Because we get asked a lot.
The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of 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.
4. 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.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is 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.
6. 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 the cost.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country 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.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
10. 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 may never meet, will be left disappointed.
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
13. 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.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
15. The postwar 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.
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.
17. 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, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
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 republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet 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.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska
https://t.co/8igjazz1On
A single cow can indeed provide enough beef to feed an average family of four for a full year.
While a cow weighs a lot on the hoof, the amount of edible meat you actually take home is what matters:
- a typical steer weighing around 1,200 lbs (545 kg) will yield approximately 440 to 500 lbs (200–225 kg) of take-home meat after processing.
- for a family of four, 450 lbs of meat translates to about 8.6 lbs (3.9 kg) of beef per week.
- you’ll get roughly 200 lbs of ground beef, along with roasts, brisket, ribs, and various steaks (ribeye, T-bone, sirloin).
With moderate consumption (about 1.5 kg of beef per week for the entire household), 200 kg of meat can last for over two years.
For families who consume beef almost daily (about 3.5–4 kg per week), a whole animal covers about one year’s worth of needs.
It's official:
We are now witnessing the largest energy supply disruption in modern history.
Since the start of the Iran War on February 28th, more than 500 million barrels of crude and condensate have been removed form the global market.
In other words, global supply has now lost ~$50 billion worth of crude oil production since the Iran war began nearly 50 days ago.
This is the same amount of fuel it takes to run the world's international shipping industry for 4 months.
The world has never seen anything like this before.
🚨BREAKING: Former Biden-era VA official John H. Windom—tasked with overseeing the massive Electronic Health Record Modernization project—has been federally indicted for concealing thousands in cash, casino chips, Louis Vuitton gift cards, and other lavish gifts from contractors.
While leading the effort, Windom helped award a $10 BILLION contract to Cerner (later bought by Oracle Health). He allegedly pushed the company on 'diversity and inclusion,' leading to a $1.7M DEI-related subcontract for his circle—while raking in personal perks from a 'Power Group' of favored vendors.
The result? A disastrously flawed system linked to over 4,000 cases of harm to veterans—including at least 4 deaths from scheduling errors, lost orders, and catastrophic failures. Rollout stalled after safety nightmares.
This is what happens when ethics take a backseat and ideology (DEI) mixes with billion-dollar contracts. Veterans deserved better. Accountability now.
In 19 days, a jury in Oakland is going to decide whether the entire legal foundation of the AI industry is built on fraud.
Everyone thinks the Musk vs Altman lawsuit is a billionaire grudge match.
Two egos, one grudge, a $150 billion damages number designed for headlines.
Easy to dismiss. Easy to scroll past.
That's exactly what Altman wants you to think.
Because what's actually on trial on April 27 is something much BIGGER than Elon's hurt feelings...
A jury is going to decide whether you can legally take billions of dollars in nonprofit donations, use them to build the most valuable technology in human history, and then quietly convert that nonprofit into a for-profit company worth $850 billion.
If the answer is no, the entire AI industry has a problem.
Because OpenAI is not the only company that did this:
Anthropic was founded by OpenAI defectors using the same nonprofit-first mission language.
xAI pitches itself as building AI "for humanity."
Every frontier lab has used the moral cover of "we're doing this for the good of the world" to attract talent, capital, and regulatory goodwill they would have never gotten otherwise.
An Elon win doesn't just touch OpenAI. It creates a legal precedent that every AI company built on a nonprofit or public benefit promise becomes vulnerable to shareholder and donor clawback suits.
That's why this case matters. And that's why Altman is panicking.
Just look at what he did this week:
Elon filed a motion demanding the court remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and FORCE OpenAI to return to its nonprofit origins.
Then he amended the suit to say if he wins the $150 billion, all of it goes to OpenAI's charity arm. Not him. Zero dollars to Elon personally.
That amendment was surgical. It stripped Altman of his entire public defense.
He can no longer claim this is about Elon's ego or Elon's bank account. Elon is now legally on record saying he just wants the mission back.
OpenAI's response was to panic-write a letter to the California and Delaware attorneys general asking them to investigate Elon for "anti-competitive behavior." Their strategy chief publicly accused Elon of coordinating attacks with Mark Zuckerberg.
They called the lawsuit "harassment driven by ego and jealousy."
That's NOT the response of a company that thinks it's going to win.
Real companies with real defenses don't ask the government to silence the person suing them 3 weeks before trial. They let the evidence speak.
OpenAI is scrambling because they know what's in discovery.
Elon's team has been building this case for two years. Emails, board minutes, internal conversations about the conversion.
The kind of paper trail that juries understand and executives can't explain away.
And the timing couldn't be worse...
OpenAI is trying to IPO at $852 billion. They just raised $122 billion. Microsoft has $135 billion of exposure to them.
A jury verdict that even partially sides with Elon in late April or May would crater the entire IPO runway and send shockwaves through every major AI investor on Earth.
This is why Altman spent the last 2 weeks doing press tours and policy blueprints and "super intelligence agendas" aimed at Washington. He's trying to REFRAME himself as the responsible statesman of AI right before a jury decides if he's a con artist.
Most people will watch this trial start and think it's celebrity drama.
The smart money is watching it and realizing that the legal foundation of the AI boom is about to be tested in court for the first time EVER.
And if that foundation cracks, everything built on top of it is at risk.
☢️ He would build nuclear weapons.
🫏 He thinks Gavin Newsom "is not one of the crazy people."
⛰️ He's serious about fighting an underground war.
🤖 And he's comfortable with Yoko Taro rebooting Evangelion. (Same.)
@PalmerLuckey on The Axios Show ↘️
https://t.co/aKge6ohwQp
Joe Rogan: “My position on this completely shifted... This is clearly demonic.”
Robert W. Malone: “It’s hard to come up with a language to express what we’re observing in the world other than the language of theology.”