While Silicon Valley tech billionaires may be household names for their wealth, there are many equally influential, though lesser-known, technologists who are themselves as much thought leaders as businessmen. Among them are Alexander Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, Palmer Luckey, CEO of Anduril, and other tech philosopher-investors like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who have all expressed interest in a more principled and patriotically-minded technology investment strategy.
In their new book The Technological Republic, Alex Karp and Nicholas Zaminska review some of these thinkers, recalling the days when the US government knew how to pull together a budget and a team to solve difficult technical problems, from developing nuclear weapons to landing on the moon. There were fewer lawyers and more businessmen and scientists involved in legislating. Cutting-edge software technology used to do more than create online social networks and lazy shopping venues, the authors argue. Instead, the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market has launched companies involved with the creation of financial, marketing, and shopping technology software to a preeminent position in the stock market. This current state is a reflection both of bad leadership and a spiritually bereft, wayward citizenry following a shallow, shortsighted sense of purpose in life.
Karp and Zaminska are focused on three issues: poor government leadership, unambitious technology investment, and a society devoid of culture and national soul. The book argues that leaders must be more willing to make decisions that will be beneficial in the long term and be prepared to face criticism from other politicians and voters who think in smaller, less civilizational terms. Acting more like scientists and less like lawyers in a popularity contest, leaders should know where to invest big money, where technology can solve massive human challenges, and know how to promote national pride and patriotic identity.
One of the book’s exemplar leaders is Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew who created what some consider to have been an authoritarian-style state to form a cultural identity that preserved the nation’s independence while maximizing its economic potential. Politicians’ salaries were made equal to a median salary of Singapore’s business cadre, discouraging the taking of bribes and encouraging the nation’s brightest, not necessarily the richest, to government leadership. If Karp and Zaminska’s ideal leadership type looks like a Robert Kaplan-esque “pagan ethos” warrior, the electorate, in contrast, as the book implies, needs a more rooted, religious, moral compass.
The book’s essential weakness, as admitted by the authors, is their fixation on cultural relativism as deleterious to American society coupled with their inability to firmly specify the values, religious or otherwise, that cultures should be judged by. Neither Karp nor Zaminska are particularly religious so it is unsurprising they cannot articulate a really cogent sense of how to morally judge a society or what human flourishing means. Karp and Zaminska go on about the factors by which one could grade a culture: wealth creation, standards of education, the difficulty level of its arts and crafts, though a firm answer remains elusive. Yet, even if they are not completely onboard with religion and religious values, it is notable that Silicon Valley technologists, who a generation ago would have been known as the most stalwart secular atheists, have come to a strong, if incomplete appreciation of religion generally and Christianity and/or Judaism specifically.
The logic stream at numerous points in the book draw parallel points from the anti-woke movements, reviewing the Silicon Valley vs. Ivy League debates over merit vs. diversity, and historical and social evidence in support of a Judeo-Christian worldview. In some places, the book leans more towards a Hal Brands view of American power, argued in his latest book The Eurasian Century, where American military engagement in Europe and elsewhere has ensured that the Eurasian landmass cannot be dominated by another power. But the book also demonstrates limited knowledge of the Just War Tradition, oversimplifying the logic of self-defense by merely quoting a Rabbi’s parable. With a hint of Reinhold Niebuhr’s ethics, Karp and Zaminska suggest that acts of forgiveness have merit beyond political calculations.
Not since FDR has one man had so much opportunity to remake America’s defense-industrial base, as Walter Russel Mead recently argued on the John Anderson Podcast, speaking about President Trump. The security minded, self-proclaimed principled and patriotic Silicon Valley warrior-philosophers believe they have found an advocate for not only their cultural views, but also their new technology projects. Where once immaterial software served the purpose of physical hardware that broadened the spectrum of human possibility, it is now the other way around. Decades ago, in recognition of the potential of harnessing the atom, the US invested significant time and resources in inventing the nuclear bomb. There is an analogous situation concerning which nation will be the first to harness AI as a technology certain to reshape the world, for good or ill, depending on whether it’s the US or China that gains the decisive lead.
The authors remind the reader that large, ambitious technology projects have always needed government funding. With a patriotically motivated workforce intent on winning the new Cold War and significant government investment in STEM education to train them, our capacity to innovate new technologies should increase considerably. According to the Technological Republic, the best business teams are small, flat, and founder-led. Like a bee hive searching for its next home, every scout’s suggested new home address is graded on its merit and not the scout’s status, rank, or seniority. Unlike large corporations and traditional heavy industries, smaller companies are more flexible, more easily adapt to the market, and can more quickly respond to and capitalize on technological breakthroughs.
The would-be Technological Republic recognizes that it will take a restoration of US values and culture to regain the ambition necessary to meaningfully advance the United States and humanity generally towards the next stage in civilizational evolution. The book is an interesting read if only for its interweaving of philosophy, ethics, politics, and technology. But the ideas, as the authors lay them out, also serve to elucidate a number of contemporary political movements.
In many places, the reader will identify ideas that fit, although somewhat awkwardly, with conservative politics. Whether the interest of tech entrepreneurs will continue to align with the more influential Republican Party base remains to be seen. But it’s a positive development that so many influential people are coming to recognize the value of thick religious institutions in America.
The books core principles and philosophy, may not evolve in the same direction and pace of politics and its whims. How long will the tech beehive align with the current political wind’s course? The hive’s scouts are always on the lookout for a better home when seasons change.
