Alex Karp and It would seem that I don’t have much in common. I work for WIRED, which does solid reporting on Trumpworld; Karp is the CEO of Palantir, a $450 billion company that has contracts with agencies such as the CIA and ICE and worked for the Israeli military during its Gaza campaign. I live in the East Village of Fresh York, and the house where Karp spends most of his time is a 500-acre expanse in rural Fresh Hampshire. (Last year, he was one of the highest-paid executives in the United States.) I studied plain English, and he earned a law degree and a doctorate in philosophy, studying under the legendary Jürgen Habermas. I consider myself a progressive; Karp considers it a “pagan religion.”
But we share one common status: We are both graduates of Central High School, a high-profile school in Philadelphia. (Not at the same time. I have several years under my belt as a 58-year-old executive.) Perhaps it was this connection that prompted Karp to agree to the social gathering. The son of a Jewish pediatrician and a black artist, Karp struggled with dyslexia and apparently turned a corner at Central – even now he speculates that overcoming this challenge helped prepare him for later success.
Our interview was conducted during Palantir’s annual corporate client meeting. The event had the dizzying atmosphere of a multi-level marketing summit. Customers I talked to – from giants like American Airlines to relatively modest family offices – said Palantir’s AI-powered systems are pricey but worth the money.
Not present at the event are the customers that provide Palantir with most of its business – the US government and its allies. (The company does not do business with Russia or China.) Palantir was founded to apply Silicon Valley innovations to defense and government technologies. Together with co-author Nicholas Zamiska (a Palantyrian), Karp presented his philosophy earlier this year in a book titled Technology Republica surprisingly readable polemic that praises Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism. According to Karp, the anti-establishment tone of Apple’s Macintosh marketing was the original sin in a technological culture that celebrates indulgent individualism and disregards nationalist concerns. At the conference, Karp, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, began his speech by saying, “Since our founding 20 years ago, we have occasionally butted heads with Silicon Valley.” In 2020, Karp moved the company’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Denver, making it the richest corporation in the state.
Some see Karp as a dystopian supervillain. He reacts to criticism aggressively, bluntly and without a trace of remorse. After years of contracts, the company appears to have proven to the government that its tools can effectively utilize information on the battlefield and in intelligence operations. Palantir has a multimillion-dollar contract with ICE for “target selection and enforcement,” which essentially helps the agency locate people for deportation. Karp proudly says that in Ukraine, the company’s products helped deliver lethal force. Palantir has a code of conduct that purports to commit the company to, among other things, “protect privacy and civil liberties,” “protect the vulnerable,” “respect human dignity,” and “preserve and promote democracy.” Last May, in an open letter, 13 former employees accused Palantir’s management of abandoning its founding values and complicity in “normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of an oligarch-led ‘revolution’.” Karp also revealed that other employees had left because of the company’s cooperation with the Israeli military. His retort: If you’re not generating opposition, you’re probably doing something wrong.
Under his fiery Palantir defense, I sense Karp yearning to be understood. He noted that everyone who wants to talk to him is ICE, Israel and Ukraine. I also wanted to visit these topics and I did. But our conversation also touched on Donald Trump, democracy and his love affair with German culture. Oh, and Central High.