Thomas Edsall’s latest New York Times essay opens with a Peter Thiel quote from 2010 that deserves far more scrutiny for historic parallels than the NYT gives it.
We could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority, but maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means, and this is where I think technology is this incredible alternative to politics.
A minority that can’t win elections. A conviction that persuasion is futile. A technological mechanism to bypass democratic consent entirely.
This is a very well studied pattern from 1930s Germany. 
Joseph Goebbels articulated the same exact structure in 1928, using radio and institutional capture rather than Silicon Valley.
The Playbook
| Move | Goebbels (1928-1935) | Thiel/Palantir (2010-2026) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Admit minority status | “We are an anti-parliamentarian party” that rejects democratic institutions | “We were in such a small minority” that elections are unwinnable |
| 2. Declare persuasion futile | “We oppose a fake democracy that treats the intelligent and the foolish in the same way” | “People who are never going to agree with you” |
| 3. Identify non-democratic mechanism | “We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons”; radio as “the Eighth Great Power” | “Technology is this incredible alternative to politics” |
| 4. Execute bypass | Enabling Act dismantles republic through constitutional means | Palantir builds surveillance and control infrastructure for intelligence and military without democratic deliberation |
| 5. Pull up the ladder | “We would deny to our adversaries without any consideration the means which were granted to us” | Karp (2026): anyone doing this without military cover is “in an insane asylum” |
Step five is where we are, so hopefully people start seeing the problem soon. The NYT certainly isn’t helping by acting like Nazism is now the norm. Karp’s CNBC appearance, quoted at length in Edsall’s piece, reads like we are supposed to just accept a warning. It isn’t normal. It’s Nazi doctrine being delivered to the public as if that’s just the way it is in 2026.
Karp says AI will somehow on its own destroy the economic and political power of only the educated, largely Democratic voters. He says anyone who thinks this will “work out politically” without capture of the military is delusional. He says the “only justification” for absorbing societal disruption is for national security.
Every sentence sounds like general concern. Every sentence is constructed to benefit Palantir. The company already has corrupted the system to force collection of defense contracts, without accountability for technological failures. It has cemented intelligence community relationships, and it built the institutional armor that Karp says you need to undermine voters. When he tells the rest of Silicon Valley that technology without political cover is reckless, the operative message is: we are in control and you can’t do this without us.
That’s straight out of Nazi history. Karp was only missing a shout out to “my struggle” and Goebbels 1928.
Hu Contrasts This
The most helpful voice in Edsall’s piece belongs to Margaret Hu, who directs the Digital Democracy Lab at William & Mary. Where Karp treats replacing voters with technology as a management problem, something to cover in the right political framing, Hu names it correctly as the problem itself.
A.I. systems and their techno-kings have the potential to manifest almost monarchical aspirations.
“Techno-kings” with “monarchical aspirations.” That’s far more than an observation about labor markets or partisan realignment. That’s the correct diagnosis of the political structure being built. Hu goes further:
The A.I. cold war is not just a tech innovation race for military advantage. It is a race for global dominance economically and culturally, and geopolitically.
This is the frame Karp doesn’t want you to use. Karp’s version: ending democracy with information warfare tools (whether newspapers, radios or AI) is inevitable, the only question is whether you wrap it in a flag. Hu’s version: the disruption is a political choice made by identifiable actors pursuing identifiable power, and the military framing is just part of the power grab, not a check on it.
Karp says technology needs politics. Hu says technology is politics. More specifically, the political campaign of concentration is masquerading as inevitability.
What Edsall Misses
Edsall’s essay is valuable for assembling sources, particularly the Brynjolfsson and Hitzig paper showing that AI demolishes Hayek’s argument against central planning. But Edsall treats Karp’s CNBC quotes that echo Nazism as a “thoughtful reaction” rather than what they are: the CEO of a surveillance company explaining to his peers how to make the end of democracy politically survivable.
The Thiel quote at the top of the column and the Karp quotes near the bottom are the same perspectives. They’re the two phases of the same Nazi project Hitler used to seize power.
Thiel announced he was using the Goebbels theory. Karp is delivering the after-action report and next steps. Karp says “nobody should do what we did” from the commanding position of having already done it.
That’s just like Hitler. It’s an announcement they’ve built a moat with a drawbridge. And Palantir is expecting they will be the only ones to survive inside.