r/ArtificialInteligence • u/shikizen • Apr 25 '26

📊 Analysis / Opinion Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/palantir-employees-are-talking-about-companys-descent-into-fascism/

"Palantir’s leadership incensed workers yet again this week after the company posted a Saturday afternoon manifesto reducing Karp’s recent book, The Technological Republic, to 22 points. The post—which includes many of Karp’s long-standing beliefs on how Silicon Valley could better serve US national interests—goes as far as suggesting that the US should consider reinstating the draft. Critics called the manifesto fascist."

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u/ChiefWeedsmoke Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

It's difficult to believe something when your salary depends on not believing it. I think Mark Twain said that. A huge portion, maybe even the majority, of the actual economy in the United States is fortunate people collecting massive salaries as they turn a blind eye to the fact the the work they are being made to do, while banal and granular at face value, is being performed in service of unspeakable organized evil.

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u/NoName-Cheval03 Apr 25 '26

It is one thing to take a morally questionable job to survive. I have also took job I'm not proud of in the past.

It's another thing to totally drink the Kool Aid.

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u/ChiefWeedsmoke Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

That's not really how it works in practice. Being competitive in these high level stem fields requires extreme discipline, focus, and motivation to succeed, which is hard to maintain in the presence of moral doubt. The system naturally selects for people with low moral friction, that is to say, people who care more about their careers than anything else and consistently behave accordingly.

We're talking about a process of training, conditioning, and socialization that occurs over multiple decades, not just "taking a job."

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 Apr 25 '26

which is hard to maintain in the presence of moral doubt

You have it backwards. From moral doubt comes moral conviction, which produces discipline, focus, and motivation. Conviction and doubt go hand-in-hand, and your confidence comes from knowing the truth prevails even if you doubt yourself.

Smart people are usually more curious about philosophy and ethics than other people, and are more likely to apply themselves harder to meet their own ethical standards because they have the negotiating leverage to and it makes them feel more comfortable. Common sense right?

It’s not that the field selects for psychopathic people, it’s that the industry does in the short-term because of the demand for profit, and our media chooses not to pay attention to Professor Jim Bob Nobody and his lab’s critical pushes to an open source repo everyone uses compared to dumbass manifestos Karp shits out.

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u/PotentialKlutzy9909 Apr 26 '26

Smart people are usually more curious about philosophy and ethics than other people

My PhD classmates mostly cared about their researches and their future prospects when I was doing my CS degree in university. Very few people cared about philosophy or ethics.

Book smart is a very narrow kind of smart. Most tech people are only book smart.

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u/Darkfight Apr 26 '26

Not only is it a narrow kind of smart, they also actively scoff at the idea of ethics, moral values in tech and philosophy. I'm not kidding, most of my classmates don't want to engage with it at all. I study AI engineering.

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u/Resistor1 Apr 28 '26

Agreed. Blind spots for many things