Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, offers a sobering view: The biggest technological shift in human history is happening, and almost no one is talking about it.
Schmidt opens with a startling industry prediction:
Jeffrey Sachs on the real origins of the Iran war, and the coming economic devastation.
(0:00) Where Does the Iran War Go From Here? (10:13) Iran’s Growing Power Since the War Began (14:37) Where Does the Hatred Towards Iran Come From? (24:37) The Nuclear Weapon Lie Surrounding… pic.twitter.com/yHg5BvY3Qp
Last week, the Peter Thiel-cofounded company poured fuel on the fire with a 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s 2025 book “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West,” an ominous corporate manifesto that critics called a “hideous ideology” and “example of technofascism.”
Now, Palantir’s seemingly endless run of bad press has current and former employees shaken, Wired reports, with some starting to wonder whether “they’re the bad guys.”
“I think there’s a bit of an identity crisis and a bit of a challenge,” one former employee told the magazine. “We were supposed to be the ones who were preventing a lot of these abuses. Now we’re not preventing them. We seem to be enabling them.”
While Palantir prides itself “on a culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement over the complex areas we work on,” as a spokesperson told Wired, workers and alumni are required to sign non-disparagement agreements and forbidden to speak to the press.
Meanwhile, employees have vented in internal Slack threads, voicing their growing concerns over Palantir and ICE’s relationship, especially after the shooting death of numerous protesters.Palantir started auto-deleting conversations in at least one Slack channel after seven days, per Wired, raising even more questions.
Palantir maintains that its ICE contract allows the firm to make a “difference in mitigating risks while enabling targeted outcomes,” according to an internal blog post.
Following the deadly strike on the Iranian school, one employee asked in a Slack channel if “were we involved,” and whether the company is “doing anything to stop a repeat,” as quoted by Wired.
And the company’s most recent manifesto summarizing Karp’s book drew yet another heated reaction internally.
“I’m curious why this had to be posted,” one frustrated employee wrote in a Slack thread viewed by Wired. “Especially on the company account. On the practical level every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the US (for sure in the current political climate), and I doubt we need this in the US?”
“I’ve already had multiple friends reach out and ask what the hell did we post,” another employee wrote.
“It’s like we taped a ‘kick me’ sign on our own backs,” another worker wrote. “I hope no one who decided to put this out is surprised that we are, in fact, getting kicked.”
I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.
Apr 24, 2026 The Trump ReportFormer National Security Advisor John Bolton joins Maddie Hale to discuss Donald Trump’s claims the US “fully controls” the Strait of Hormuz while ordering the US Navy to ‘shoot and kill’ any Iranian boat laying mines, Iran warns the US of “an eye for an eye” and Trump lashes out a reporter who questioned the timeline for the Iran war. Welcome to the Trump Report, join this channel to get access to perks –
Let’s begin with a simple question that rarely gets a straight answer: what would victory over Iran actually look like? In Washington and Jerusalem, the answers tend to sound definitive: eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability, break its regional power, perhaps even force political change at the top. It’s the language of decisive war, the kind with a clear endpoint.
But shift the perspective to Tehran, and the definition changes completely. Victory, for Iran, is survival. That asymmetry shapes the entire conflict. In wars like this, the side that needs less to claim success often has the advantage – and, right now, Iran needs far less.
There is no denying the military imbalance. The US and Israel can strike with extraordinary precision and reach. They have demonstrated that repeatedly – targeting infrastructure, leadership and strategic assets.
But tactical success has yet to translate into political outcome. Iran’s state hasn’t fractured. Its governing system remains intact, and its networks – military, regional, ideological – continue to function. Even its most sensitive capabilities, including nuclear expertise, remain resilient.
The deeper miscalculation lies in assuming Tehran is playing the same game as Washington. It isn’t. Iran is not trying to defeat the US or Israel outright. It is trying to outlast them, complicate their objectives and raise the cost of progress until it becomes unsustainable.
This logic is visible in how the conflict has unfolded. The battlefield extends beyond direct confrontation into shipping lanes, energy markets and regional alliances. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz are not incidental – they are pressure points with global consequences.
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Iran’s strategy is not about dominance but entanglement. It doesn’t need battlefield superiority if it can draw its adversaries into a conflict that is too costly to resolve and too complex to conclude.
When wars stall, the instinct is to escalate: more bombing, strikes on energy infrastructure, even, in extremis, “boots on the ground”. The assumption is that more force will finally produce a different outcome.
But Iran is not a passive target. It has already shown a willingness to retaliate across the region, including against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, as well as targets in Jordan and Iraq. Strikes on Iran’s energy systems would not stay contained – they would invite retaliation against these same states, widening the conflict.
There is another constraint: American is estimated to have already used up around 45% to 50% of key missile stockpiles, including roughly 30% of its Tomahawk missile inventory. So the stark reality is that escalation is no longer just about willingness, but capacity — and in any wider war, the question may not be how far the US can go, but how much it has left.
The consequences would also extend beyond the battlefield. Iran’s response would be sustained attacks on neighbouring countries, on their power, fuel, and water systems, rendering parts of the region increasingly unlivable as temperatures soar over summer. Huge numbers of people would be forced to leave, risking another large-scale displacement crisis.
Even then, the core reality remains unchanged. Iran is built for endurance – any ground campaign would likely become prolonged and attritional. More importantly, escalation misses the point – the problem is not a lack of force, but the absence of a political objective that force can realistically achieve.
An Indian-flagged carrier, Jag Vasant, arrives off Mumbai carrying liquefied petroleum gas aftr being allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz by Iran under a ‘friendly nations’ exemption. EPA/Divyakant Solanki
Compounding the problem is a quieter but equally significant reality; the US and Israel do not appear to be fully aligned in their end goals. Israel’s posture suggests a pursuit of maximal outcomes – deep, possibly irreversible weakening of Iran’s system, if not outright regime collapse. The US, by contrast, appears to oscillate between coercion, containment and negotiation.
These are not just differences in emphasis – they are differences in strategy. Wars fought without a shared definition of victory rarely produce victory at all. What they produce instead is sustained military activity without strategic convergence – constant movement, but little progress toward resolution.
No conclusion in sight
At some point, it becomes necessary to describe things as they are. This is no longer a war moving toward a decisive conclusion. It is a conflict settling into a pattern – strikes followed by pauses, ceasefires that hold just long enough to prevent collapse, and negotiations that advance just enough to avoid failure.
And those ceasefires tell their own story. Their repeated extension reflects not progress, but constraint. Washington, under Donald Trump, has strong incentives to keep talks alive, avoid deeper escalation, and end the war sooner rather than later. The alternatives – regional war or global economic shock – are far harder to manage. That dynamic gives Tehran leverage. It does not need to concede quickly when delay itself strengthens its position.
Time, in this sense, is not neutral. The longer the conflict drags on, the more it intersects with the most sensitive pressure points of the global economy. Energy markets are stressed, with supply routes under strain and reserves tightening. Industries that depend on stable fuel flows – aviation, shipping, manufacturing – are increasingly exposed.
What began as a regional conflict has morphed into systemic risk. Even limited disruption can ripple outward, affecting prices, supply chains and political stability. The longer the stalemate persists, the greater the cumulative strain and the closer it edges toward a broader economic shock.
Who really holds the advantage?
In purely military terms, the answer is obvious: the US and Israel retain overwhelming superiority. But wars are not decided by capability alone. They are decided by how goals, costs, and time interact.
In that equation, Iran’s position is stronger than it appears. It has set a lower threshold for success, demonstrated a higher tolerance for prolonged pressure, and shown an ability to impose costs beyond the battlefield. Most importantly, it does not need to win. It only needs to prevent its adversaries from achieving their aims. So far, it has done exactly that.
Which brings us back to the original question: can the US and Israel win this war? If winning means forcing Iran into submission or fundamentally reshaping its strategic posture, the answer is increasingly difficult to avoid – they cannot.
What they can do is continue. Manage the conflict, contain its spread and shape its margins. But that is not victory. It is endurance.
The real danger is not defeat, but the persistence of a belief that just a little more pressure, a little more escalation, or a little more time will produce a different result. If that belief is wrong, then this is not a war on the verge of being won. It is a war that cannot be won at all. A forever war.
Bamo NouriHonorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London
Inderjeet ParmarProfessor in International Politics, City St George’s, University of London
Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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BIG NEWS: Iran’s State TV has released a list of new energy facilities that will be targeted when the war resumes The list: – The RasGas and Ras Laffan LNG facilities in Qatar – Das and Zirku Islands in the UAE, major hubs for offshore oil and gas – The Abqaiq, Safaniya, and Khurais facilities in Saudi Arabia, considered the jewels of Saudi energy infrastructure – The Burgan oil field in Kuwait, the world’s largest oil shale deposit.
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