Interventions

The 'Technological Republic' and the new software-defined warfare: when military power goes through the stack

by Gordon Mensah and Giovanni Trotta

24 April 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

A post on X, signed Palantir, launched a 22-point manifesto inspired by Alex Karp's The Technological Republic: a call to arms for Silicon Valley, invited to stop 'wavering' on the military use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to consider technological superiority as a moral and strategic duty. The point is not only communicative: that text aspires to formulate a legal-economic doctrine, a pact between private innovation, public power and the legitimisation of military technology. If the 'technological republic' becomes a framework, risk, responsibility and sovereignty change: no longer just market and procurement, but security capitalism, with a redefinition of the roles of those who innovate, decide, control the stack and are accountable for the effects.

To understand the paradigm shift, one must start from the battlefield. As we argue in the paper Astrid Palantir, Anduril and Kyndryl: three archetypes of the new defence-tech ecosystem between software-defined warfare and hardware turn, contemporary warfare is increasingly software-defined: it is less about a single platform and more about the ability to integrate sensors, logistics data, legacy systems, AI models and chains of command. Operational superiority depends on the coordinated control of data, systems and infrastructure that enable continuity, resilience and scalability.

A paradox emerges here: the more 'software-speed' warfare becomes, the more relevant the material base that makes it operational grows: clouds, networks, semiconductors, data centres, technical standards and supply chains. AI does not operate in a vacuum, but within a computational supply chain of advanced chips, computation and connectivity.

The technological shift is also industrial. The old military-industrial complex does not disappear, but changes centre of gravity: an ecosystem of defence-tech companies, digital platforms and cloud providers is growing alongside the prime contractors. Dario Guarascio speaks of a military-digital complex: a new interdependence in which Big Tech and the State become mutually dependent, because digital infrastructure is both an enabler for the military and a competitive asset in the markets.

This is where the 'Copernican revolution' in military innovation comes in: for decades, the DARPA model dominated, with public research and spillover to the private sector. Today - often - the opposite is happening: architectures born in the civil digital market, from enterprise cloud to AI, are being adapted to defence, with the state buying developed capabilities and adapting them with appropriate budgets and procurement.

Within this process, Palantir and Anduril act as archetypes. Palantir presides over the 'data-decision' node: Gotham, Foundry and AIP are decision-making infrastructures that graft models and analytics into real workflows, linking data

heterogeneous to mission-critical decisions, with traceability and access rules. You don't just sell software: you become a hub in the public decision-making architecture.

Anduril embodies the 'autonomy-command and control' node: it integrates uncrewed systems in the air, land and maritime domains with a C2 (Lattice) platform that connects sensors and assets and accelerates the perception-prioritisation-response cycle. It is a hardware-plus-software model, but with software-first logic: the value is in the platform that orchestrates heterogeneous systems and 'closes the loop' in operations.

So far, the narrative seems linear: more AI, more efficiency, more deterrence. But when AI enters the terrain of national security, the systemic risk increases: it accelerates the decision chain and changes its epistemology. What does the system 'see', with what data, bias and industrial incentives? The digital stack is not just an industrial issue; it is a sovereignty issue.

And this is where rights, ethics and accountability come into play. Ashley Deeks has defined the double black box as the short circuit that arises when the opacity of the security apparatus is added to the opacity of algorithms and AI systems. The result is an increasing difficulty in reconstructing democratic accountability and control, even when formally the decision remains human.

The European question remains. The risk is to reproduce in defence-tech the pattern already seen in other sectors of the digital ecosystem: entrusting crucial parts of security to US stacks and infrastructures. There are two scenarios: subordinate integration, with US platforms but technological and jurisdictional dependence; or selective operational sovereignty, building European capabilities on infrastructures and standards. This is where the 'technological republic' stops being just an American formula and becomes a political category for Europe as well: the place where sovereignty, accountability and democratic control are redefined in the age of software-defined warfare.