Issue 1/Anti-Palantir Manifesto

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A response to Karp by Harry Halpin, philosopher and CEO of Nym. Published on nym.com, 23 April 2026. Reprinted in full.

Why we must fight Palantir

Because I get asked. A lot.

1. Programmers working on the Internet have a moral responsibility to the entire world, not a single country. The Internet has been designed since its inception as a universal system for the sharing of knowledge without censorship. The Internet is not the property of any one government or nation.
2. The Internet enables mass surveillance at a scale unimaginable to the Gestapo and the Cheka. Far too many programmers have wasted their lives building surveillance systems under the guise of Web advertising. Today, these web tracking systems are being used to monitor, control, and even kill humans by companies like Palantir that seek to combine state violence with corporate efficiency, and thus create a new form of technofascism.
3. Surveillance justified by external national security threats will be turned against citizens inside the nation-state. Mass surveillance was once the exclusive domain of the NSA, but today it has been privatized to corporations like Palantir that are unaccountable to any democratic process.
4. Everyone is a target. The "enemy within" continually expands until it encompasses the entire population of a nation regardless of their status and beliefs, justifying evermore paranoid and totalizing surveillance.
5. Surveillance can only be defeated by building software and hardware to defend ourselves. Meek calls for regulation or moralizing demands for human rights are useless in this era. Any rights must be enforced by the hard power of code.
6. We are ruled by a senile gerontocracy. Unlike the generations that fought in the world wars, most of our current rulers are degenerate pedophiles who would sacrifice the well-being of the youth and the entire planet due to their infantile desire for wealth and power.
7. The American Empire is unraveling. Once, the United States of America presided over a globe where it could enforce its rule via the status of the dollar as a global reserve currency and a network of equally global military bases.
8. In a real war, fantasies of total technological dominance always backfire. When a faceless drone kills a child's father, that child will one day take revenge regardless of the cost.
9. Oddly enough, proponents of fully automated warfare support a universal draft. Deep-down, these keyboard warriors know that their techno-fascist fantasies are a paper tiger when up against determined opponents that engage in asymmetric warfare.
10. The problem is not whether AI weapons will be built; we must hold responsible those who are building them.
11. Atomic war is on the horizon. As various states descend into wars over increasingly scarce natural resources, the possibility of tactical nuclear strikes has returned to the historical stage.
12. Our goal is a world of peace where every person can be empowered by the Internet. Modern war is the quintessential game of sending young people to the meat-grinder.
13. We should fight for the world we want, and build the tools needed by future generations. Pacifism would be suicidal in this period of global turbulence and resource wars, but real hard power lies in technology.
14. The State will not help us. The state is a dying pre-Internet institution that increasingly resembles nothing but a Ponzi scheme fueled by taxes and debt.
15. Centralized and opaque algorithms are a danger to free speech. Propaganda is the flip-side of surveillance.
16. Building new forms of social organization with each other is vital to survival.
17. Digital identity is the next step in their system of control. Within the next few years, access to the Internet will require biometric national identity cards, using the flimsy excuse of "protecting children."
18. Only when one can be anonymous is one truly free. The freedom to express oneself without censorship and surveillance is a vital precondition for both the autonomous use of reason and the democratic evolution of society.
19. America created the first global surveillance state, but it will not be the last. Too many have forgotten, or perhaps taken for granted, the revelations of Wikileaks and Snowden.
20. Culture wars are a psyop. The "Epstein class" virtue-signals about morality and the superiority of their civilization, all while trying to return to the rule of hereditary elites.
21. New forms of technology can reshape the world. Technology is not just a tool, but the world we live in and an extension of our cognitive capabilities.
22. Live free or die trying. We must bear eternal vigilance in the struggle against fascism, and the battlefield is technology. There is no middle ground: Technologists must choose whether to work for the enslavement of humanity or to create new spaces for freedom.

Note from Harry Halpin

These are my personal beliefs, not those of Nym. Yet as a philosopher that founded a tech startup working on anti-surveillance tech, I have a responsibility to respond to this manifesto of Palantir and its so-called "philosopher-CEO" Alex Karp. I studied philosophy under the French philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler, who tried to warn us of the rise of behavioral control and artificial stupidity on digital platforms. It is to his legacy that I dedicate this response.

Source: Harry Halpin, nym.com/blog/anti-palantir-manifesto, 23 April 2026. Reprinted in full.