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Once upon a time, the most brilliant engineering minds once collaborated with government to advance world-changing technologies. Their efforts secured the West’s dominance and kept its people safe. Now, our relationship with new technologies has become shallow—and the repercussions could not be more perilous.

Today, engineers and founders build photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms, furthering the ambitions of whoever can exploit them. This complacency has spread into academia, politics, and the boardroom. The result? An entire generation for whom the narrow-minded pursuit of the whims of a late capitalist economy has become their calling.

In this groundbreaking treatise, one of tech’s boldest thinkers and his longtime deputy offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition. Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska argue that in order for the West to retain its 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. Governmen , in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that have propelled Silicon Valley’s success.

Above all, 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.

© Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W.Zamiska 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025