The Cybernetic Web – The Scholar's Stage

ALEXANDER KARP AND NICHOLAS ZAMISKA’S The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West may not be the worst book I have read this year, but it is by far the most disappointing. Karp is the rare CEO more famous for his intellect than his entrepreneurship. The overlap between the students of Jürgen Habermas and captains of industry is small. Among the technology brethren, Karp is regularly portrayed as a latter-day philosopher king. Karp leans into this image. I do not begrudge him this—founders must sell both themselves and their companies, and a company like Palantir is easier to sell when its founder is wreathed in mystique.

There are some downsides to mystique. If people believe you are some philosophic savant, they expect you to write a book with real intellectual heft. An important book. The sort that teaches men how to merge principle with practice. The sort of book that might be remembered.

I often draw a distinction between the political elites of Washington DC and the industrial elites of Silicon Valley with a joke: in San Francisco reading books, and talking about what you have read, is a matter of high prestige. Not so in Washington DC. In Washington people never read books—they just write them.

To write a book, of course, one must read a good few. But the distinction I drive at is quite real. In Washington, the man of ideas is a wonk. The wonk is not a generalist. The ideal wonk knows more about his or her chosen topic than you ever will. She can comment on every line of a select arms limitation treaty, recite all Chinese human rights violations that occurred in the year 2023, or explain to you the exact implications of the new residential clean energy tax credit—but never all at once.

Category Archives: The Cybernetic Web

Book Notes: The Technological Republic (2025)

The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite

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