Strong Message Here Technological Republic (with Stewart Lee and Carole Cadwalladr)
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May 7, 2026 
Stewart Lee, comedian and cultural commentator, adds sharp humour and asides. Carole Cadwalladr, investigative journalist and founder of The Nerve, explains Palantir, tech manifestos and surveillance. They unpack Alex Karp's manifesto, Orwellian language, network‑state ambitions, AI trust and WorldCoin. Short, witty and provocative conversation about tech power and rhetoric.
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William Shatner's Prose Has One Clause Too Many
- Armando recounts reading William Shatner's Tech War and notices sentences "one phrase too many," making it unintentionally comic.
- Stewart jokes about Shatner-style series and audiobook reading, using the book as a linguistic example.
Tech Pre-Failure Compared To A Juggler's Drop
- Stewart likens tech founders' deliberate failures to jugglers dropping a plate to create drama and interest.
- Armando points out the darker flip side: catastrophic harms framed as acceptable "pre-failure" on the path to improvement.
Palantir Uses Moral Rhetoric To Justify Surveillance
- Palantir frames its work as a moral imperative, arguing better tech reduces war while reversing critiques into proofs of virtue.
- Armando and Carole highlight Alex Karp's manifesto claiming tech scares adversaries into peace, echoing Orwellian inversions like "war is peace".