Palantir's manifesto: The birth of the algorithmic Leviathan and the new techno-bourgeoisie

In recent years, the shedding of all masks of the political-economic liberal narrative—or the realization that masks are no longer necessary—has also been reflected in Silicon Valley. With the harsh reality of 2026, the “libertarian technology dream” has given way to a techno-Leviathan. The manifesto of Palantir, an artificial intelligence (AI) technology and surveillance company that trained and professionalized its military technology during the Gaza genocide, cannot be viewed as a utopian text.

The situation has long since surpassed conceptualizations of technofeudalism that focus on property and rent relations. Although Palantir's manifesto may appear at first glance to be a text positioned along the axes of security and technology, it is a declaration by Silicon Valley's new techno-bourgeoisie to transform the state into an algorithmic infrastructure by asserting its sovereignty over financial capital and bureaucracy.

What is emphasized in the points is the seizure of the state's sovereign authority, decision-making architecture, and ultimately, the perception of social reality through software-based outsourcing.

The new techno-bourgeoisie is mobilizing to direct AI technologies toward social control, military surveillance, and geopolitical deterrence, framing security as a new, economically infinitely expandable algorithmic market space. The recurring emphasis on “inevitable threat” and “software-based deterrence” in the manifesto, which turns security and uncertainty into a sustainable economic resource, draws an ideological framework where the threat ceases to be an external reality and becomes the market itself. In this political-economic plane, the call for the rearmament of Germany and Japan in the 15th point of the manifesto is a market expansion strategy. However, this time, military surveillance technologies will also encompass imperialist geographies. For example, the manifesto includes the hope of tethering the decision-making mechanisms of European countries, which lag behind the US and China in technological infrastructure, to American-based closed-circuit algorithms.

The darkest dimension of the manifesto, however, is its ideological framework. This supremacist approach, which glorifies the “functional” civilizations of the West while trapping the rest in the “disposable” category, is an algorithmic neo-colonial siege. The text explicitly takes the assumption of a “clash of civilizations” as its starting point. This assumption is not debated or proven; it is directly imposed. Because if this assumption collapses, the entire business model collapses. What is clearly defended in this text is hard power in the 21st century; it will be established through software infrastructures. Sovereignty will now turn into a variable that can be directly canceled from Big Tech servers. In other words, sovereignty will now be written into code. The military-industrial complex will be replaced by threat definitions, target lists, and strategic priorities generated algorithmically. For a country like Turkey, which is geopolitically sensitive and has multi-layered threat perceptions, this risk is not theoretical, but existential. Because the moment an externally sourced algorithmic system begins to determine Turkey's threat priorities on Turkey's behalf, sovereignty is effectively transferred.

Artificial intelligence will analyze existing data, modeling future possibilities to generate proactive and preventive intervention areas. However, in this process, the more data the model processes, the more potential threats it will generate. Thus, the security field will turn into a technically infinitely expandable market, and AI will become the means of production and legitimization mechanism for this market. This is a stage that goes beyond surveillance capitalism, because data will no longer be used just for behavioral prediction, but directly for operational decision-making. Imagine a scenario where a “threat scoring” software similar to Palantir, through its analysis of keywords and metadata, sends a message to your phone one morning saying, “Your potential for spreading misleading information to the public has been measured at 98%; report to the police station as a preventive measure.” In a system where decision-making processes are so automated, legal practices will be left not to judges, but to the preventive intervention commands of algorithms.

Ultimately, the logic of capitalist accumulation controlled by the techno-bourgeoisie and AI inevitably produces “Absolute Evil.” Hannah Arendt's modernity-centered thesis of the “banality of evil” has today given way to the illusion of the infallibility of the algorithm. While responsibility evaporates within a line of code that has no conscience, the real problem lies in the property regime of technology.

Because for states and societies, data ownership is a power too important to be transferred to a company. And the only way out of this darkness is to take the decision-making architecture back from algorithms and return it to a system that respects human dignity. If technology were to cease being a tool of capital domination and become part of a system where labor is liberated, algorithms could be used not to generate potential threats, but for the planning of social needs and the reduction of working hours.

In conclusion, as AI and automation develop, the new techno-bourgeoisie—faced with the contradictions of the decreasing need for humans in production—will not care about the well-being and future of the world and humanity while creating new markets for itself. So, is it possible to strip AI of its greed for profit and desire for control, and imagine it as a transparent coordinator of collective welfare? Or are we ready to formulate a new “What Is To Be Done, How Is It To Be Done?” that will turn AI from a watchtower into a tool that serves social freedom?