Because a lot is asked of us.
The Technological RepublicShort.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. Silicon Valley’s engineering elite have an affirmative obligation to participate in the nation’s defense.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative thing, if not our crowning achievement, as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it can also limit and constrain our understanding of what is now possible.
3. Free email is not enough. The decline of a culture or civilization, and indeed of its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of providing economic development and security for the people.
4. The limits of soft power, let alone lofty rhetoric, have been exposed. The predominance of free and democratic societies requires more than moral appeals. This requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
5. The question is not whether AI weapons will be created; It is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not stop from engaging in dramatic debates about the merits of developing technologies with significant military and national security applications. They will move forward.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We, as a society, should seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and fighting the next war only if everyone shares in the risks and costs.
7. If an American Marine asks for a better rifle, we should make it; And the same applies for software as well. As a country we must be able to continue to debate the appropriateness of military action abroad, while remaining steadfast in our commitment to those we have asked to take steps to harm.
8. Public servants do not need to be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees the way the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
9. We should show more grace towards those who have subordinated themselves to public life. The elimination of any room for forgiveness – the abandonment of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche – could leave us with a set of characters we will regret.
10. The psychology 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 expressing their inner lives to people they may never meet, will be disappointed.
11. Our society has become too eager to make haste, and often rejoices at the demise of its enemies. Defeating an opponent is a moment to pause, not celebrate.
12. The nuclear age is ending. One era of resistance, the nuclear age, is ending, and a new era of resistance built on AI is about to begin.
13. No other country in the history of the world has put forward more progressive values. The United States is far from perfection. But it’s easy to forget how much more opportunities exist in this country than in any other country on the planet for those who are not hereditary elites.
14. American power has made possible an unusually long peace. Many people have forgotten, or perhaps assumed, that some version of peace has prevailed in the world for almost a century without military conflict with any great power. At least three generations – billions of people and their children and now grandchildren – have never seen a world war.
15. The impotence of Germany and Japan after the war must be undone. Defaming Germany was an exaggeration for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly dramatic commitment to Japanese pacifism, if sustained, would also threaten to alter the balance of power in Asia.
16. We should applaud those who strive to create where the market has failed to act. The culture almost satirizes Musk’s interest in the grand narrative, as if billionaires should 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 hidden beneath a thinly veiled disgust.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. When it comes to violent crime many politicians across the United States essentially step back, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take any risks with their constituencies or donors to try and experiment with solutions that save lives.
18. The ruthless exposure of the personal lives of public figures drives away a lot of talent from government service. The shallow and petty attacks against the public sector – and those who dare to do anything other than enrich themselves – have become so unforgivable that the republic has been left with a significant roster of ineffective, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any real trust structure hidden behind it.
19. The caution we unconsciously encourage in public life is corrosive. People who don’t say anything wrong often don’t say anything special.
20. The widespread intolerance towards religious belief in some circles must be opposed. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the clearest signs that its political project is a less open intellectual movement than many within it.
21. Some cultures have made significant progress; Others remain passive and regressive. Now all cultures are equal. Criticism and value judgments are prohibited. Yet this new dogma masks the fact that some cultures, and indeed subcultures. . . Has created a miracle. Others have proven mediocre, and worse, regressive and harmful.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of empty and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly in the West, have resisted defining national cultures in the name of assimilation for the past half century. But to include what?
Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the WestAlexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. by Zamiska
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