Why the Tech Billionaires Are Aligned with Trump

Fueled by profit motives, ideological radicalization, and elite self-victimization, America’s tech barons are aggressively taking the side of authoritarianism. But why now?

One of the Palantiri, the seeing-stones, from Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

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Perhaps Alexander Karp, the CEO of Palantir, just wanted to remind the world how much he and the company he defines are aligned with the MAGA regime. On April 18, Palantir released a 22-point manifesto, basically the abstract version of the book “The Technological Republic” Karp and co-Palantiri Nicholas Zamiska published a year ago. “Look at us!”, it yells, “look how all in we are on America First nationalism and the Trump agenda!”

Palantir was co-founded by Karp and Peter Thiel in 2003. They named the company after the elven-made seeing-stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga, magical crystal balls used for telepathic communication and information gathering across vast distances. Palantir offers data analysis software and AI-powered “operational intelligence,” as Karp puts it – especially to the military, law enforcement, and intelligence services.

Why does a publicly traded tech company need such a manifesto? Because Karp, like so many of today’s tech lords, fancies himself a philosopher-CEO. They are convinced they have some profound insight to offer, and they are determined to make the world listen. And so, we get “The Technological Republic, in brief,” a document that reeks of cultural chauvinism. “Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive,” we learn. Palantir, therefore, is deeply opposed to “the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism” – makes sense, from a Western supremacist perspective: We must not dilute the “culture”! The manifesto also sprinkles in some revanchism, demanding that “the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone,” complaining that the “defanging of Germany was an overcorrection.” Why is a company that, above all else, embraces the militant nationalism of America First concerned with such matters? Because the America First mandate includes a commitment to fighting for Western supremacy everywhere and elevating rightwing nationalists abroad. Raging against the “neutering” and “defanging” of Germany as one of history’s great injustices is just standard repertoire for the post-1945 German far right.

In any case, the manifesto calls on America to not get soft. Enough with all the “woke” self-critique and cancel culture: The nation must get back to relishing its own superiority and punish its enemies with “hard power”! And for that, it needs a global surveillance machinery that Palantir is happy to supply. Get rid of the deep state and those pesky civil servants with their outrageous attempts to sabotage that project: In Palantir’s vision, the government and the totally unaccountable tech elite become one – an all-powerful fusion in service of American supremacy and the defense of Western “culture.”

The Palantir manifesto is a stark reminder: The Silicon Valley tech billionaires are fully aligned with Trump.

Remarkably, it wasn’t all that long ago that many of them were cozying up to Obama and the liberal establishment. After the 2016 election, for instance, the Washington Post, the paper Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had purchased in 2013, famously vowed to stand against the Trumpist assault under the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Yet when Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, Bezos was right there with him – and officially declared it was time for the Post to stop all this “democracy” talk; a mass exodus of liberal voices from the Post followed quickly thereafter.

Or take Palantir CEO Alex Karp: He was seen as a liberal, a progressive, even a proper leftist until just a few years ago. In 2024, he still supported Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But then he donated for Trump’s inauguration and is helping to pay for Trump’s bizarre ballroom plans. Karp is now calling Palantir the first company “to be completely anti-woke.”

What happened?

Considering how much power – over our politics and our private lives – these guys are amassing, we better find a proper answer to that question. This is, without a doubt, one of the defining, and most dangerous, stories of our time. Let’s tackle it step by step by investigating:

(1) Why this is not *just* a story of capitalists attempting to maximize profit by sucking up to the authoritarian regime - but also a tale of political and ideological radicalization

(2) Why it was a mistake to equate technological futurism with social progressivism, as the fundamental worldview in the tech elite circles has always had inherently anti-democratic tendencies, leading so many of them to conclude that “freedom and democracy are incompatible”

(3) The role of extremist thinkers like Curtis Yarvin in intellectualizing the anti-democratic impulses, and the spread of a staunchly authoritarian ideology that is best described as either “reactionary modernism” or tech-fascism

(4) How and why these long-standing anti-democratic impulses and reactionary tendencies are being activated *now*, and the escalating sense of elite self-victimization that fuels people like Alex Karp and Marc Andreessen who considered themselves “liberals” or even “leftists” until quite recently.

We need to understand why they are now giving themselves permission to make common cause with the rightwing extremist assault on democracy – because we will all be suffering the consequences.

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