Better Offline - Palantir's Manifesto with June and Caleb from KTC

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron digs into Palantir’s 22-point manifesto with Caleb and June from Kill The Computer.The Manifesto: https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312 Caleb and Junehttps://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/killthecomputer.com https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer https://x.com/canteverdie Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84rt762qen  YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums. We dropped, like, five right now. Like, that's the rate we gotta be going. Yeah, that's a good attitude.

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I'm your host, Ed Zitra, and I have lost the plot. 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 are you doing you too? Really great. I'm doing wonderful. Awesome. Yeah, so I was just reading what appears to be a school shooter manifesto that was posted on Parenthood. Radical AI centrist. Doesn't want data centers built, but really loves talking to chat GBT about all of his plans. 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 our, I'm constantly at Palantir. Hey, have you come up with like, or 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.

It's so true. 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 in some time. I mean, it's just Oracle, actually. Now that I said out of my understanding is that it's like an app layered on top of like databases essentially. It's like what it is for different companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, 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. Yeah, first client of Oracle was CIA. It's very funny. Back in a Peter Thiel did a Reddit AMA like 10 years ago. And he called the CIA a front. for Palantir in that movie

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

they was joking, but it was like, come on. They're stunting in the, to the extent that they're doing stuff with confidence that they shouldn't have. Exactly. 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, get a 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 Donald Trump does the two points? That's a lot of, that's a long manifesto. The 23rd point that he only sent to a couple people was some of you are cool. Don't come to school tomorrow. I thought point 14 would be a little more racist.

though. American power. Let's actually go through these, shall we? Okay. Please. 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, you 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. Yeah, 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 Newsweek 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.

Like, you might think Elon Musk, if he said this, you know, he's just asking for more taxpayer money or something. It's important to remember that, like, Alex Karp believes in this, like, very sincerely, all of this stuff that he's saying. Yes. You know, there's probably some cynicism to, too. because he obviously is, you know, his whole business is baking money off the federal government in some ways. But he does believe every, all 22 points are sincere. I mean, I think specifically this point 14, too, especially like he does believe these things. Peace for who?

This long peace for who? Sure, 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 died. Who knows what happened there? It's a bomb involved killing. Yeah.

Yeah. No source on that one. You don't know where that came from. Karp is interesting in that, like, his entire life, he has, you know, he's, essentially this, like a progressive Democrat that since October 7th specifically is kind of, yes, absolutely. he's uh he's you know he voted against trump and he fought with peter teal about his support of trump i was as recently as recently it was uh yeah it was actually it was october seventh that really kind of um and then some like anti-book stuff i still think that he does believe in some of these things he's just uh kind of going into like uh i don't know midlife crisis divorce dad like i don't know

what i believe anymore mode sort of um burnout type thing yeah but yeah i he's every interview I watch with him, I feel like if I had his number, I'd be like, hey, man, uh, call me. Yeah. You doing right, man? Yeah. A little too much, um, coffee this morning. You know what I mean?

A little too much espresso. Uh, that, uh, it makes you, makes your face itch and makes you feel a little crazy, a little too much espresso, mate. Yeah. Because you see a guy like this bouncing around on stage and it's like, how miserable. How miserable. But, like, being alive must really fucking suck for you. I know it's really generic to be like, these people need therapy.

But, like, these people need friends. Yeah. Like, actually. One guy. Outside of themselves, too, because they're all friends with each other, of course. They all talk to each other in group. But they don't fucking, they don't care about each other. No one's doing a brother check-in on the single group chat.

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 anti-crass conference to see how you're doing. I'm sorry, you're going to be, are you all right? Yeah, you do it okay. You seem a little off the rails. 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, point to, military. Can I just one more quick point on what Clark believes. His dissertation, I mean, this is all part and parcel of his entire worldview.

He genuinely believed. So even when he was still anti-Trump, he would say stuff like, well, I believe like some of his policies in the Middle East are good. His dissertation, a big part of it is the idea that aggression towards others, other is like the great social glue for a nation state. Jesus Christ. 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. And you consider like 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.

It's also, I don't mean to attack people's physical ability, but like, am I meant to be scared of you, mate? I don't know. It looks like his bone will snap if you just like blow at him. 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 out. Get an editor, mate.

The object has changed the lives. It may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. What? Yeah, I can... 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 I 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? Sort of. So he...

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. Oh, really good. Mind masters, thought to the death. It was very, very fun to listen to. Two geniuses. Yeah, two geniuses last night.

It was in the middle of a minute. Einstein and Dostoevsky. That was awesome. But in that, he kind of expounds on this idea. And 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, like, 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, you know, if you understand the tradition that he came up intellectually, he goes to study under Habermis, 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 Habermis's 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 Habermis also would say early technology takes people. 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. 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 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, an argumentative. But a white guy, well, you're just, it's the marketplace of ideas. He just wants to be a great man. It's just the great man thinking. father was a, Haberis' father was an advisor to the Nazi party and he himself was Hitler used.

Now, he wasn't a Nazi. And Alex Carp, you said, studied under him? Well, tried to. He goes, yeah. It's actually very funny. Mora 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 whole career.

Because for a lot of, a long time, a lot of people thought, oh, he stood in her under Habermis. He's like this, he's connected to the Frankfurt School. and it's not, 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 Hobartis said explicitly to him,

he faxed him a three-page takedown of one of his first drafts with 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 literature. critics and it was so bad that Habermis said, I will not mentor you for your dissertation. And that's how they have their following out. Yes, Alex Carp. And that is so funny. That's so good. Holy shit. And this definitely is a sticking point for him. He did eulogize.

He 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. It's just, I don't know. I'm like, the other thing is, is you hear something like that. Every great artist story you hear like that usually ends with them continuing. Yeah, I believe in myself.

Michael Jordan didn't make the team, but he did, you know, go to the Bulls or Brian Wilson got the eff in music class but wrote Pet Sounds. He instead decided to make like Hitler Salesforce. Just a very specific period of time as well. Well, Gino Smith said they wrote me off. I didn't write back. Let's not think about that. 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 cultural 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. When I hear the word security, I'm like, oh, you don't mean social services, do you? 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, like we're like, 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 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, that minded this is. Yeah, I'm not trying to, like, well, actually, you June. A lot of people will say techno-fascism.

And, like, if you were to, like, I don't know, use Umberto Echo's, you are fascism framework for this. It would checks boxes for sure. I would just say that, like, maybe the way, I think the better way to frame this is, for Alex Carp's thinking, is like a Cold War-style liberal. Okay. You know what I mean? You expand on that.

So, yeah, go on. I think I might know what you mean. Because he's essentially saying the tech industry needs to become the new defense sector and we have great enemies like China. You know what I mean? I think that there is very serious concerns. 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 bit better of a framework as all. I mean, I think you're right. I think it's in this as well later on. He talks about explicitly how the previous 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. 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, that one is just like, yeah, that one is built to be into, that, it reminds me of every college philosophy student I've ever made 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 fucker thing. What do you mean soft power? Because if the argument was, see, falling into the trap here, if the argument was that decorum alone doesn't work, yeah, that's true. Yeah. If your thing is just someone will obey the rules always, yeah, Trump has proven that isn't the case. You'll 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. 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. 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, I mean,

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, eh, I mean, ethics? I don't know about that. Like, who cares? We shouldn't care about that.

That's weak thinking. That's soft thinking. So I think that's like a part of it there too. But it's also like, no one knows what this is. Like no one knows this, this isn't. I think on a level, they're sort of drinking their own Kool-Aid in a sense of. 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. 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 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, Andrewil. We do know how that's going poorly. Badly enough that Andrewil had to pull out Ukraine. Sorry, I mean, they were kicked out. I didn't know that. And also, yeah, numerous government agencies, most of the general support this. Also, they lose billions of dollars, but that's cool, I guess. It's just like, 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 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. Pride Month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence. IHartRadio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival and we won't stop. Celebrate pride.

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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. That's what taxes do. I think it's even sinister, though. I think he's talking about 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 a military. 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 a lot of this, at least when I read this, I'm like, oh, my God, 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 time, 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're all in the IDF. It's like, that's sort of, I think, the buy-in that he was.

wants the country to have. This was 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, a 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. I, and that's the thing. I've read a decent amount of people, a decent amount of people that's saying that Silicon Valley is trying to jump into defense because they're running out of shit to sell. Google just signed a deal with, I think, some part.

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

Yeah. Other than every Google ad product. They're fine with that surveillance, but this surveillance. Number seven's a classic. If a U.S. 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 the, but there was a specific gun built for the military that just did not work out. Like, that's happened many times before.

Yeah, yeah. 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. I don't know. It's like, fine. I mean, he's so stuck in there. He's like, we can do better. We'll do better. We'll be just like the military. Public, at number rate, public servants need to, need not be our priests, any business that compensated his employees in the way that the federal government compensates

public servants would struggle to survive. All right, what do you mean? My interpretation here is, do you remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter? And it was a 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 going to be hard, actual real work. Like, no more sitting around on bouncy balls anymore. No bouncing on those bouncy balls in the office anymore. This is like this is what you do to get real chairs. It's like basically what he's, 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 line of thinking for

people that own companies at the top. This should be the like top down approach to run a company efficiently. But I think he might also be saying that public servants are underpaid, which I kind of agree with. As long as you're not in Congress. and have stocks, in which case you're overcompensated. I think he's sort of low-key shitting on the government as a whole here. 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 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 were reported it live. 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 hates woke college campuses or whatever. I knew he was like sort of nominally pro-Israel. I mean, Palantir's worked with Israel since 2014, so I knew that. Extreme Zionist. 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 Zionism in the last

couple of years. I was not aware of that shift of his. Yeah. I support Irish Zionism from Connor O'Malley. I started, don't worry, I started doing my own blanket tours a couple of weeks ago, don't worry. 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 of the human psyche may leave us with a cost of characters of 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 ventral-laced urine

from drones. It's just the same guy. What is this about? It's so hard. It's so hard with cancel culture, you know? What the fuck is it with these big fucking tough guys who've got like,

I'm so fucking tough. I'm so strong and big and tough. Don't hurt my feetlings. Don't be mean to me. Okay, have some of forgiveness, you piece of fucking shit. You know, it's really hard on us when we press the button that kills 180 school children. Have you thought about us? Have you really thought about that when you criticize us for doing that, how that makes us feel?

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. 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? It drives me crazy how all of these people are simultaneously tough guys,

but the winiest, fucking 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 son 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, they wine, they whine until they get what they want. And then they

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

And you guys said, being white. I love it. It's just that every day. Yeah, I think that this one and into the next point tour are kind of connected in that kind of hobomish 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 joking a little bit, but that is like central to his like core ideological belief. Yeah. It's amazing.

how many people, like, get Twitter psychosis and bring it out into, like, everything they do in real life. It's, it's astounding. 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. 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, have you guys seen? Yeah. It's basically this concept where that if you care too much about other people, you will always like, like, the way it's 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 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. Are you suggesting 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. But what if I want more stuff? 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 he, you know, I think Caleb,

you're 100% right. It's adjacent to number nine in that, in that same way that you were outlining before. But I also think it's, 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. 10. Point 11 is our society has grown too eager to hasten and is often gleeful at the demise of its enemies. Exactly.

All of these are tied. Of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. Well, have you talked to your customers about this? 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 enemy's suffering. He laughs. He takes glee in the suffering of those he disagrees with.

In that same Barry Weiss interview, 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. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Okay. I feel like that word pride, probably not.

not something that come out of his mouth. 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 or a Gen Z brain rot edits about deportations. Which is so embarrassing. I'm not saying I agree. But 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, yeah. Yeah, you're totally fine. I'm not saying I agree with Karp, but specifically about ICE, his point was, you know, if you are somebody who's concerned with this, you would want Palantir did to succeed because then that means we only deport people who deserve it, who have done crimes. I mean, so again, 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. Yeah. No, I think you're so right. I always go back and forth on whether these tech people truly believe the things that they say. I think Elon 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. 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. Yeah.

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 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?

Yeah. So it's a weakness, a sign of weakness to have empathy. Correct. Because he can't negotiate with or engage with empathy like a person who hasn't experienced abuse from a terrible father could, right? I don't know. I don't feel like Elon believes in anything. I genuinely think that he just, I think the, oh, I think he has deep-seated races.

I truly, like, 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 be the woken. Well, I mean, I said Democrat. Ooh, we're getting political, aren't we?

Very political episode. Yeah, there we go. No, and 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. Yeah, yeah.

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 sales force like so okay this is maybe a better question for the end

but I I've I've just been thinking why and though we're only halfway through but like why did they post this like it's a like they're trying to make like Palantier state from the I can actually tell you so from a client perspective this is some shit that you're sent at 5 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. I'm going to put this. I'm going to put that. So, wait, say, April 18th, this was posted. Let's see what day this was. Okay.

Oh, fuck, yeah. This is posted on a Saturday. He wrote this on a Friday. So, yeah, some poor PR person got to fuck it, an email Friday at like 7 p.m. 8 p.m. And he's like, he's like with his wife and kids trying to eat dinner. He's like, I'm going to post this tomorrow. I'm going to post this.

It was posted at 11.45am. Okay. So, okay. So you're talking like, what's that, 8.45 a. m. Eastern Pacific.

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 number. At least go, well, okay. Okay. I need to post this now. Post it tomorrow.

And it was probably the thought was, okay, this guy out on a Saturday. I can convince him, yeah, you should post it immediately on the Saturday, so everyone misses it. Except the problem is, is that everyone saw it because it's the fucking counter account. But it's just, no, this is a, this is client's 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'm not supposed to blog. Isn't this? just a summary of the main points of Alex Carp's book that came out like a year ago like yeah this is a summary this is a summary of one of his books essentially all the points he thought

he had a fucking book oh yeah he co-wrote it's hard power soft belief enough about it's um do you know who that guy is Caleb have you ever looked into the Nicholas Ziminsk Zimiska yeah he's the he's that like a legal counsel

he's their lawyer oh damn he's the fucking lawyer honestly 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. 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, comp. Once one age of deterrence, comma, the atomic age, comma, is ending, comma, and a new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin. No, it is not. Just no. 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 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. North Story Israel, like it's a crazy story.

You should look at it as a promise software. You'll go to say it. It'll ruin your life. It will ruin your life. I have a hobby for the rest of my day. 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? Like, is the idea that we'll be able to generate more nudes? Like, but the Chinese already have

seen as, develop undetectable deep fakes of Kim Jong-un. What are we doing? Like, what's the, what's the, of this. We'll be able to generate epic bacon memes of our adversaries. I love that he wrote this, timing-wise, it was not that far after when, do you remember, you guys remember this? This is a really small blip on their 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? No, I missed that. Oh, my God. 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-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-ha. and it gave me a list of rocks. What are you talking about the atomic age of AI? Come on.

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 shoveling it over. Keep our stock price high. Yeah, like, we need that.

Yeah, keep coming. But this next point is the funniest. No other country in the history of the world has advanced. to 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. God damn, dude. I guess if you're maybe talking about Russia and currently, maybe, like if that's the only other country in the world, sure. 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. Definitely not. It just, that kind of gives away the game. Also, just like, what does he mean? Based on, like, the history of America, I wouldn't say, like, I think it was more defined as a battle against progressive values in some cases, like history of Portland, for example, looking to the Portland Police Department. I don't know, look at the current police department of pretty much every city as well.

And I mean, just the police department, just the government actively 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 are racing go back to school systems and like like I don't think it's true like like I don't yeah it's just not necessarily true like we are still a lot of people love to be like wow like we like whenever peter 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 Roof's false, first of all. Second of all, it was illegal.

You could not gay marry in this country until 10 years ago. It's 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 it's better now. We have a police force arresting people of color arbitrarily. Yeah. It's like we are sure, like I'll, I guess I'll hand it to him.

We are far from perfect, but I think we're further from perfect than we're trying to convince us. but we also seem to be trying to undo those. Anyway, don't worry, we've got another really smart point coming up. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark.

And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. If you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts 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 you. business, think IHeart, streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at IHeartadvertising.com. That's IHeartadvertising.com. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult.

There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Black Music Month, the Questlove show celebrates the artists, innovators, and cultural voices who continue to redefine music. We're sitting down with a groundbreaking country artist, Mickey Guyton. The way that the country music community accepted Post Malone, versus Beyonce versus Shibuzi. Like, those are very eye-opening things.

Hip-hop visionary Fat-Fi Freddie. Genre-bending musical genius, Thundercat. And the always-legendary revolutionary voice. Chuck D. Yeah, we changed tires, man. I had 18 jobs before this became my occupation, man. Okay. I wrote, I wrote Barmer's show as a messenger.

From unforgettable stories to deep conversations about creativity, culture, and legacy. These are the voices shaping the soundtrack of black music past, present, and future. Listen to the Questlove show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Number 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps taken for granted than nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. What the fuck you? Peace for who?

Peace for who? A peace for who. Billions of people and their children and now grandchildren have never known a world war. Literally. Those are the only wars that have happened in the last hundred years. 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.

Read the Jakarta method. That's what I have to say. A million people. Like a minimum, a million people in Jakarta. Like the amount of terror we have reigned on the world. It's like, sure it's not worth. 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 globe. So it's perpetual. There's been war everywhere.

If you're a fucking ignorant monster, if you want to pretend that like America has been in a war the whole time. Anyway, here's another great point. And there's also different countries also doing wars. Like, I don't know. Like, there is not long peace. Yeah. It don't matter none. You know, what's the little, oh, it's over there. And Anyway, number 15, 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 threatened to shift the balance of power in Asia.

What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'm serious. I like this idea that if Japan could have a military, they're problems. they're like everything that's going wrong in Japan right now would be fine. I think it's a counterbalance to China is what he's getting at. 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 build up military. What are they going to like how is that going to change the current situation? I don't know. I think it's just like, the word overcorrection, too, I think is very telling. It's like, okay, you don't really have. It's interesting that 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, I feel like everyone knows why they cannot have militaries. Yeah, what happened? What happened, Alex? Yeah.

What happened? the 40s. 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 believed in are a sort of direct confrontation of like post-war Germany and the things that he saw in that society is very interesting and just I think that he saw he he really and this is a hobromous 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 carp thinking quite a bit and um 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 fucking 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 a reasoning tool, but still, it's like, hmm.

I mean, I think we're going to 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 there's like this shame like you cannot have shame for anything you ever do you cannot be introspective like Mark Andrieson he was talking about like oh yeah it's like

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 Yeah, it's, I don't, isn't that a Roger Stone thing as well? Like, never apologize, never back down. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, absolutely it is. Yeah. It probably came from him, to be honest. 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 act. 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. has created is essentially dismissed or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. That would suggest he's created something.

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? Because he was epic and based and said, I will buy this. And then when he tried to pull out, they were like, no, you agreed to buy this fucking website. Shit. Give us the money. That's his interest, you moron.

Dr. Carp, excuse me. Also, let's talk about some of the things that Elon Musk has talked about. Robots doesn't exist. Robotaxies 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 doesn't. And then he's like, well, it's delayed until the year of the base tiger.

he's just like and everyone just goes okay well if we had a functioning business and 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 dullards 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 well you sit here 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 Hanwar 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 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 go. Raytheon is not sitting around being like, what's us? Well, they actually have a social strategy. It's very funny and they love to post like LGBT awareness, which is really fucking crazy. 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. 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. 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? It's been really interesting Palantir, especially in the last year, sort of make this bigger presence of themselves with this manifesto and Alex Garp 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

like, Palantir supports Israel. They are purposefully, like, putting themselves in the limelight and getting all of, like, all of this attention and hate. It's sad. It's attention economy. It's the attention economy. Yeah. 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 such. and kind of kept to himself. And 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... I can explain. He saw all the attention that Elon Musk got and the Peter Taylor's got 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. I want to do this. I want to be popular too. And also, now's the time, because all these people want to be statesmen. SBF, Zambank, Mr. Bankman, Free. 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're 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 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 on for. find the picture from the dinner with Trump and look at Elon Musk's shoes. And look at the brake on the... I mean, he wore a shirt backwards when he was doing his little X joke or whatever. Remember that?

But it's just like, go and look at their shoes. Look, I'm not even being the menswear guy here. Look at the brake on their pants. It's really uneven. This is something that you can solve when you have a billion dollars. You go to Saville 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 date. 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 could just be famous. And they've realized that that works. You can just go out and blah, blah, blah, blah, racism. Pax Americana, Manifest Destiny. I've learned these terms yesterday from Wikipedia and I forgot what they mean. Blah. It's, they will do that as 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 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,

banning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with the constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and, And experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. Surveillance state, yay! And also, you see. 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 assailants that he closed. Watch Deadly Class. Great show.

Have you ever watched The Southland Tales, either of you? Oh, yes, of course. Do you remember like throughout the movie there just will be points where some like just different things will pop off and there's it'll it'll cut to military people on roofs with the machine guns and they'll just like shoot people from the roofs

that's like what he wants he wants the machine guns on the roof with just like soldiers always watching that's like that's that's that's what this point is is Sackland Tales that movie Sarah Michelle Geller is in it as a porn star and the one thing I remember is she has in a movie called Cockchuggers 2 cock chugging to be clear

Sarah Michelle Galler, amazing actress, but just like fucking hilarious. Everyone should watch Southland Tales, by the way. It is a insane movie. Panned at the time, but I think especially these days, it is very prescient. I think very, you'll be like, God damn, people didn't like this back in the day. It's a very camp. Oh, no, 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, if only his worldview was that coherent. Because what he believed 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. What are how he feels about prisons, by the way?

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 transients because they have mental health issues. Of course, 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 were 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 or a coward. 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. It really pisses me. What we're going to say? Oh, sorry. Yeah, go on, 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 Palantir specifically will make them better for whatever that's right. Of course they will. Yeah, I think that he does believe, because again, he is over the years described himself as various times, you know, 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 I alone can improve these problems. Like Boris Bolkin of Ninth Gate. I alone am worthy. But let's move on. Bitcoin will fix this. All right. Well, that's got a 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's 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 this is about a mate of his but this is like this is don't look at the Epstein files yeah like this is a long way to say to not do that yeah don't look at the Epstein files don't

look at whether Reid Hoffman's 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 number nine I say really quick Sorry, really quick. Just that, like, it's so funny to say this, but also be, like, virulently anti-Zoran Mamdani. He's like, Zara and Mamdani, none of the things he 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, sorry. Are you suggesting a conservative leader is a hypocrite? Um, yeah. Um, yeah. Hipricer much? Hypocrat match It's just it just it just it just it just it just drives me crazy how all of this 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 he he He says things that can directly contradict some of this manifesto Well 19 the caution in public life that we unwittingly encourages corrosive Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all So that's just about racism That's just about saying the arsler That's like it's real like like it's like like this, he's going to frame this as, oh, it's a philosophical debate, but it's like, no, it's,

it's, um, it's not. It's actually, it's actually just someone said the arsler and he wants to protect them. But 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 resisted. The elite's tolerant intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that is a political project, that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement the 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. I've found it so fascinating in the last two-ish years how a lot of these

Silicon Valley tech people have really, whether they are actually really embrace it or not, have outwardly embraced religion as this new thing that everyone needs to, like, you're like a per person for re-embracing religion, you know, 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 like anything else while they talk about how we need more bombs to kill people. They've seen the value of appealing to people who already have like preclude to dogma baked in, right? Absolutely. It's super beneficial for them. You if like I mean Russell Brand,

you, sexual assault, you, you pick up a Bible, everyone, you get a lot, all sorts of money. The Pierce-Borman thing was so funny, by the way. Oh my God. Just flipping through the Bible. Two minutes. Oh, my God, it's like, I think it's this one. I think, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't find the, I can't. And Pierce 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 Pierce 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, I don't, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is he, is he, is he, 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. It's something for them, not for you. And the moment it becomes something outward

is when I get very fucking suspicious. Absolutely. All right. If you guys know this, you know, you guys boldly go to church every Sunday, right? That's cool. Do you really? Yeah.

Yeah, what kind of church? I didn't know that. Shit. I have been going to a universalist, Unitarian Church. So it's like fake church. There's nothing fake about it. It's what your faith is. No, I'm, I am like agnostic and 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. 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. My God, dude.

I assume he means Islam. Like, I just, I assume he's referred. Like, it's just like, yeah. It's like those, 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. Yeah. 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?

Yeah. And smile in their face. What do you mean by that? And make them fucking say it. Yeah. I mean, it's so obviously, like, rooted in that, like, oh, the West, Western values. It's, yeah. All right.

Final one. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and horro-low 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.

We need transphobia. We need homophobia. We need more bigotry. That's the only way will be multicultural. 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, we lose so much.

The society, that'll lead to societal decline. If we're tolerant of everyone. What if someone's intolerant of me being intolerant? Yeah. 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. But I think that 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 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. 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. It's sort of this

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. 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? You can find us at We do a show called Kill the Computer. You can find us at killthecomputer.com. 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 like 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. It's got games on it. Our phone has games on it.

It's so sick. 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 intertwined 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 like death capitalist economy of like, Oh, Grief Tech?

Grief Tech. 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. They made a chat bot out of your dead grandmother. And they're going to update the model and she'll start hallucinating and you can't afford it and blah, blah, blah. It's just very. Yeah. It's very, yeah.

No, we talk about all sorts of stuff like that. So please check us out. Thanks for listening, everyone. There'll be a monologue on Friday. You'll love it, I promise. I haven't decided what it is yet. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. I'm God damn Ed Zittron.

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