Last week, Palantir, a Peter Thiel-cofounded AI company whose technology helps generate automated kill lists for the Israeli and U.S. militaries, published a 22-point manifesto on X describing its core principles.
The screed was a summary of The Technological Republic, a 2025 book coauthored by Alex Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, and Nicholas Zamiska, the company’s head of corporate affairs.
In it, the company called for a number of sweeping, self-serving policy changes: increasing the development of AI weapon systems; using software to project the West’s “hard power;” ensuring that Silicon Valley plays “a role in addressing violent crime;” and a massive expansion of the U.S. military — one of Palantir’s largest revenue sources — through a mandatory draft. “National [military] service should be a universal duty,” the company wrote.
In another mercenary policy recommendation, Palantir called for the full rearming of the Axis Powers, writing, “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 more heavily armed Germany and Japan would likely result in new revenue sources for Palantir, given the company’s growing role in the martial infrastructure of the U.S. and its allies.
One section of the manifesto specifically defended Elon Musk against what it called “thinly veiled scorn.” “We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act,” Palantir wrote. “The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves.”
The manifesto concluded with vague, fascistic ramblings hailing the supremacy of “some cultures” over others. “Certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful,” the company wrote. “We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism.”
Grok’s CSAM problem
A 47-year-old man in Nashville was arrested on Monday for allegedly using Grok, the AI model developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, to generate dozens of images of infant and prepubescent girls being sexually abused.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that the man’s account had shared more than 40 images depicting child sexual abuse between September 2025 and March 2026, according to WKRN. The man has a criminal history of exposing himself to young girls.
Meanwhile, xAI, the company that facilitated the creation of child sexual abuse material at an industrial scale, has yet to face any meaningful consequences from law enforcement in the U.S. Instead, the Justice Department has refused to cooperate with French authorities investigating child sexual abuse on X, the social media platform owned by xAI.
“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment,” the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs wrote in a Friday letter to France’s Justice Ministry, per the Wall Street Journal. France’s investigation constitutes “an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform,” the department added.
As part of the investigation, which is being led by the Paris prosecutor’s office, French authorities summoned Musk for a meeting on Monday. But the American centibillionaire did not show up.
This Week in Musk:
A Reuters investigation found that Tesla, which has only paid federal taxes one year over the past two decades, used questionable financial maneuvers to avoid paying U.S. taxes on $18 billion in profits from its sales in the Netherlands and Singapore. The maneuvers likely shaved $400 million off Tesla’s U.S. tax bill. (Reuters)
Thousands of Tesla owners are suing the company in a class-action lawsuit accusing it of failing to deliver the self-driving capabilities that they paid for and that Musk has promised for more than a decade. Separately, during an earnings call on Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that Tesla will not be able to deliver self-driving using the hardware housed in millions of cars it sold under the guise that they would one day operate autonomously. (Wall Street Journal)
Tesla said last week that it has launched its so-called Robotaxi service in parts of Dallas and Houston. Despite the name, the cars cannot actually drive themselves. In Austin, where Tesla has spent nearly a year testing the service, the vast majority of the company’s Robotaxis are still operated with a human employee seated in the vehicle. (Electrek)
SpaceX said it has reached a deal to acquire Cursor, an AI coding software company, for $60 billion later this year. If SpaceX chooses not to acquire the company, it could instead pay Cursor $10 billion as part of a partnership to “create the world’s best coding” AI. (X)
Following its planned IPO in June, SpaceX will look to solidify Musk’s power by issuing super-voting shares to him and a handful of insiders, ensuring their control outweighs that of regular investors. The IPO filing also indicated that Musk will be able to maintain control of SpaceX’s board. (Reuters)
As part of his lawsuit with OpenAI, lawyers for the Sam Altman-led company have asked Musk about his use of “rhino ketamine,” a powerful dissociative and hallucinogenic mixture that includes phencyclidine, or PCP. The judge overseeing the case ultimately ruled that OpenAI cannot ask about Musk’s ketamine use. But somewhat related questions about Musk’s attendance at Burning Man, an annual bacchanal attended by Silicon Valley types, are allowed. (Washington Post)
Bezos’ rocket company suffers major failure
While testing its New Glenn rocket for the third time on Sunday, Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-founded aerospace company, attempted to launch a communications satellite into low Earth orbit. But the mission was a failure. The payload was deployed “too low to sustain operations,” said AST SpaceMobile, the owner of the satellite.
The mission outcome could have cascading effects, potentially jeopardizing NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program. The space agency plans to use a Blue Origin lunar lander affixed to a New Glenn rocket to return astronauts to the Moon as soon as 2028. But Blue Origin could be forced to ground the rocket for months as it awaits the outcome of an FAA investigation into its failed payload delivery.
“It could take them three, four months, or longer,” American Enterprise Institute fellow Todd Harrison told the New York Times. “If it goes longer than that, then that’s disappointing, and that starts to impact the Artemis program.”
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp blamed the failure on an engine problem in the New Glenn upper stage, which “didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit.”
Last year, NASA appeared increasingly receptive to the prospect of using a Blue Origin vehicle to send astronauts to the Moon as soon as possible, given the repeated setbacks SpaceX has faced while developing Starship, another vehicle chosen for the Artemis missions. It now appears that both companies could fail to meet the White House’s goal of notching a lunar landing before Donald Trump leaves office.
Blue Origin, however, did have some success on Sunday, landing the rocket’s reusable booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.
This Week in Bezos:
Project Prometheus, the AI lab where Bezos serves as co-CEO, is nearing the completion of a $10 billion fundraising round. (Financial Times)
Amazon has reached a deal with Anthropic to invest up to $25 billion into the maker of the Claude chatbot. “Anthropic’s commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Amazon has a similar deal to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, Anthropic’s top competitor. (CNBC)
Since Bezos overhauled the editorial board of the Washington Post to embrace “free markets,” the newspaper has repeatedly attacked proposals seeking higher taxes on the rich, according to a review by the Nation: “Post editorials have also opposed minimum wage increases, tenant protections, social housing, rent control, free buses, caps on credit card interest rates, caps on the prices of staple foods, congestion pricing, and even the Railway Safety Act, introduced in response to the catastrophic 2023 chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio. Many of the articles are devoted to lambasting labor unions.” (The Nation)
“The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation”
That’s the message that activists in New York City are sharing on guerrilla posters calling for a boycott of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual fundraising party, which will feature the centibillionaire and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, as the lead sponsors.
Zuckerberg forces Meta employees to train the AI models that could replace them
Meta is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.
The tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens, according to one of the memos, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a channel for the company’s model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.
The purpose, according to the memo, was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggle to replicate how humans interact with computers, like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts.
“This is where all Meta employees can help our models get better simply by doing their daily work,” it said.
Internal documents reviewed by CNBC also found that Meta is tracking its employees’ use of sites such as Google, Wikipedia, Threads, LinkedIn, and GitHub to help train its AI models.
8,000
That’s roughly the number of employees that Meta plans to lay off next month as part of yet another workforce reduction at the Mark Zuckerberg-led company. Sources who spoke to Reuters said Meta plans to carry out additional rounds of layoffs throughout the year as the company attempts to replace human labor with AI systems. “We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” Meta chief people officer Janelle Gale wrote in an internal memo defending the plan to layoff 10% of the company’s workforce. “This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here.”
Larry Ellison pushes to expand resort on his Hawaiian island
Through an asset management company, centibillionaire Larry Ellison has submitted a petition for a large resort development project on Lanai, according to SFGate. The filing with Hawaii’s Land Use Commission requests the rezoning of 170 acres so that Sensei Lanai, the Four Seasons resort on the island, can construct “new villas,” spa facilities, and an outdoor recreational area to host weddings and other events.
Ellison owns 98% of the land on Lanai, the sixth-largest Hawaiian island and home to 3,300 residents. He recently moved his full-time residence from Lanai to a $173 million Palm Beach estate near Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
In other Ellison news, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on Sunday that his company, Oracle, has received $305 million in tax breaks from Tennessee since 2021. In return, Oracle moved its headquarters to Nashville and promised to deliver 6,000 new jobs to the state. But Oracle has only delivered a small number of jobs thus far, even as it laid off 30,000 workers earlier this month.
Oligarch Roundup
The Zuckerberg-founded school for impoverished families will close, laying off 147 employees. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the nonprofit that Zuckerberg and his wife used to fund the school, has pledged $50 million to help families whose children will have to be relocated to new schools. Zuckerberg has recently opted to slash his traditional education philanthropy and donate more to AI research. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve has long-held ties to Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and Marc Andreessen. Kevin Warsh, a tech investor and the Federal Reserve chair nominee, attended Stanford alongside Thiel. His $200 million fortune includes investments in Palantir, and he has spoken glowingly about a future dominated by AI. During a 2022 podcast appearance with Karp, the Palantir CEO told Warsh, “You wouldn’t be hanging out with us if you were as normal as you claim to be.” (CNBC)
Florida has opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI stemming from a deadly shooting at Florida State University. James Uthmeier, the state’s Republican attorney general, said at a press conference, “We have been looking into the recent FSU shooting, and that shooter’s communications with ChatGPT. Our review of that communication has revealed that a criminal investigation is necessary.” (NBC News)
Sam Altman’s iris-scanning orb project partners with Tinder, Zoom, and Shopify. World, the Altman-cofounded company, has physical locations where people can have their faces scanned to receive a “proof of human” digital ID, which they can then use to confirm their identity and non-AI status on eligible websites. Meanwhile, Tinder users who take part in the face-scanning project will receive the ability to boost their profile’s visibility for free. (The Verge)
Tim Cook to step down as Apple CEO. After 15 years leading the world’s third most valuable company, Cook announced on Monday that he will be replaced in September by Apple hardware engineering executive John Ternus. Cook will remain at the company as its executive chairman. “Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!!” wrote Donald Trump in a post reacting to the news. The president also recalled a time during his first term when Cook called him to “kiss my ass.” (CNBC)
It is hard to click “like.” How about something like Glad you researched this, thanks for publishing.
Thanks Caleb! billionaire class are ugly inside and out. For everyone else except the rich: "National [military] service should be a universal duty,” the company wrote."