of manifest in the world that we live in, essentially. So we talk about a lot of stuff like we talked about today. We talk about. One of my favorite episodes that we did a little bit ago was talking about the death capitalist economy of grief tech.

[Ed Zitron]

Grief tech?

[Juniper]

Yeah. Where it's like these tech companies, how they sort of prey on people grieving, family members dying, or, like, getting to end of life and providing these different services that will sort of create fake memories in some cases.

[Caleb]

They made a chatbot out of your dead grandmother and they're gonna update the model and she'll start hallucinating and you can't afford it and blah blah blah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just very.

[Juniper]

It's very. Yeah, no, we talk about all sorts of stuff like that, so please check us out.

[Ed Zitron]

Thanks for listening everyone. There'll be a monologue on Friday. You'll love it. I promise. Promise. I haven't decided what it is yet. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. I'm goddamn Ed Zitron. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] M A T T O S o. You can email [e-mail] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat where's your Ed? To visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of coolzone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website CoolZone Media, or check us

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[Tyler McCall]

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