By John Bew

By 2012, more than a decade into the war on terror, hundreds of American troops had been killed, and countless more injured, by cheap roadside bombs. The Pentagon had spent in excess of $25 billion to develop better ways to protect its people in Iraq and Afghanistan, with innovations including improved armor and bigger vehicles. At every stage, however, the insurgents seemed faster to adapt, posing the single greatest threat to coalition forces at a fraction of the cost.

The challenge, it turned out, was not primarily a matter of better hardware. The U.S. government had accrued reams of information about the methods used by the insurgents to make these bombs, as well as the areas where these devices were most concentrated. What it lacked was a system that could assemble all this data in one place. Eventually the Army's Rapid Equipping Force enlisted the support of Palantir, a Silicon Valley software company founded in 2003.

Named after the indestructible crystal balls in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Palantir's mission was to use big data to help tackle terrorism and other threats. Today it is one of the most successful software companies in the world, with deep ties to the national security state.

In "The Technological Republic," Alexander Karp, Palantir's co-founder and chief executive, reflects on how this mission jarred with the prevailing culture of Silicon Valley, in which the idea of supporting the nation-state in its fight for primacy was anathema. Such a position, the book argues, is an unsustainable and unjustifiable luxury in a world of fierce geopolitical competition.

It is an argument that goes right to the heart of the social contract. Today the political economy of the Western world -- indeed the international system -- is being radically rewired by novel forms of power. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum computing and cryptocurrencies are the new black gold.

Historians should avoid the traps of hyperbole and presentism. But I do not believe we have seen such a fundamental re-evaluation of the foundations of Western political theory and the relationship between science and security since the period between H.G. Wells's "The New World Order" (1940) and the conclusion of the Manhattan Project in 1946.

A new age is upon us. And so the hunt is on for a new set of principles to govern the relationship between state and society. I recently heard one venture capitalist in California speak of his admiration for James Burnham's "The Managerial Revolution" (1941) -- a book that I remember my first chief of staff at 10 Downing Street would often cite. Something borrowed, something new. Old wine in space rockets.

The founders of Silicon Valley have now accrued such resources, social capital and geopolitical influence that their minds are turning to the defining questions of our age -- from existential philosophy to the very nature of world order. Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, worked with Henry Kissinger to write two profoundly important books on AI and the future of humanity. Elon Musk's ever-expanding to-do list apparently now includes, in addition to becoming a neo-evangelist for free speech, creating a new air defense system to make America invulnerable. Peter Thiel, the other co-founder of Palantir and an important figure in the court of President Trump, was once a philosophy graduate who founded the libertarian-conservative Stanford Review.

Mr. Karp, meanwhile, is very much his own political animal, one who in the past has identified as a socialist. He has a doctorate in neoclassical social theory and once seemed destined for academia. In "The Technological Republic," he and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, who serves as legal counsel and the head of corporate affairs at Palantir, have produced something no less ambitious than a new treatise in political theory.

The authors begin with some core propositions. First, the culture of Silicon Valley has been bent out of shape by its detachment from and hostility to the needs of government and the societal collective. Second, there is a deeper crisis of meaning and purpose among the Western polities; to survive in an era of lethal international competition, a course correction is needed. Messrs. Karp and Zamiska urge liberation from a "narrow and thin" utilitarianism. Without an active debate about what constitutes the "good life," they ask, how can we be expected to navigate our future path?

The professed aim of "The Technological Republic" is to contribute to a "richer discourse" and a "more meaningful and nuanced inquiry" into societal beliefs. I must admit to approaching the book with some skepticism, perhaps expecting a tech-centric theory of everything or a display of the hubris that often comes when people experience great success in one field, then turn their minds to another. But Messrs. Karp and Zamiska's treatise is nuanced, caveated, largely compelling and reassuringly humble.

The story starts with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's harnessing of scientific service to military ends during World War II. The authors evoke a time when great minds such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein played a larger role in American public life. Institutions such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, both founded in 1958, became essential components of America's sense of national purpose, spurred on by competition with the Soviet Union.

This period generated its own anxieties. By 1961 President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned not only of the creation of an industrial-military complex but his fear that "public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." Those words have some resonance today.

Yet the authors blame other trends for the "hollowing out" of the American mind and the erosion of its belief in the national project. One was the postmodern fashions that began, in the late 1960s, to eat away at classical education in the universities. Another was the narrowing of American capitalist culture. This saw Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs create a social cocoon around themselves, focused, the authors write, on "narrow consumer products, rather than projects that speak to and address our greater security and welfare." The state, meanwhile, retreated from its previous willingness to harness engineering and technical expertise for national purposes.

Channeling Jürgen Habermas, Messrs. Karp and Zamiska warn that the decadence of the elite is only tolerated if it provides economic growth and security. Others might prefer a more effective firewall between the private sector and the world of politics. "The Technological Republic," by contrast, calls for the "blending of business and national purpose" once more. This should include, the authors nonetheless insist, "a firm and uncontroversial commitment to liberalism and its values, including the advancement of individual rights and fairness."

In philosophical terms, there is a slight tension between the book's admiration for the hard rationalism of engineering culture -- its "obsessive focus on outcomes and disinterest in theatre and posturing" -- and the need identified for a rejuvenation of the living soul of the nation. The policy prescriptions that emerge -- such as a plea for Silicon Valley to turn its well-capitalized energies to problems such as law enforcement, healthcare and education, as well as national security -- are not in themselves revolutionary.

But as the machine begins to encroach upon every aspect of our intellectual, spiritual and collective lives, it is hard not to agree with the book's plea to return to first principles. The same goes for the propositions that China's techno-leviathan needs an affirmative alternative and that the moral case for effective deterrence needs to be remade.

Far better, then, that these pleas are buttressed by a warning against "overly muscular and unthoughtful nationalism" and grounded in the lighter threads of Enlightenment thought.

Mr. Bew is a professor of history and foreign policy at King's College London and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was the chief foreign-policy adviser to the last four British prime ministers.

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February 28, 2025 12:50 ET (17:50 GMT)

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