Palantir's Manifesto with June and Caleb from KTC

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 June https://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 https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv 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: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 3:18Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron. I have lost the plot.

• 3:35Ed Zitron?

  I've lost the plot. Anyway, we have bagged. 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 two? 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 Palantir.

• 4:07Speaker 07

  Radical AI centrist, doesn't want data centers built, but really loves talking to a chat GPT about all of his plans.

• 4:15Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 4:39Speaker 07

  Still don't know. So true.

• 4:40Ed Zitron?

  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 and some time. I mean, it's just Oracle, actually, now that I say that.

• 4:53Speaker 07

  My understanding is that it's like an app layered on top of like databases, essentially, is like what it is for different companies. Yeah, yeah.

• 5:01Ed Zitron?

  It's just, it's just Oracle. I was gonna say evil Oracle, but I think that that's Oracle.

• 5:07Ed Zitron?

  That's just Oracle. I mean, their first client was the CIA.

• 5:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, first client of Oracle was CIA. We love it.

• 5:14Speaker 07

  It's very funny. Back in, Peter Thiel did a Reddit AMA like 10 years ago, and he called the CIA a front for Palantir in that. I thought it was very funny. Come on, dude. I hate these people. They are like, they're, they're stunting on all of us all the time. They think they can just like do this shit. I mean, obviously, they love it. It was like, come on.

• 5:36Ed Zitron?

  Literally stunting in the, to the extent that they're doing stuff with confidence that they shouldn't have.

• 5:41Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 5:41Ed Zitron?

  Cause 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 gonna 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, like Donald Trump.

• 6:06Speaker 07

  22 points? That's a lot of, that's a long manifesto. The 22nd, the 23rd point that he only sent to a couple people. If some of you are cool, don't come to school tomorrow.

• 6:18Ed Zitron?

  I thought point fourteen would be a little more racist, though. American power. Let's actually go through these, shall we?

• 6:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, please.

• 6:25Ed Zitron?

  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 do 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?

• 6:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I think it's really, just for context here, I've been

• 6:51Speaker 07

  kind of racking my brain for the first blog that we're doing over on our Kill the Computer news 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, 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. You know, there's probably some cynicism to, because he's obviously is, you know, his whole business is making money off the federal government in some ways, but he does believe every, all twenty two points are sincere. I mean, I think specifically this point fourteen two, especially like he does believe these things.

• 7:34Speaker 07

  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 or by terrorists, but Palestinians, they just, you know, they died. Who knows?

• 8:00Ed Zitron?

  This bomb involved killing.

• 8:01Speaker 07

  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, this does have to be this, like, a progressive Democrat that since October seventh. Really? He's kind of, yes, absolutely. He's, you know, he voted against Trump and he fought with Peter Thiel about his support of Trump. That was as recently as like twenty twenty four. Seriously? Yeah, it was actually, it was October seventh that really kind of, and then some like anti woke stuff. I still think that he does believe in. Some of these things, he's just kind of going into like, I don't know, midlife crisis, divorced dad, like, I don't know what I believe anymore mode, sort of. Top burnout type thing, yeah.

• 8:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I, he's, every interview I watch with him, I feel like if I had his number, I'd be like, hey, man, call me.

• 8:55Ed Zitron?

  Doing all right, man? Yeah, a little too much coffee this morning. A little too much espresso. It makes you, it makes your face itch and makes you feel a little crazy, a little too much espresso, mate. Because you see a guy like this bouncing around on stage and it's like, how miserable, how miserable, 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.

• 9:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:26Ed Zitron?

  Like, one guy.

• 9:28Speaker 07

  Outside of themselves, too, because they're all friends with each other, of course, they all talk to each other.

• 9:33Ed Zitron?

  They don't fucking, they don't care about each other. No one's doing a brother check in.

• 9:38Speaker 07

  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-christ conference to see how you're doing.

• 9:48Speaker 07

  Sorry, are you all right?

• 9:50Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, you're doing okay. You seem a little, you seem a little off the rails. Sorry, I didn't call you back. I was just writing a 62,000 words screed about why woman must change.

• 10:02Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 10:18Speaker 07

  Just one more quick point.

• 10:19Ed Zitron?

  Please, please, please.

• 10:23Speaker 07

  His dissertation, I mean, this is all part and parcel of his entire worldview. He genuinely believes, so even when he was still anti-Trump, he would say.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  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 the great social glue for a nation state.

• 10:45Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's very strange for like, you know, this supposedly progressive guy who I genuinely do believe, think he does economically want better things possible when you consider like the 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.

• 11:08Ed Zitron?

  It's also, I don't mean to attack people's physical ability, but like, am I meant to be scared of you, mate? Right, it's, I don't know, just like.

• 11:17Speaker 07

  It looks like his bone will snap if you just like blow at him.

• 11:20Ed Zitron?

  Also, he seems sickly.

• 11:24Ed Zitron?

  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 hell, get an editor, mate. The object has changed our lives. It may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

• 11:42Ed Zitron?

  What?

• 11:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I can.

• 11:44Ed Zitron?

  Like, I think, I, 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 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.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  Right. 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.

• 12:12Ed Zitron?

  Ooh.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Really good.

• 12:14Ed Zitron?

  Mind masters, thought to the death.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  It was, it was very, very fun to listen to.

• 12:19Ed Zitron?

  Two geniuses.

• 12:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, two geniuses last night.

• 12:22Ed Zitron?

  Einstein and Dostoevsky.

• 12:26Speaker 05

  Awesome. But.

• 12:28Speaker 07

  In that he kind of expounds on this idea and his thing is basically, and I 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, you know, 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 like the tradition that he came up intellectually, he goes to study under Habermas, a German philosopher that's connected to the Frankfurt School. He understands these kind of like social theories and frameworks that he kind

• 13:12Speaker 07

  of appropriates a little bit. And Habermas' 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 Habermas also would say, early technology takes 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.

• 13:48Ed Zitron?

  But I'm just gonna 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 don't 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 and argumentative. But a white guy, well, you're just, it's the marketplace of ideas. Fucking-

• 14:29Speaker 07

  He just wants to be a great man. He's, it's just- Well, Habermas' father was a, Habermas' father was- Advisor to the Nazi party and he himself was Hitler Youth.

• 14:38Ed Zitron?

  Now, he wasn't. Oh, wait, and Alex Karp, you said, studied under him?

• 14:42Speaker 07

  Well, so he tried to. He goes, yeah, it's actually very funny. Uh, Maura Weigl, uh, who founded Logic Magazine, I believe is what it's called, and she's a very brilliant writer. She kind of like dissected his, his whole career. Because for a lot of, a long time, a lot of people thought, oh, he studied her under Habermas. 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, um, he, uh, about aggression, a bunch of other things too, that it's very jargon-y, literally. And Habermas said explicitly to him, he faxed him a three-page takedown of his, one of his first drafts of his dissertation that said,

• 15:24Speaker 07

  "You are not like interesting enough to ever be taken seriously on this. You won't even be able to compete with like literary critics." And it was so bad that Habermas said, "I will not mentor you for your dissertation." And that's how they had their fallout. Yes, Alex Karp.

• 15:41Ed Zitron?

  And that is so funny. Yeah, that's so good. Holy shit.

• 15:46Speaker 07

  And this definitely is a sticking point for him. He, he did eulogize, I was died recently, and he did talk about that, how the, 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.

• 16:06Ed Zitron?

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

• 16:18Speaker 07

  Didn't make the team, but he did, you know, go to the Bulls or, or Brian Wilson got the F in music class, but wrote Pet Sounds. He instead decided to make like Hitler sales.

• 16:27Ed Zitron?

  Just a very specific period of time as well. Geno Smith said, they wrote me off. I didn't write back. Let's not think of what that.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  Eighteen months.

• 16:38Ed Zitron?

  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 civil, a culture or 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. Moment I hear the word security, I'm like, oh, you don't mean social services, do you?

• 17:01Speaker 07

  No, no, 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, 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, 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 militar, 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.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm not trying to like, well, actually, June, a lot of people will say techno fascism and like, if you were to like, I don't know, use Umberto Eco's, you are fascism framework for this, it would check boxes for sure. I would just say that like, maybe the way, I think the better way to frame this is for Alex Carps thinking is like a Cold War style liberal.

• 18:06Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 18:07Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 18:08Ed Zitron?

  You expand on that. So, yeah, go on. I think I might know what you mean, but.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  Because he's essentially saying he, we, the, the tech industry needs to become the new defense sector and we have great enemies like China. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that there is very serious concerns. 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, it's I just think that if you're 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 is all.

• 18:38Speaker 07

  I mean, I think you're right. I think it's in this as well. Later on, he talks about explicitly how the previous like 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.

• 18:55Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 19:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:13Ed Zitron?

  Just like, ah, you know, something's not working, but this other thing that I make. What do you think? What the fuck? That one is just like, yeah, we that one is built to be in that. It reminds me of every college philosophy student I've ever made where 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 fucking thing. What do you mean, soft power? Because if the argument was, see, I'm falling into the trap here. If the argument was that decorum alone doesn't work. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. If you if your thing is just someone will obey the rules always. Yeah, Trump has proven that isn't the case. So just ignore it. 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

• 19:57Ed Zitron?

  sales force. Like, that's 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.

• 20:07Speaker 07

  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 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, oh, I mean, ethics, I don't know about that. Like, who cares? We shouldn't care about that. That's, that's weak thinking. That's soft thinking. So I think I think that's like a part of it there, too. But it's but it's also like, no one knows what this is. Like, no one, no one knows this. This isn't.

• 20:53Speaker 07

  I think on a level, they're sort of drinking their own Kool-Aid in a sense 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 there, I mean, he's trying to huff, he's trying to get everyone to huff his own glue at the same time together.

• 21:16Ed Zitron?

  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, and we do know how that's going, poorly. Badly, badly enough that Andrew had to pull out of Ukraine, sorry, I mean, they were kicked out. And also, yeah, numerous government agencies, also they lose billions of dollars, but that's cool, I guess. It's just like, it's like, it's not, it's not a question whether AI weapons, yeah, they're being built already, that happened already.

• 21:59Ed Zitron?

  And it's nothing to do with generative AI. It's nothing to do with large language models. If you had a 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.

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• 25:22Ed Zitron?

  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. Yeah. That's what taxes do.

• 25:47Speaker 07

  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 it 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, 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 were all in the IDF. It's like, that's sort of, I think, the buy-in that he wants the country to have.

• 26:32Speaker 07

  This was the point, I think a lot of this was really bad when I was first reading this, but I got to point six and I was like, okay, a palantir is sort of like, they should be viewed as an enemy of of modern society. They, they, they want us to go to like a wartime economy. They want us to like move towards this idea that every like wartime is normal and it should be good because it benefits their bottom line.

• 26:53Ed Zitron?

  And that's the thing, I've read a decent amount of people, heard a decent amount of people that are saying that Silicon Valley is trying to jump into defense because they're running out of shit to sell.

• 27:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:03Ed Zitron?

  Google just signed a deal with, I think, some part, I think there's, there's some part of the government, maybe I need to look if it's CBP or whatever, but like they just signed a secretive deal and 500 people signed a petition.

• 27:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, oh, I saw that. They were like, um, we're not in the business of surveillance. And it's like, bitch, what do you think this is?

• 27:25Ed Zitron?

  Other than Google Max. Other than every Google ad product.

• 27:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, they're fine with that surveillance, but this surveillance.

• 27:35Ed Zitron?

  Number seven's a classic. If a US 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. 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.

• 28:14Speaker 07

  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.

• 28:20Ed Zitron?

  Public, number eight, public servants need to, need not be our priests, any business that compensates its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. All right, what do you mean?

• 28:34Speaker 07

  My, okay, 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, this is going to be hard, actual, real work, like, no more sitting around on bouncy balls anymore. No, no bouncing on those bouncy balls in the office anymore. This is, like, this is what you do to get paid decently. It's like, basically, what he's, I think, 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, 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.

• 29:16Ed Zitron?

  But I think he might also be saying that public servants are underpaid, which I kind of agree with.

• 29:21Speaker 07

  See, I think he's.

• 29:22Ed Zitron?

  As long as you're not in Congress and have stocks, in which case you're overcompensated.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  I think he's sort of low-key shitting on the government as a whole here.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  He's doing that, and he's also targeting academia. He talks about, he has, since, like, the, I think, his, like, schism from a lot of things comes from, like, the campus protests, um, post-October 7th.

• 29:44Speaker 07

  Incredible.

• 29:45Speaker 05

  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, um, you know, this a lot to the, you know, a bunch of farm animal sounds from the crowd because they're repurposed it live.

• 30:00Speaker 05

  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.

• 30:12Ed Zitron?

  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's he hates woke college campuses or whatever.

• 30:24Speaker 07

  I I knew he was like sort of nominally pro Israel. I mean, they've Palantir's worked with Israel for since 2014. So I knew that.

• 30:31Ed Zitron?

  Extreme Zionist.

• 30:32Speaker 07

  I 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.

• 30:46Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. I I support Irish Zionism from Connor O'Malley.

• 30:51Speaker 07

  I started, uh, don't worry. I started doing my own blanket tours a couple of weeks ago. Don't worry.

• 30:56Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so moving on. Number nine. Number nine. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life.

• 31:07Speaker 07

  Aww.

• 31:08Ed Zitron?

  The eradication of any space for forgiveness and jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche. May leave us with the cast 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.

• 31:29Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 31:30Ed Zitron?

  From drones. It's the same guy.

• 31:32Speaker 07

  It's it's just so hard. It's so hard with cancel culture, you know?

• 31:36Ed Zitron?

  What the fuck is it with these big fucking tough guys who go like, I'm so fucking tough. I'm so strong and big and tough. Don't hurt my feelings. Don't be mean to me, okay? Have some forgiveness, you piece of fucking shit.

• 31:52Speaker 07

  You know, it's really hard on us when we press the button that kills 180 schoolchildren. Have you thought about us? Have you really? Have you thought about that? When you criticize us for doing that, how that makes us feel?

• 32:04Ed Zitron?

  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 noxious 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.

• 32:32Speaker 07

  It drives me crazy how all of these people are simultaneously tough guys, but the whiniest

• 32:38Ed Zitron?

  biggest piss babies.

• 32:40Speaker 07

  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 sudden, right wingers whine a lot. And it's like, motherfucker, they've always been like this. Like, this is their, their, their operating, like, this is how they operate. This is what they do. They, they whine, they whine until they get what they want. And then they whine about getting what they want.

• 33:00Ed Zitron?

  I forget what's the, I think it's Caleb Pitts, maybe. He has a great standup comedy thing where he's walking around, he's a bald guy, and he has I eat shit tattooed on his head. And he looks at the camera and goes, guess who just got kicked out of a cafe for being white?

• 33:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, I love it.

• 33:17Ed Zitron?

  That every day. Yeah, I think that this one and into the next point too are kind of connected in that kind of harbor my 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 essential to his like core ideological belief. Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 07

  It's, 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.

• 33:55Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 34:13Ed Zitron?

  Well, I mean, I give him that one, but also I'm not sure he realizes the actual problem.

• 34:20Speaker 07

  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 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, the concept of if you care so much about other people, you will shrink the majority's white, like rights essentially.

• 35:05Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 35:17Speaker 07

  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, you know, I think Caleb, you're a hundred percent 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, that's missing the forest for the trees for them is like what they're thinking.

• 35:48Ed Zitron?

  11, point 11 is our society has grown too eager to hasten and is often gleeful at the demise of its enemies.

• 35:55Speaker 07

  Exactly. All of these are tied, yeah.

• 35:57Ed Zitron?

  The sanction of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. Well, have you talked to your customers about this? Have you, 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 enemies suffering. He laughs, he takes glee in the suffering of those he disagrees with.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  I think the term that he used, and I may be wrong, but no one's gonna listen to this to correct me anyway. He said something along the lines of like, America should take pride when it uses force because we're a just nation or something.

• 36:39Speaker 07

  Oh my god.

• 36:40Speaker 05

  Jesus Christ.

• 36:42Ed Zitron?

  I feel like that word pride, probably not something that come out of his mouth.

• 36:49Speaker 07

  It's also just wild, especially this year, as recent as of like three months ago. And I, and I think the reason for this is he doesn't view these people like as enemies, even though, you know, the way that ICE, I'm talking about the way that ICE uses Palantir to like find, find people to deport scans regions and, 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 aura Gen Z brain rot edits about, about deport.

• 37:27Ed Zitron?

  Which is so embarrassing.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  I am, I'm not saying I agree.

• 37:30Speaker 07

  But I, I think to finish this thought, they don't see that as like demise of enemies. There, that is not what I think they think, but go on, sorry. Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're, you're totally fine. I must think I agree with Carp, but he specifically about ICE, his point was, you know, if you are somebody who's concerned with this, you would want Palantir to succeed because then that means we only deport people who deserve it, who have done crimes. I mean,

• 37:54Speaker 07

  Fucking god.

• 37:55Speaker 05

  So again, I, I'm just saying, I'm not saying I agree with, but what I am saying is it matters because he does believe he's high on his own supply.

• 38:01Speaker 07

  Yeah. No, I think you're so right. I, I always go back and forth on what, whether these tech people truly believe the things that they say. I, 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.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  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, on Elon when he's talking about how like empathy is a bug or something like that.

• 38:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  I'm not a psychologist and I'm not even frankly that smart, but um, 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.

• 38:46Speaker 07

  Empathy for mankind, but not on the individual and it's a societal bug, right? Yeah, it's a weakness, a sign of weakness. Yes, correct, because because he can't, he can't negotiate with or engage with with empathy like a person who hasn't experienced abuse from a terrible father could, right?

• 39:02Ed Zitron?

  I don't know. I, 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 racism. 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 wokest.

• 39:31Speaker 07

  Obama.

• 39:32Ed Zitron?

  He'd be, well, I mean, I said Democrat. Uh, ooh, we're getting political, aren't we?

• 39:40Speaker 07

  Very political episode.

• 39:42Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, there we go. No, 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.

• 39:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:51Ed Zitron?

  He was an epic bacon science guy and he's, he's now just like, he sits online with too much, maybe like, I will, yes, yes, horse idiot 52, I agree. It is time for the grid cleansing. 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, who gives a fuck what you think? You make evil Salesforce. Like, so, okay, number 12.

• 40:24Speaker 07

  This is maybe a better question for the end, but I, 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 palanquin stage.

• 40:36Ed Zitron?

  From the, I can actually tell you. So from a client perspective, this is some shit that you're sent at five in the morning on a Sunday or a Saturday. Like a Sunday morning, you get this and the client's like, I'm gonna put this up on Monday.

• 40:50Ed Zitron?

  I'll put this, I'll put that. So wait, say 8/18, this is 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 a fuck it, an email Friday at like 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM and he's at, he's like with his wife and kids, trying to eat dinner. He's like, I'm gonna post this tomorrow. I'm gonna post this. It was posted at 11:45 a.m.

• 41:15Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 41:16Ed Zitron?

  So, so, okay, so you're talking like, uh, what's that, 8:45 a.m. Eastern Pacific? Anyway, putting all that aside, so this was just, I'm gonna 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.

• 41:38Ed Zitron?

  I need to post this now. Post it tomorrow. And it was probably the thought was, okay, this is going 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 Palantir 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.

• 42:08Speaker 07

  Well, isn't this, isn't this just a summary of the main points of Alex Karp's book? That came out like a year ago? Like this is like, yeah, this is a summary. This is a summary of, of one of his books, essentially all the.

• 42:20Ed Zitron?

  I didn't realize he had a fucking book.

• 42:22Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:22Ed Zitron?

  He did. He co-wrote. Hard power, soft belief, enough about, um, it's, um.

• 42:29Speaker 07

  Do you know who that guy is, Caleb? Have you ever looked into the Nicholas Zeminska? Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's the, he's that like a legal counsel.

• 42:36Ed Zitron?

  He's their lawyer.

• 42:37Speaker 07

  Oh, damn.

• 42:39Ed Zitron?

  He's the fucking lawyer. Honestly, if I was, 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. It's just, 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, com, 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.

• 43:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:15Ed Zitron?

  No, it's not. What are you talking about? What do you mean? Uh, the chatbot. Because if we're talking about AI powered databases, if we're talking about like databases of people pre-crime and that, we have fucking compass since the eighties. We have had algorithms for pre-crime since the eighties. We have had the fucking promise software was the underlying thing back doors to Israel, like it's a crazy story. Um, you should look at the promise software.

• 43:42Speaker 05

  Don't do it. It'll ruin your life.

• 43:43Ed Zitron?

  It will ruin your life.

• 43:44Speaker 07

  I have my, I have a hobby for the rest of my day.

• 43:48Ed Zitron?

  It'll fuck you up big time. Um, big up to my girlfriend for telling me on that one. Um, 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, 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, what's it deterring? Like, is the idea that we'll be able to generate more nudes? Like, but the Chinese already have.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  Develop undetectable deep fakes of Kim Jong. What are we doing? Like, what's the point of this?

• 44:38Ed Zitron?

  We'll be able to generate epic bacon memes of our adversaries.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  I love that he wrote this, um, timing wise, it was not that far after when you remember, you guys remember this? This is a really small blip on the radar, but it's just 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?

• 45:00Speaker 07

  No, I missed that. Oh my god.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  The first thing I did on there, I was like, I asked it, what kind of rocks are the most nutritious to eat? Smiley face. And it gave me a list of rocks. What are you talking about? The atomic age of AI. Come on.

• 45:13Speaker 07

  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, keep shoveling it over. Keep shoveling it.

• 45:28Ed Zitron?

  Price high.

• 45:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, like we need that. Yeah. Keep, yeah.

• 45:31Ed Zitron?

  But this next point is the funniest. No other country in the history of the world has advanced 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.

• 45:51Speaker 07

  God damn dude. I guess if you're maybe talking about Russia currently, maybe like if that's the only other country in the world, sure.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  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?

• 46:08Speaker 07

  Definitely not.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  It just, that kind of gives away the game a little bit.

• 46:11Ed Zitron?

  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. Look into the Portland Police Department. Oh, I don't know. Look at the current police department of pretty much every city.

• 46:32Speaker 07

  And I mean, not even 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 take like, taking away monuments in some cases, erasing it from school systems. And like, I don't think it's true. Like, like, I don't, yeah, it's just not necessarily true. Like, we are, we are still, a lot of people love to be like, wow, like, we like, whenever, 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 roofs. False, first of all. Second of all, you, it was illegal. You could not gay marry in this country until 10 years ago. It's like,

• 47:14Speaker 07

  yeah, like, 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.

• 47:23Ed Zitron?

  We have a police force arresting people of color arbitrarily.

• 47:26Speaker 07

  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 he's trying to convince us of.

• 47:36Ed Zitron?

  Things, but we also seem to be trying to undo those. Anyway, don't worry. We've got another really smart boy coming up.

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• 50:58Ed Zitron?

  Number 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten, or perhaps taken for granted, that 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? At least three generations, billions of people and their children and now grandchildren have never known a world war.

• 51:18Speaker 07

  Literally. Those are the only wars that have happened in the last 100 years? There's like a, 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-

• 51:34Ed Zitron?

  Read the Jakarta method, that's all I have to say.

• 51:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, 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 war for us. It's not war on our territories, it's not war on our ground. But it is war, it is devastation, it is terrorism across the globe.

• 51:51Ed Zitron?

  So it's perpetual. There's been war everywhere.

• 51:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 51:55Ed Zitron?

  If you're a fucking ignorant monster, if you want to pretend that like, America has been in a war the whole time is-

• 52:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 52:02Ed Zitron?

  Anyway, here's another great point-

• 52:03Speaker 07

  And there's also different countries also doing wars, like, I don't know, like, there is not long peace.

• 52:08Ed Zitron?

  Ah, it don't matter none, you know? What's a little while is over there? And, uh, 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 threaten 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.

• 52:39Speaker 07

  I like this idea that if Japan could have a military, their, their problems, their, they're like, everything that's going wrong in Japan right now would be fine.

• 52:48Ed Zitron?

  Well, yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 07

  It's a, it's a-

• 52:50Speaker 05

  Counterbalance to China is what he's getting at.

• 52:52Speaker 07

  I do, 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, you know, build up military. What, what are they gonna, like, how is that gonna change the current situation? I don't, I, I think it's just like, the, the word overcorrection to it, I think is very telling. It's like, okay, you don't really have, it's interesting that he became from a prog- 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,

• 53:35Speaker 07

  I feel like everyone knows why they cannot have militaries.

• 53:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, what happened? Why, why that happen, Alex?

• 53:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, what happened in the 40s?

• 53:43Speaker 05

  Well, I can't speak to, to Japan despite, you know, the obvious kind of surface level, that's a counterbalance to China thing. Uh, in his, you know, his history and I don't know if the, I haven't finished the book yet, I'm still reading it, but um, in his life, he did go to Germany in, I think he moved for, for school in those, the, the eighties, um, or early nineties when he was studying there. And a lot of his, his politics and his, the things that he believes in are a sort of direct confrontation of like post-war Germany and the things that he saw in that society. It's very interesting and just, I think that he saw, he, he really, and this is a haramist thing too, of like,

• 54:23Speaker 05

  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 um, it's still very kind of fucking crazy to, to think about this, and especially when you think about how openly he engages with fascist and Nazi ideals, you know?

• 54:59Speaker 05

  Again, from the point of argument as a reasoning tool, but still it's like hmm.

• 55:04Speaker 07

  I mean, I think we're gonna 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 they're like, there's like this shame, like where this, like you cannot have shame for anything you ever do. You cannot be introspective, like Mark Andreessen. He was talking about like, oh, you know, it's like, it's so, it's, it's, 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?

• 55:41Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's, I don't, isn't that Roger Stone thing as well? Like never apologize, never like that. Yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 07

  Oh, my God. Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 05

  No, explicitly it is.

• 55:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, it probably came from him, to be honest.

• 55:51Ed Zitron?

  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 created is essentially dismissed or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. That would suggest he's created something.

• 56:19Speaker 05

  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?

• 56:29Ed Zitron?

  Cause he made, he was epic and based and said, I will buy this. And then when he tried to pull it out, they were like, no, you agreed to buy this fucking website shit. Give us the money, you moron.

• 56:41Speaker 05

  Doctor Karp, excuse me?

• 56:42Ed Zitron?

  Also, let's talk about some of the things that Elon Musk has talked about. Robots doesn't exist. Robo taxis doesn't exist. Tesla Roadster with rockets on it doesn't exist.

• 56:56Ed Zitron?

  Just like, the reason people snicker on Jira Elon Musk is he says something will happen and then it doesn't. And then he's like, well, it's, it's delayed until the year of the base tiger.

• 57:10Ed Zitron?

  It'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.

• 57:16Speaker 07

  My god.

• 57:17Ed Zitron?

  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 where 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 Hanwha executives who could be slotted in and we would never know the difference

• 58:02Ed Zitron?

  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 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 a so? Well, they actually have a social strategy. It's very funny and they love to post like LGBTQ awareness. Just really fucking crazy.

• 58:26Speaker 07

  I love when they're like, we're the greatest company for gay people out there. We're rated number one.

• 58:31Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, 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. And if you need to kill someone, call RTX. We will blow them up big time. What's it gonna cost? More than you think and more than we say.

• 58:49Speaker 07

  It's, it's been really interesting, Palantir especially in the like, in the last year, sort of make this bigger presence of themselves. With this manifesto and Alex Karp 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're purposefully like putting themselves in the limelight and getting all of, like all of this attention and, and hate. It's attention economy. It's the attention economy. Yeah.

• 59:16Speaker 05

  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 a bit. And quietly, I would say, uh, smartly, just building relationships with various governments and alphabet agencies around the world and such. And kind of kept to himself. And I've, 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. Um, I, I don't know what it is. I'm still kind of trying to, to.

• 59:51Ed Zitron?

  I can explain. He saw all the attention that Elon Musk got and the Peter Thiel's got by saying like, yeah, the Antichrist, right? Or like, uh, what if we ban woman? Like whatever they're saying. And he was like, yeah, cool. I want to do this. Like, I want to be popular too. And also now's the time, because all these people want to be statesmen. SBF, Sam Bank, Mr. Bankman Freed. 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 seeing it with Elon, except I say this with no respect to government officials. He lacks the decorum. He lacks the grace. He, he just, 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.

• 1:00:32Ed Zitron?

  This is such a really small thing, but go and find the picture from the dinner with Trump and look at Elon Musk's shoes. And look at the break.

• 1:00:41Speaker 05

  I mean, he wore a shirt backwards when he was doing his little X jump or whatever. Remember that?

• 1:00:45Ed Zitron?

  But it's just like, go and look at their shoes. Look, I'm not even being the menswear guy here. Look at the break on their pants. It's really uneven. This is something that you can solve when you have a billion dollars. You go to Savile 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 in any city, everywhere. You have enough money. You could probably just have them fly. Like they could do one in a day. 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, racism, blah, blah.

• 1:01:27Ed Zitron?

  Pax Americana, manifest destiny. I've learned these terms yesterday from Wikipedia and I forgot what they mean. And 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. Um, oh, here we go. Here we go. Point seventeen. 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 experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

• 1:02:07Speaker 07

  Surveillance state, yay.

• 1:02:09Ed Zitron?

  Yay. And also. Also, um, this is a person that does not believe that, uh, social services are part of that. But the violent crime in San Francisco comes from Ronald Reagan emptying the fucking homeless people, people that became homeless, I should say, from mental asylums that he closed. Watch Deadly Class, great show.

• 1:02:29Speaker 07

  Have you, have you ever watched, uh, The Southland Tales?

• 1:02:31Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yes, of course.

• 1:02:32Speaker 07

  Do you, do you remember, like, throughout the movie, there's just will be points where, where some stuff, 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.

• 1:02:45Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 1:02:45Speaker 07

  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 Southland Tales.

• 1:02:52Ed Zitron?

  That movie, uh, Sarah Michelle Gellar is in it as a porn star. And the one thing I remember is she has, is in a movie called Cock Chuggers 2 Cock Chuggin'. To be clear, Sarah Michelle Gellar, amazing actress, but just like fucking hilarious. Everyone should watch Southland Tales, by the way. It is a insane movie.

• 1:03:09Speaker 07

  In, panned at the time, but I think especially these days, it is very prescient, I think, very, uh, you'll be like, goddamn, people didn't like this back in the day. It's very, it's a very camp.

• 1:03:18Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, I can get why people didn't like it. It is insane. It is.

• 1:03:22Speaker 07

  It is insane.

• 1:03:23Ed Zitron?

  Scene between scene, you're like, what, what is happening? Anyway, if only his worldview was that coherent. Cause, cause what he believe 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. Wonder how he feels about prisons, by the way. No, 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 transience because they have mental health issues caused by the fact they don't have a place to sleep or a place to go to the bathroom other than their trousers.

• 1:04:05Ed Zitron?

  And these people are suffering and they're hurting and the way that people deal with them is to hurt them more versus

• 1:04:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Ed Zitron?

  And oh, it costs a lot of money. Yeah, it does to pull someone out of hell. And if you are someone listening to this, by the way, who has a view of homeless people, it's like, oh, they need to be moved away. You're a fucking asshole and a loser and a coward. Homeless people are victims of society. They are, 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. Really pisses me off.

• 1:04:35Speaker 07

  Caleb, what were you gonna say? Oh, sorry.

• 1:04:36Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 1:04:52Speaker 07

  Of course they will.

• 1:04:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I think that he does believe, because again, he, he's over the years described himself as various times, you know, a so, 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. This, I alone can improve these problems. Like Boris Balkan of the ninth gate.

• 1:05:21Ed Zitron?

  I alone am worthy, but let's move on.

• 1:05:23Speaker 07

  Bitcoin will fix this.

• 1:05:24Ed Zitron?

  All right, well, let's go to 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 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 Republicans 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. Well, this is like,

• 1:06:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is, uh, don't look at the Epstein files.

• 1:06:09Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Speaker 05

  That's a long, long way to say to not do that.

• 1:06:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, don't look at the Epstein files. Don't look at whether Reid Hoffman, 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.

• 1:06:24Speaker 07

  I just want to say really quick, sorry, really quick, just that, like, it's so funny to say this, but also be like, if you're in the, uh, anti-Zora and Mamdani, he's like, Zora and Mamdani, none of this, uh, but none of the things you 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.

• 1:06:48Ed Zitron?

  Are you suggesting a conservative leader is a hypocrite?

• 1:06:51Speaker 07

  Um, yeah, are hypocrite much? Hypocrite much? It's just, it's just, it just drives me crazy how all of this, none of, none of these people, like, I think he does believe this stuff, but he's just so, uh, he is not self-aware in any capacity to where it's like, he, he, he says things that can directly contradict some of this manifesto.

• 1:07:09Ed Zitron?

  Well, 19, "The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all." So that's just about racism. That's just about saying the arslah. That's like, like, it's real, like this, he's gonna frame this as, oh, it's a philosophical debate, but it's like, no, it's, um, it's not. It's actually, it's actually just someone said the arslah and he wants to protect them. But we gotta keep, we, we've let this one go a little long, so we're gonna 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

• 1:07:52Ed Zitron?

  open intellectual movement than many within it would claim." I would say that there are definitely, um, ways in which religion is pushed out. I don't think those are the ones he's talking about, though.

• 1:08:03Speaker 07

  I I've found it so fascinating in the 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 like outwardly embraced religion as this new thing that everyone needs to, like, you're you're like a deeper person for for re-embracing religion, you know, like Peter Thiel, all of these people. I like, I 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 preclivity to dogma baked in, right?

• 1:08:45Speaker 07

  Absolutely. It's it's super beneficial for them. You, if, like, I mean, Russell Brand, you, uh, sexual assault, you, you, you pick up a Bible, everyone, you get a lot of all sorts of money. The Pierce Morgan thing was so funny, by the way. Oh, my God. Just flipping through the Bible. Two minutes.

• 1:09:03Ed Zitron?

  Oh, my God. So I think it's this one. I think I can't, I can't, I can't find the, 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, I, I, is it, is it, is it Isaiah, is it, is it Isaiah, is it, 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,

• 1:09:46Ed Zitron?

  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 never, it's, it's something for them, not for you. And the moment it becomes something outward is when I get very fucking suspicious.

• 1:10:07Speaker 07

  Absolutely. All right. If you guys know this, you know, guys, both of I go to church every Sunday, right?

• 1:10:12Ed Zitron?

  That's cool.

• 1:10:13Speaker 07

  Do you really?

• 1:10:14Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, what kind of church?

• 1:10:16Ed Zitron?

  I didn't know that. Shit.

• 1:10:17Speaker 07

  I I have been going to a

• 1:10:17Ed Zitron?

  Universalist Unitarian Church. So it's like fake church.

• 1:10:20Speaker 07

  But yeah.

• 1:10:21Ed Zitron?

  There's nothing fake about it. It's what your faith is. No, I'm, I'm, I am like agnostic and I, I have some spiritual, I think my writing is quite spiritual, the process, but it's like nothing without God or anything. I think people are dismissive of religion in some ways, but this is referring to school protests. Exactly. This is just, 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. Twenty-one. Some cultures have produced vital advances. Others remain dysfunctional and regressive.

• 1:10:55Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 1:10:55Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 1:11:11Speaker 07

  My.

• 1:11:11Ed Zitron?

  What are you fucking talk?

• 1:11:13Speaker 07

  My god.

• 1:11:14Ed Zitron?

  I assume he means Islam. Like, I just, I assume he's referring, like, it's just like.

• 1:11:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's like those, the, those brown countries, you go a little south, the, the darker than brown, the black countries that there, is there really any wonders there? There's no wonders there.

• 1:11:29Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 1:11:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Ed Zitron?

  And smile, smile on their face. What do you mean by that? And make them fucking say it.

• 1:11:45Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, it's so obviously like rooted in that, like, oh, the West, the Western values. It's like, yeah.

• 1:11:52Ed Zitron?

  All right. Final one. Twenty-two. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow 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!

• 1:12:11Speaker 07

  Racism, we need transphobia, we need homophobia.

• 1:12:14Ed Zitron?

  We need more bigotry. That's the only way we'll be multicultural.

• 1:12:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. No, this, yet again, is sort of like cancel culture bullshit. This, this is like suicidal empathy because like, oh, what? Like if we're tolerant of everyone, like what, like we lose so much, the society, that'll lead to societal decline.

• 1:12:30Ed Zitron?

  If we're tolerant of everyone. What if someone's intolerant of me being intolerant? Fucking assholes.

• 1:12:37Speaker 07

  Oh, God.

• 1:12:38Ed Zitron?

  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, I would try and poison myself. I, I don't, I don't want to know what these people think. But I think that this kind of, 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 don't want, 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 oppressed enough, oppressed enough.

• 1:13:17Speaker 07

  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, it's like both of those things. It's, it's, it's sort of this like 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.

• 1:13:35Ed Zitron?

  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?

• 1:13:43Speaker 07

  You can find us at, uh, we do a show called Kill the Computer. You can find us at killthecomputer.com or just anywhere.

• 1:13:50Ed Zitron?

  Amazing website.

• 1:13:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, B, our, our community, our, our, 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.

• 1:14:13Ed Zitron?

  It's got games on it. Our phone has games on it.

• 1:14:15Speaker 07

  It's so sick. There's a leaderboard, like, yeah, it's fucking dope.

• 1:14:19Ed Zitron?

  Kill the computer rocks.

• 1:14:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a show about just, uh, like how, um, internet and culture and politics sort of intertwine and, and sort of manifest in, in the world that we live in essentially. So we talk about a lot of stuff, like we talked about today, we talk about, um, one of my favorite episodes that we did, uh, so a little, little bit ago was, uh, talking about the, the like death capitalist economy of like, uh,

• 1:14:45Ed Zitron?

  Oh, grief tech?

• 1:14:46Speaker 07

  Grief tech, yeah, where it's, it's like these, these tech companies, how they sort of prey on, on people grieving family members dying or, or like getting to end of life and, and providing these different services that will sort of create fake memories in some cases.

• 1:15:01Ed Zitron?

  They made a chat bot out of you.

• 1:15:02Speaker 05

  Your dead grandmother and they're gonna update the model and she'll start hallucinating and you can't afford it and blah, blah, blah.

• 1:15:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's very, yeah, no, we talk about all sorts of stuff like that. So please check us out.

• 1:15:14Ed Zitron?

  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 goddamned Zitron.

• 1:15:31Speaker 05

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot app to visit the Discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:16:40Speaker 04

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• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  What if you could make that stop? With LPL Financial, we remove the things holding you back and provide the services to help push you forward. If you're a financial advisor, what if you could have more freedom, but also more support? Ready to invest? What if you could have an advisor that really understood you? When it comes to your finances, your business, your future, at LPL Financial, we believe the only question should be, what if you could? Paid advertisement. Anna Kendrick is not a client of LPL Financial LLC and receives compensation to promote LPL. Investing involves risk, including potential loss.

• 1:17:41Speaker 04

  Principal LPL Financial LLC member FINRA, SIPC. Small businesses are the pulse of every community. They bring people together, create opportunities, and drive growth. That's why Chase for Business helps small business owners like you by offering personalized guidance and digital tools that can help your business grow. With our guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more at chase.com/business. Chase for Business, make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase and Company. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other.

• 1:18:26Speaker 04

  One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all.

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR. Fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free at O D O O dot com. That's Odoo dot com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.