From one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his deputy a sweeping indictment of the West’s culture
of complacency arguing that timid leadership intellectual fragility and an unambitious view
of technology’s potential in Silicon Valley have made the U.S. vulnerable in an era of mounting
global threats. “Fascinating and important.”—Walter Isaacson #1 New York Times bestselling
author of Elon Musk Silicon Valley has lost its way. Our most brilliant engineering minds
once collaborated with government to advance world-changing technologies. Their efforts secured
the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order. But that relationship has now eroded with
perilous repercussions. Today the market rewards shallow engagement with the potential of
technology. Engineers and founders build photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms
unwittingly becoming vessels for the ambitions of others. This complacency has spread into
academia politics and the boardroom. The result? An entire generation for whom the
narrow-minded pursuit of the demands of a late capitalist economy has become their calling. In
this groundbreaking treatise Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W.
Zamiska offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition arguing that in
order for the U.S. and its allies to retain their global edge—and preserve the freedoms we take
for granted—the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent
challenges including the new arms race of artificial intelligence. The government in turn
must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that has propelled Silicon
Valley’s success. Above all our leaders must reject intellectual fragility and preserve
space for ideological confrontation. A willingness to risk the disapproval of the crowd Karp
and Zamiska contend has everything to do with technological and economic outperformance. At
once iconoclastic and rigorous this book will also lift the veil on Palantir and its broader
political project from the inside offering a passionate call for the West to wake up to our
new reality.
