The 22-point ‘manifesto’ of the Epstein class has been floated by Alex Karp, the CEO of the tech giant Palantir—the company that provided the AI system called Movan Smart Systems, which killed 167 children in a girls’ school during the Iran war and helped orchestrate the genocide in Gaza.
The ‘manifesto’—a condensed version of Alex Karp’s book The Technological Republic—why should it be taken seriously? The document is dangerous because it imposes a new AI-driven arms race on the world and spreads a dangerous ideology, albeit not entirely new, of racial hierarchies. Why does a CEO of a company need to write such a book? The history of capitalism tells us that capitalists invent new technology to extract profits even if it causes destruction to humankind. This book is propaganda to justify making AI warfare a profitable business and using data to create a surveillance state.
It is not within the scope of this article to take up all 22 points, but only those which are detrimental to world peace and life on the planet.
- It says that Silicon Valley has an obligation to defend the national interests, which means that it should integrate more with the military-industrial complex rather than finding solutions for the welfare of the people.
- The era of soft power is over, and if a ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ country like the US is to maintain its hegemony, it has to use hard power built on software. In other words, maintain hegemony by military means using AI technofascism.
- The ‘manifesto’ uses fear psychosis to make business opportunities for Palantir, saying that if the US does not use AI in military and national security, the enemies will.
- The ‘manifesto’ says that conscription should replace voluntary enlistment in the armed forces, which is undemocratic and a form of military Keynesianism to resurrect the economy by sending the youth into unnecessary overseas conflicts and to benefit AI companies like Palantir.
- The demand is to give AI companies a free hand to develop software to defend national interests with no ethical or moral restrictions, just as a US Marine is given a free hand to possess the latest weapons to protect national security.
- It says that deterrence of the atomic age is over and replaced by the AI age. This means that a new arms race is kick-started by tech companies that get government contracts from the military-industrial complex.
- The ‘manifesto’ indulges in gaslighting to say that the US has maintained peace for three generations since the Second World War, and denies the fact that US military interventions in other countries since 1945 have been the biggest threat to world peace.
- The other observation it makes is that the two fascist nations, Japan and Germany, were tamed too much after the Second World War. Japan went too far down the path of pacifism and should go back to militarisation to balance China in the Asian region. This is a call for escalating the threat of war, which could be disastrous.
- The most dangerous part of the ‘manifesto’ is that it draws a correlation between human advancement and certain cultures. This means that certain cultures are superior to others and contribute to all the development we have achieved as a species. This is eugenics, a pseudoscience, in a new form used for racial profiling by the Nazis, which they learnt from the Americans, who used it to profile immigrants to the US. This has enormous implications. Once we start dehumanising cultures, it normalises the act of oppression and elimination of the ‘other’. This brings us back to the debate about whether humans become better based on nature or nurture.
- The other danger this ‘manifesto’ proposes is the denial of plurality, which is a direct attack on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). This is a voice against democracy within the US, denying that all citizens are born equal and making some more privileged than others.
- The other disgusting proposition is that the Epstein class should be forgiven for their eccentricities because they contribute to society with their ‘genius’, which means war crimes, paedophilia and genocide are the price the world has to pay for their ‘genius’.
The economic power acquired by a few through the accumulation of wealth translates into political power; this political power is used to further strengthen the power of the few. This gives another reason why science and technology should be under public ownership rather than in the hands of a few. If the relations of production are not transformed into social ownership of the means of production (which includes new technologies), then we will immerse ourselves in a techno-fascist state where we lose even the limited democracy that the capitalist system has offered. This threat is in addition to the job losses created by AI, which is causing uncertainty in people’s livelihoods.
