The New American Nexus: The true meaning of the big-tech brotherhood

ALEX KARP IS the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, a defence and data analytics firm that makes advanced AI-based software for the Pentagon’s most lethal US weaponry. Karp keeps a low profile compared to Elon Musk. But in many ways, the two men represent America’s powerful new tech brotherhood.

Both have white supremacist views. Both warn that Western civilisation is in peril. Musk believes white people are being discriminated against worldwide by leftwing wokes. He points out that the ratio of white people in the world’s population has fallen in 100 years from 36 per cent in 1926 to 8 per cent in 2026.

Musk, 55, wants white women to have as many children as possible. He himself has fathered 12 children with four known partners and possibly many more children with unknown partners. Karp, 58, has an equally unusual domestic life. He is unmarried and has no children but maintains what he calls a “geographically monogamous” relationship with two women located in different countries.

Karp’s views are even more fundamentalist than Musk’s. InFebruary2025, Karpwrote TheTechnological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief and the Future of the West. The book became an instant hit on the New York Times’ bestseller list. But it was a 22-point manifesto that Karp’s firm Palantir Technologies published last month that revealed the full extent of Karp’s neo-fascist political philosophy.

For example, the manifesto declares: “Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. [But] all cultures are now [regarded as] equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity.”

Political leaders in Europe were quick to call out Karp, warning that his manifesto advocates an attack on democratic norms. In the Nation, a publication founded in 1865, Elizabeth Spiers noted: “Karp’s manifesto asserts primarily that we can achieve peace through war, and that billionaires brandishing ‘grand narratives’ in the manner of Elon Musk should be in the country’s driver’s seat, sending ordinary citizens to the battlefield whether they like it or not.”

Karp’s manifesto has drawn widespread condemnation. As Belgian philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh, who teaches at the University of Vienna, said, “Palantir and Karp’s messaging is an example of techno-fascism.”

Who is Alex Karp? Born in New York City to a German-Jewish father and African-American mother, Karp has deep roots in Germany. He divides his time between the US and Germany and speaks fluent German. He wrote his PhD dissertation at Frankfurt’s Goethe University in German despite having the option to write it in English. At home and at work in the Florida-based Palantir Technologies, Karp speaks in German for a large part of the time. He has called the “neutering” of Germany after World War II an “over-reaction” by the West.

Karp seems conflicted by his part- African maternal lineage. Accused of white supremacism like Musk and US President Donald Trump, Karp uses his mixed ancestry to deflect criticism of racism. With Palantir Technologies winning the lion’s share of US defence contracts during the war on Iran, Karp’s views have gained broader public interest.

Dave Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University, is scathing about both Karp’s book and manifesto: “It strikes me that there is nothing in this America First-sounding manifesto that wouldn’t fit comfortably within a modern-day Mussolini regime.”

Karp’s views, however, are increasingly echoed in Silicon Valley where AI has made xAI’s Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang tech superstars. The combined market capitalisation of the Magnificent Seven—Nvidia, OpenAI, Tesla, Alphabet (Google), Meta, Microsoft and Apple—is $22.31 trillion. That’s larger than the GDP of China.

Many in the US feel the tech brotherhood has acquired more power than is good in the public interest. Disappointing recent quarterly results by OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, has underscored the belief that AI is overhyped. More troubling is the growing alarm of the dangers AI poses in the hands of bad actors. Musk and Karp are AI’s sharp edges. They cut both ways.