Palantir CEO Alex Karp: Why the West is Destroying Itself, Data Empire, Skeptics, How to Win

Summary

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All-In Podcast: Alex Karp (Palantir CEO) — Why the West Is Destroying Itself, Data Empires & How to Win

Date: September 9, 2025
Episode Theme:
This episode features a live conversation with Palantir CEO Alex Karp on the company's journey, the culture of the West, the role of technology and civil liberties, the challenges of mass immigration, criticism from both progressives and conservatives, and reflections on how the West can reclaim its vitality. Karp shares candid, provocative views on meritocracy, border policy, the Israel-Gaza conflict, Western self-doubt, China, and the obligations of modern society’s builders.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Meritocracy, Individualism & the Culture of Winning: Karp argues that the strength of the US and the broader West lies in enabling individual artistry, merit, and unapologetic outperformance.
• Defending (and Critiquing) Palantir: He addresses criticisms—both legitimate and distorted—of Palantir’s technology, especially around surveillance, civil liberties, and support for Western governments and military.
• The West’s Malaise and Risks: Karp discusses what he sees as the West’s self-defeating tendencies—political, cultural, and demographic—and the necessity for a renewed willingness to “fight to win.”
• The Immigration & Border Debate: He provides nuanced (and contentious) takes on border control, the impacts of immigration, and how political parties frame solutions.
• Geopolitical Realities: Israel, Gaza, China: Karp reflects on Israel’s right to self-defense, the ethics of modern warfare, and the strategic challenges posed by China, especially around fentanyl and information warfare.
• Data, Technology, Civil Liberties: The technical and ethical realities of Palantir’s platforms, the impossibility of “easy” surveillance without sacrificing basic freedoms, and how technology can both help and harm.
• Critique of Modern Progressivism: Karp claims modern progressive politics has fallen short of actually helping the working class and instead perpetuates dysfunction.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Palantir Journey & Its Critics

[00:01–05:50]

• Palantir’s growth: First-ever billion-dollar quarter, exceeding expectations.

• Karp addresses the audience: Divides fans, skeptics, and critics. Notes that “builders” are drawn to measured outperformance.

• Quote:

  “If you work for Palantir, everyone knows you’re good. And to all supporters of Palantir, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. And to all people who’ve hated on us, enjoy your call.” — Alex Karp [00:22]

• Palantir’s counterintuitive journey: Built a business others thought impossible; stood by US government through controversy.

• He "steel-mans" critics: Recognizes genuine fears about technology and exclusion, admits “we have not done even an adequate job of helping people.”

• Discusses academic and activist opposition: Argues some opponents are trapped in “non-working philosophical models” and “Stalinistic bullshit,” undermining individual achievement.

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2. Protestors’ Arguments & the Gaza/Border Debates

[05:50–12:19]

• Protest criticism often centers on Palantir’s involvement with military, enforcement (ICE), and border security.
• Karp’s “steel-manning” of points: Accepts the challenge of ensuring technology doesn’t exclude; believes best software can minimize harm (e.g., targeting in conflict zones).
• Border debate:
  • Host: “Are there 30 million people here illegally? 40, 50...? You say you call BS on that.”
  • Karp: “I'm not calling BS. I'm saying it's a very, very hard problem. But in the world of AI and software, you can't say it can't be done.” [08:57]
• Critiques simplistic solutions (e.g., blanket surveillance via cameras/facial recognition): “It could very easily be done if you eviscerate our civil liberties. Yeah, that’s not being done right.” [09:11]
• On policymakers’ dysfuntion: Borders remain open because political actors refuse to solve underlying problems, relying instead on imported labor and political expediency.

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3. Immigration: Complexity & Solutions

[12:19–14:13]

• Karp’s (partial) solution: Criminal aliens should leave; reiterates the complexity—defining “criminal,” process, standards, and preserving civil liberties.

• Quote:

  “How do you do that without eviscerating our civil liberties?... Do you do predictive data? That's the question.” — Alex Karp [12:51]

• Technical and ethical dilemmas abound; “These things are much, much harder than they look.”

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4. Palantir, Data Collection, and Civil Liberties

[14:13–20:02]

• Responds to fears of mass surveillance:
  • Palantir’s architecture is designed to protect, not undermine, civil liberties—features like immutable logs, strict ACLs, serialization.
  • “We had a Democratic administration come to us and basically ask us to do a Muslim database ... we've never done anything like this.” [14:13]
  • Challenges critics: “If you want to do data analytics in a way that eviscerates civil liberties, you don’t want our product … Hardest product in the world to abuse.” [16:04]
  • “No, we are not surveilling U.S. citizens.” [19:02]
• Encourages direct verification over hearsay: “Do not believe anything I’m saying. ... Spend 20 minutes looking at the product.” [15:55]
• Palantir’s refusal to work with China, Russia, or adversaries—turning away major revenue despite criticism.

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5. Israel, Gaza, and the Ethics of Modern War

[20:02–22:23]

• Israel’s right to exist and self-defense is clear to Karp. Asserts US would be “a lot more brutal” than Israel in similar situations.
• “If you want to minimize innocent human life being killed, you’re going to have to use software. ... It’s going to have to be better in the future.” [21:22]
• Confirms Palantir’s software is used in Israel, stating “it has been very precise and deadly. And I support that.” [22:17]

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6. Is the West “Committing Suicide”?

[22:23–29:15]

• Responds to Tucker Carlson’s framing: Does not see audience as suicidal, but warns, “you’re going to have to fight to win ... or it may be taken from you.” [22:51]
• Blames Western self-rejection, lack of cultural pride, and anti-meritocratic drift across Germany, France, UK, Canada.
  • Example: Germany—“To believe that there’s nothing special, unique and uniquely valuable about German culture is insanity.” [25:15]
  • In France, the collapse of meritocracy and aversion to celebrating success has led to stagnation.
• “The way you commit suicide in the west is you stop believing that your particular culture has something superior in it.” [25:12]
• On anti-meritocracy: “If you’re in Germany or France and you’re the best of the best, you’re going to wait 30 years before you have a real job.” [28:41]

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7. The American Cultural Difference & Threats

[29:15–31:52]

• Contrasts European “anti-Calvinist” moral cultures (where success is suspect) with American “Calvinism,” which celebrates individual achievement.
• “The underlying backdrop of America is this Calvinist view. And the anti-Calvinist cultures of Europe ... equate, like, you know, behind every great success is a great crime.” [29:38]
• Slippage here leads to tribal scapegoating, including (but not limited to) antisemitism:
  • “Derangement syndrome comes from ... classic liberal inputs have to be really, really fair, as fair as we can make them. And outputs are never going to be fair.” [31:36]

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8. China, Fentanyl, and Stability

[31:52–34:11]

• Karp’s perspective: US must be strong internally rather than obsessed with adversary’s tactics.
• Quote:

  “It’s their job to destabilize us. It’s our job to be stable.” — Alex Karp [34:11]

• Catalyzes discussion on China’s role in fentanyl trade, TikTok and other destabilizing elements—asserts only a resilient, self-aware society can withstand such threats.

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9. Cartels, Fentanyl, “Narco-Terrorism,” and Law

[34:12–36:46]

• On whether drug cartels should be treated as terrorists: “It’s a real problem. We should just [eliminate them]. ... The fact that somebody’s going to say ... we’ve got to use a ... form of law to the point where America has to die ... They’re actually paving the way for a fascism ... Americans are not going to tolerate that level of dysfunction.” [35:15–35:45]
• The result of not acting: Civil society collapses at the hands of both extremism and criminality.

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10. What Is (and Isn’t) Progressive?

[36:46–37:53]

• Karp: The modern progressive movement isn’t helping the working class, isn’t progressive—cites failure on crime, drugs, and wages.
• Quote:

  “Progressive is defined by the working class [doing] better tomorrow than they did today and know it. … It’s not progressive, by the way, to have so little competence or willing[ness] to use force that we get overrun by drugs.” — Alex Karp [36:52]

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11. Critique of Western Foreign Policy & the Neocon Approach

[37:53–39:26]

• Karp: He’s “never been a neocon” or believed in occupation; sees Western superiority as doing what “we do really well,” not exporting democracy or mass migration.
• Argues that the neocon and “pro-migration” worldviews share flawed logic—both fail because they ignore local realities and overreach.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Any technology that works can be abused. We are the single worst technology to use to abuse civil liberties." — Alex Karp [16:01]
• “The way you commit suicide in the West is you stop believing that your particular culture has something superior in it.” — Alex Karp [25:12]
• "It's their job to destabilize us. It's our job to be stable." — Alex Karp [34:11]
• “I've never been a neocon ... Why are we trying to make people us? … I'm very in favor of using force where it's needed, but force where it's needed and doing occupation are completely different things.” — Alex Karp [38:12]
• “We never worked with China, we never worked with Russia. … And by the way, it's cost Palantir a lot of money.” — Alex Karp [19:24]

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Segment Timestamps

• Palantir’s Success, Critics & Builders vs. Protesters: [00:01–05:50]
• Gaza, Immigration Criticisms & Border Policy: [05:50–12:19]
• On Criminal Aliens & Civil Liberties: [12:19–14:13]
• Data, Surveillance & Palantir’s Architecture: [14:13–20:02]
• Israel, Modern Warfare, & Palantir’s Role: [20:02–22:23]
• Has the West Lost Its Will? Europe vs. America: [22:23–29:15]
• Meritocracy, Calvinism & the Culture Divide: [29:15–31:52]
• China, Fentanyl & Internal Strength: [31:52–34:11]
• Cartel Terrorism, Dysfunction and Rule of Law: [34:12–36:46]
• Why “Progressives” Aren’t Progressive: [36:46–37:53]
• Foreign Policy & Neocon Critique: [37:53–39:26]

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Closing Words & Tone

The episode is an unvarnished, occasionally combative discussion that merges technical insight, cultural diagnosis, and forceful advocacy for individualism and meritocracy. Karp’s blunt, cerebral, and sometimes profane style offers a mix of technical rigor, social criticism, and passionate defense of both Palantir and the Western tradition of self-determination and success.

Final words:
“You're going to have to speak up and explain to people why you have the right to win, or it may be taken from you.” — Alex Karp [22:54]

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This summary captures the essential arguments, spirit, and technical discussions from Alex Karp's appearance, with clear structure and referenced timestamps for deeper listening or review.

Transcript

[Alex Karp]

Sometimes traditional stock analysis just lets you down. That's how I feel about the stock of Palantir. A billion dollars in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. The stock has just ripped. They have delivered here beyond the expectation. And the expectations were obviously remarkably high.

[Interviewer/Host]

Karp's the kind of guy who kicks your you know what, and then he gets in your face afterwards and he.

[Alex Karp]

Tells you that he just did that. As usual, I've been cautioned to be a little modest about our bombastic numbers. It's if you work for Palantir, everyone knows you're good. And to all supporters of Palantir, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year's. And to all people who've hated on us, enjoy your call.

[Interviewer/Host]

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Great to see you.

[Alex Karp]

Thanks for coming out.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

Hey, man, how are you? Awesome.

[Alex Karp]

How are you doing well, thanks for coming out, by the way. Thank all of you guys. Great crowd. You have the best people.

[Moderator/Host]

You have a lot of fans here. Yesterday we also had a number of protesters, hopefully enough. What are they protesting? They're protesting. Alex Karp being here. Categorize for me what's going on. Who are the protesters? Why do they protest? Who are the fans? Why do they love you? What can you see?

[Alex Karp]

Good taste. Good taste. Well, there is an issue of taste. And I think actually, you know, like, you always have to kind of try to steel, man the other side. And so, like, probably the people protesting may just have heard that they should protest me. But if you ask why, could they have an argument or why should you like me, love me in some cases? Honestly, some of you guys like and love me more than I like myself, which takes a little work. But I think this audience, as an example, though, is almost unfair because builders basically learn from watching, like, highly, highly talented people basically put a discount rate on everything anyone says and measure accomplishment based on outperformance against that discount rate. And you'll find if you're managing future builders, a lot of anyone who's Palantir in shape, that de facto you get street cred by outperforming against expectations, where expectations are kind of multiplied against a high discount rate. So I think what you'd find in this audience is two things converging. One, you know, the journey of Palantir is completely counterintuitive and especially technical experts. You know, the FD thing was viewed as, like, you weren't going to get a multiple. I was viewed as, like, this magical wizard who could get the smartest people in the world to work on something that was de facto stupid. We were quote unquote, terrible at public relations and we stood up for the US government even when it was really, really unpopular. And then there are a lot of people in the audience who agree with that. But I think as importantly, look at the results, look at the fruits we bore, look at the people we have on our side and, and then you get to the other side. And again, it would be easy just to dismiss the other side as, I don't know, stupid. They don't know what's going on. Let's just take the intellectually rigorous version of why you would be against what we're doing. There's a misconception that AI and tech is going to exclude everyone who's not in this room. And so a lot of people who are protesting, actually what they're protesting is there's no way to get in this room. And in fact the way aptitude and the way the implementation of things has worked, they're just wrong. And because they've assumed that, they then go into what I would call super aggressive non working philosophical or empirical models where they assume the losers are noble, but actually what they're really assuming is they can't win. And then you get to more subtle things. I do think there's an issue with our lead institutions that have taken the best and brightest and most valuable things you could teach someone and have turned it into some kind of Stalinistic bullshit that is anti correlated with everything that works in the west, which is like individual accomplishment. And if you had to say what is the central value, what is the central thing we do in America better than anyone else? It's like allowing people to express their individual artistry in a way where you fucking win, like with no apologies. And then because they think they're on the loser side of this, they assume morality can't be against them. And then they are trained to believe that and to understand it. Of course, if you're a professor at Berkeley teaching about Heidegger, you think losing is good because you lost. That's of course the whole reason you think that you think that because you are the noble loser. But again, where it gets super, super dangerous and where I do think we have to do a better job is you can't just assume there's no truth in what they believe, which is like we have not done an even adequate job of helping people.

[Interviewer/Host]

At the bottom is some part of their criticism about the situation in Gaza.

[Alex Karp]

Oh, so I'm getting, now you can get to no. Well, first of all, I get yelled out about, you know, what I get yelled at most about is actually enforcing the border. That's number one. So like I get our southern border. Our southern border. Like, so again, I'll go through all three. I get yelled at about, first of all, for decades I got yelled. So there are legitimate issues to go over. But I just want, for those of you who don't know the history, I've been yelled at for 20 years and protested primarily for supporting special operations in America. And you just gotta imagine that I'm being protested for bringing soldiers home alive and killing our enemies. And these are people who serve our country and been largely screwed by both parties. Like both parties have totally screwed them. And so I've been yelling. So that's, that's what I got yelled at. And then I got yelled at about that every single day. Then I got yelled at under Biden, under Obama, Biden, and especially obviously if Trump's doing it, you're definitely getting yelled at for enforcing the border. Now, I want to say I don't understand how in the world of AI, you cannot be for somewhat of a constrained border because we can make it work for every single person who's actually American and we can make laborers more valuable. We need extra labor that's not either completely the most talented in the world like many people in this room, or who are bringing skills. Also, we have enough transparency. You can't say you don't know who's in your country. It's complete bs. It's completely anti correlated, by the way, with being progressive. I grew up in the most progressive family ever. And every Friday night at Shabbat there was a lecture on how the Republicans are screwing our country but by undermining the worker and bringing in cheap labor. So I got yelled at about that and then I fought about that, actually mostly, and then commercially got yelled at about how could you have these FDEs? It's going to blow up your multiple. Now everybody wants to be an fde, but okay, so now I'm getting yelled at primarily about ice. What's going on? How's it going on? Is the treatment just the one thing I would say, and we can go through each one of these individual things. The weird, the obvious fact is, if you care about not being surveilled illegally, if you care about the treatment of people who come into the country illegally but deserve adequate treatment, if you care about lives in Gaza, in Ukraine and all over the world where Palantir is used, you're going to want the best software in the world because it's the only way you can reduce and more precisely target the people and justifiably. And, and actually the only way where you can say this person did this and they deserve to go. And so, you know, and each one of these things has to be steel manned.

[Interviewer/Host]

And then let's do that for the second one. The border. Tucker said yesterday when he spoke to President Trump there was no way to know. Are there 30 million people here illegally? 40, 50, whatever it happens to be. You say you call BS on that. We could easily do it.

[Alex Karp]

I didn't say we could easily do it. And I'm not calling BS on that. I'm actually saying it's a very, very hard problem. But in the world of AI and software, you can't say it can't be done.

[Interviewer/Host]

It could very easily be done if we put cameras everywhere and we just.

[Alex Karp]

Did facial recognition, but we don't want.

[Interviewer/Host]

To live in that.

[Alex Karp]

It could be very easily done if you eviscerate our civil liberties. Yeah, that's not being done right. That's like, I could grow your revenue at 400% but I'll lose money in perpetuity. It's not a business.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, of course. And so let's talk about what the solution to that would be. The border issue is actually a bit overstated. You have 80, 90% of the country believes the border should be orderly. That is actually something that most people.

[Alex Karp]

Okay, sorry, I just gotta interrupt you. 80, 90% of people believing in it happening are completely just non connected.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, of course, whatever the reason, the Biden administration didn't do it, you know, that's over. And now we're here and it's closed. But what would your solution be to identifying the people here?

[Alex Karp]

Well, again, I. No, I think you're jumping over a lot of things. It happened. What's interesting about political parties in America is that they're anti correlated with what they claim. Democrats claim to be progressive, like me. Having a border is not progressive. President Trump is conservative. Having a border is progressive. And unfortunately, until we change our polity, the people actually get a say on the border. By the way, the single best example of this is in Europe. So how do you explain the complete dysfunction in Europe? You know, most Europeans, Germans. There are many Germans in the audience. Hello. How many of you guys don't? How many of you guys are happy with the immigration situation you have in Germany? None. How many will talk about it publicly? How many will do anything? And then you get to These issues, the polity will frame the issue so that there is no solution. The only solution is to accept a solution no one wants. And that's what we had and it's not. And part of the problem, the reason the border is such an interesting thing is the reason you get an open border is politicians do not want to address the real problems of the society, which would mean the workers of today have more value tomorrow than they have today because they have no earthly clue how to do that. They're like, we'll just open the border and we'll get free labor and if you're on the left, we'll get people who will vote for us. It's like. And the reason, the way in which if you kind of steel man your questions, Gaza, Ukraine border, you have to raise the moral standards. So it's not again the way you led this is like if we just put up a camera. Yes, you can stop terrorism or you can have civil liberties. It's a little bit like you can have growth without revenue or you can have revenue without growth. If you want to solve the problem, you have to increase civil liberties and stop people from being in your country illegally. And the reason it doesn't happen is because there's slippage in the execution which is absolutely purposeful. And if we don't want this country to be what Europe is now, and I lived in Europe most of my life, my grandmother, if German law made any sense, would be German and I would have a German passport. If we don't want that, you have to close the border. You have to make sure that people who have a right to be here get to stay. People who don't have a right to, to stay get treated fairly by the way both sides have to step up. It's not enough to say I'm against the border or whatever, but I have no solution for what's going to happen for people, which is unfortunately what my charge.

[Interviewer/Host]

What's your solution for just your personal solution for what to do with 30 million people who are here illegally, what would you do?

[Alex Karp]

Well, first of all, my personal solution would be you divide the pie. Everybody who's criminal, criminal adjacent or has anything to do with crime, crime is going to leave and I'm going to make it so that they self deport because I'm going to come tomorrow. In a way you don't like it, that's number one and there's 90%. You know, you have a lot of.

[Interviewer/Host]

No, no, that's easy to agree on. Nobody wants felons Here it's easy to agree on.

[Alex Karp]

Yeah, but the paradigm is like, it's easy because again, you're like civilization. In any case, these things are much, much harder than they look. As an example, how do you do that without eviscerating our civil liberties? How do we make sure the criminals. How do you know someone's criminal? What standard of practice to use to define if someone's criminal? Are all criminals the same? Because de facto, if you go broad brush the way you basically are, it's like, yes, but being in the country illegally is a felon. Killing someone or potentially kill someone is a different kind. How do you deal with the people that are around them? How do you deal with law enforcement people? Databases that are not made public to you? How do you deal with imputed data? How do you deal with data? How do you do. Do you do predictive data?

[Interviewer/Host]

That's the question. So you're restating the question? I'm asking you to answer it.

[Alex Karp]

Well, I'm restating the question. So it's a question. That's the thing.

[Interviewer/Host]

I'm hoping you'd answer it.

[Panelist/Questioner]

Let me flesh this out a bit. So look, everyone on the right at least agrees that we should have a strong border. One of the criticisms or concerns that I hear on the right or from civil libertarians is that Palantir has a large scale data collection program on American citizens. So not foreign terrorists, not illegals, but American citizens. Can you just clear that up and say that either Palantir is not doing that or under what circumstances you do?

[Alex Karp]

Yeah. So first of all, I just want to like Palantir. There's a technical version which I'm going to give you. But we had a Democratic administration come to us and basically ask us to do a Muslim database. And now you would think, given the way I'm kind of besmirched as like some kind of. I don't know, it's like a Jewish conspiracy. That would be the first thing according to them I would do. We've never done anything like this. I've never done anything like this to actually understand the answer. And I love these questions about the skeptic because, like, I actually love skeptics. Like, I tend to divide the world into. You have Palantir derangement syndrome, which I don't spend a lot of time on. And I think they're anti builder. You have Palantir skeptics and you have people who don't like Palantir. If you're a Palantir skeptic or you don't like us. I want to engage. Any technology that works can be abused. We are the single worst technology to use to abuse civil liberties. Which is by the way, the reason why we could never get the NSA or the FBI to actually buy our product. And until recently, sigant institutions would never buy our product. Yeah, you laughed because it's like obvious if you want to do data analytics in a way that eviscerates our civil liberties, you don't want ACLs, you don't want branching, you don't want pipelining in more like logs. You don't want logs. And like a. You don't want serialization and deserialization in your product. If you have serialization and deserialization in your product that's intelligible, you are basically creating a product that's going to be really, really hard to abuse. And the logs are immutable in Palantir. So like, and by the way, the single most civil liberties heavy place in the world is hating on us every day. And you know what they're buying every day? Palantir. It's called Europe. And you know why? Sorry, I want to get to this because this is important because I get basically attacked by skeptics and anti Palantir people that deserve. And by the way, do not. This is a lesson for you. Do not believe anything I'm saying. And if you're online watching, I don't know, Nick Fuentes, call me. The Jewish conspiracy. Do yourself a favor and say, yeah, that could be really interesting. Spend 20 minutes looking at the product, 20 minutes looking at the product and say, is this not the hardest product to abuse in the world? Is it not built to be? And by the way, and then I'll get to direct answers of your questions. And by the way, that's made me very rich because the civil liberties protections we built into PG are the same things that we use to orchestrate large language models, the same way we orchestrate internally, and the same things you will need to make any enterprise in the world work. Because every enterprise in the world, public or private, needs deserialization, ACLS, branching, some kind of scaffolding to make the LLMs work. Which means the LLMs have an ability to do a taxonomy on your business, but without touching the business, that you can control where they're deployed, that they don't have access to your data, that you have immutable logs and that you can measure the output against against high fidelity data sets that can be viewed in any way permissible, and that the permissions are enforced, so. Hardest product in the world to abuse. I'm telling you, we've never done anything like this. Please verify. Do not trust me. Certainly do not trust the people. By the way, as a rule, the one thing I would say critical on the outside. Do not trust anyone who's never built anything. It's so easy to have all these opinions. You have all these fucking opinions about how the world works, how data works, how businesses work, how we got off the ground. I'm a conspiracy. Somehow they gave it to me. But not you. Even though I'd be the least likely person to get to sue the US government, twice. We had to hire the most important engineers in the world and be laughed and shat upon by the whole world for 20 years before anyone took it seriously. Because we were a conspiracy. And you know why people believe it? Because they've never had a job. They've never built anything. And anyone who has. No, that's just not the way the world works. For me to succeed, just like for you to succeed, you're gonna have to be 10x better than anyone else in the room, or you will fail. And that's true for me. That's true for you. That's true for every American.

[Moderator/Host]

And it's always been true.

[Alex Karp]

It's always been true. Sorry, sorry, I gotta get to this. And anyone who tells you, anyone, anyone, anyone who tells you that's not true, is you are the mark. You are the mark. If you're being taught, and that's what I would tell the protestors or the college, you're the mark. They're telling you I'm succeeding because I just got it handed to me and somehow it's unfair. No. No one handed anything to anyone at Palantir. PG is still the best product on the market. No one even tries to compete it. Foundry. Go ahead, go try to build it. Try to organize a team of people as good as Palantirians. Go ahead. Try, try. Try to do it for 20 years. Try to build a revisioning database.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

I would like to try to ask a question.

[Alex Karp]

Sorry, one second.

[Interviewer/Host]

All I want to say is I'm glad you're on our side.

[Alex Karp]

Then, my Lord, try to. Try to. Try to. Try. I don't need it. Try, try, try. Try to build ontology and FDA's five, six years before anyone thought it was. Try to raise the capital. Try to be left. But to your questions, no, we are not surveilling U.S. citizens. No, our data is not being used to aggregate and to create imputed weight. Because you could say, do you do it directly? Do you do it indirectly? That's a fair question. No. Would I do this? Don't have to believe me. But I've never done it in 20 years. I've told every single important. I do a lot of constructive engagement internally, like with countries, because people know I'm kind of on their side in the West. I've told every single major leader that's out there that I would not do something. And it's cost. And by the way, it's cost Palantir a lot of money. We never worked with China, we never worked with Russia. We never worked with adversarial. We got laughed out of the same room. Okay. Okay.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

This morning there was a report that there was some sort of an attack that Israel affected inside of Qatar against the terrorists of Hamas. I just want to give you a chance to talk about Israel, Gaza, that whole conflict. You've talked about it a lot. You have a lot of opinions. People have tried to obviously attack you and mischaracterize some of the things you see.

[Alex Karp]

Well, actually, they've often characterized what I've said correctly, so. But okay, yeah, I look, the Israel, they're for me, just before he gets as big. They're fundamental issues. Does Israel have a claim to the land? Yes. Does Israel. Yeah. So again, like, does Israel have a right to defend itself? Yes. Has Israel done something America would not have done under the same circumstances? I think America would have been a lot more brutal. And again, now then you get to the humanitarian thing and I'll say abstracting from there, I believe progressives in this country are working day and night to hurt poor people in this country. I don't believe they're progressive and I would say I do not. I believe that through direct and indirect engagement. I'm clearly not in favor of Palestinian innocent people being killed. I am not in favor of that and I'll tell you. So then the question is, are you allowed to fight war? And then the other point is, if you want to minimize human life, innocent human life being killed, you're going to have to use software. And this is going to have to be better in the future than it is now. It's true. Israel's ratio of like, casualty, innocent to non innocent, is better than anyone has ever had in the history of humanity. And it's going to have to be better in the future.

[Interviewer/Host]

Does your software help send aid to.

[Alex Karp]

The refugees or can it. You have to be very careful. I want to avoid, like, I can't go into Exact. Like, I'm not allowed to say where we're used, where we're not used. But then there's just sometimes a trick people do. It's like, oh, I'm not used for this and I'm not used for that. When in fact we are used in Israel. And I would say as a generalization where words are used in Israel, most people in this audience would be very supportive of. And it actually has been very precise and deadly. And I support that.

[Moderator/Host]

Alex, yesterday we had Tucker here and he made some references to opening borders, declining fertility rates and Africa, actual programs for assisted suicide in Canada, all of which may speak to the West's intention of committing suicide. Do you think the west generally is committing suicide? If so, why? What gets us here?

[Alex Karp]

I mean, you have to disambiguate America. Like, I walked around your audience. This is not an audience committing suicide. This audience fighting to win. And before I get to this question, and the one thing I would tell you guys is you're going to have to fight to win. Because currently I'm one of the few people, other people on stage who speak up. You're going to have to speak up and explain to people why you have the right to win or it may be taken from you. And so you're going to have to fight. And by the way, here, I mean, I don't mean left, right here, both parties need a little bit of kick in the ass here. Like, it's like, it's just, you know, we have a right to win. We need to win. And you have an individual right to fight to win. And in this country, and it should not be taken away from you. And it could be if you don't stand up and tell people, no, your idea is ridiculous. And let me explain to you how this works then. I mean, the country, for those of you who don't know, I spent half my life, I wrote this PhD in Germany. And so it's a country. I know France reasonably well, actually. But when I'm talking about Europe, Europe is obviously not Europe. You have east and West Europe and Eastern European countries are very, very different than Western European countries. Denmark's very different, and the Nordics are very different. So, but generally, when people in this country are in general talking about, you know, committing suicide, they're really thinking in their mind's eye. Germany. It's like you have a country with, you know, arguably, you know, had, you know, pre software AI, the best industrial base in the world, the best schools in the world. They have vocational schools. So, like you know, Germany, unlike, you know, they never neglected their working class. Like you have two different kinds of vocational schools in Germany. You have for like lower level and high. High level vocational training in Germany puts you on the factory floor doing important things and you earn a real salary with real benefits, your whole life and have rights. It has best health care, best life. And for those of you who embrace a lascivious lifestyle, by far the best. Think about it. And so really the high and the highest level of data protection, highest level integrity, best position to win. And okay, suddenly you got the energy. They basically blew up the energy market, they blew up immigration, and they blew up essentially their tech scene. And now it's very hard to ask and answer the question what is the future? As a kind of sideline diagnostic. And like Peter and I, who they should be calling every day on speed Dale, like they spend every day talking about us. For those of you who are German, you'll know like every single day, three times a day is Peter's Darth Vader and I'm Lord Sif. Meanwhile they should be calling us. The way you commit suicide in the west is you stop believing that your particular culture has something superior in it. Like, yes, Germany screwed up a lot of stuff in World War II, but to believe that there's nothing special, unique and uniquely valuable about German culture is insanity. It's like complete insanity. And there's nothing wrong with saying you're proud to be German. Like in German, you're literally far right of center if you're like ja I spinstoltztle. It's just ein that will put you like, I'm proud to be German. So like, like there are even at Palantir. One of the crazy things about Palantir is how German we are. Like we take everything to like every question to like the nth degree and then recatenate the thing before we make a decision. Every single person at Palantir.

[Panelist/Questioner]

So you know, I get that, you know, Germany has this problem to some degree with being able to look in the mirror, but what about France and Britain, right? They won World War II. Why are they pursuing the same policies?

[Interviewer/Host]

Canada and the policy we're talking about, just to be clear, is just allowing an extreme amount of immigration.

[Moderator/Host]

Well, I'm trying to, I'm trying. No, actually I'm trying to ask if there's a thread that connect declining with open bonds.

[Alex Karp]

The jump off place here is for very different and very non connected reasons. They all decided there was nothing special about their culture, right? And like, and Again, France's would be even better example because they have a much better narrative. They actually had a resistance. It wasn't as big as people say, but it existed. France, you know, the crazy thing about LLMs is it should have been built. And I mean the whole center of gravity should be in France. Like the two best math cultures in the world are Russia and France. And like we hire ad nauseam from France. So. But France, they gave up on two things. And France actually might even be the better example if you in France, for those of you who aren't French, France is religiously focused on meritocracy. So they have this one school you have to get into, it's all about math. And the reasons about math is the socialists in France decided that having high verbal IQ was a class based thing. And so they religiously into meritocracy. And the whole definition of it is mathematical aptitude. France is complicated. You have far right, far left in between somehow and in other countries. It's very hard to articulate in France why you think French culture is better than any other culture in Europe from a French perspective. And then for example, concretely, if you want to build a product, if you build it in France, it should be absolutely mathematical and aesthetic. If you build it in Germany, it's going to have to be conceptual and manufacturing base. You're going to have a different tech scene, a different way of organizing it. And then last, not least, and this is the thing we have to fight for the most, they become anti meritocratic. So like if you're in Germany or France and you're the best of the best of the best, you're going to wait 30 years before you have a real job. Why? Because.

[Moderator/Host]

Why they become anti meritocratic?

[Alex Karp]

Well, there's again the people out there protesting or the people, the faculty members at Berkeley have taught them to protest. The.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, a lot of strays for Berkeley.

[Alex Karp]

Well, we can pick on Stanford, the Chancellor, but they equate morally losing with losing in the real world, with winning in the like immorally. And it seems like a crazy way to think because in the end everyone loses value.

[Moderator/Host]

So and I asked this because I heard someone have a talk about this where the moral spectrum used to be strong and weak, you know, cavemen. The strongest would survive and the weakest would die. And that was how we measured what was right and what was wrong. And then what became right and wrong was this notion of good and evil, turn the cheek, compassion, et cetera.

[Alex Karp]

There are many, many different schools of Christianity and So like even in this case, like Lutheran Christianity and Catholic French Christianity are basically not correlated. They're both Christian. What's special about America was Calvinism. Like we are the most Calvinist culture in the world and actually the protesters are anti Calvinism. What does Calvinism mean? Calvinism celebrates success de facto. Almost everybody in America, that is whether you're Jewish, Muslim, Christian. The underlying backdrop of America is this Calvinist view. And the anti Calvinist cultures of Europe, Lutheranism, other kinds of cultures, they do equate like, you know, behind every great success is a great crime is a famous Voltairian classic. And it's. And we don't have this in this country. If this slips, you basically end up in a situation where everybody who is succeeding or is perceived to be in a group that is disproportionately succeeding and ends up on the firing wall. And what does that happen to the whole society? Your gd, you know, one of the.

[Moderator/Host]

More interesting are we seeing that with antisemitism?

[Alex Karp]

One of the more interesting facts about France is between 61 and 91 their GDP grew faster than America's.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

Yeah.

[Alex Karp]

So this is a very special culture. Now, the anti Semitism. Well, I don't particularly like. I actually think it should be disambiguated. I actually like someone liking or not liking a Jewish person or being. Being skeptical of Jews. That's irrelevant. Somebody who has Jewish derangement syndrome that wants to burn down the whole society to get rid of the obvious fact that Jews do well under a meritocratic situation. That's a problem for everybody, not just for Jews. And it should be very much focused. Like, you know, in private I'm very critical of like these advocacy groups and I'm constantly hanging up on them. And of course I'm not going to give you any fucking money. This is the most ridiculous bullshit ever. Like, you're like, what the fuck goes. It's like the best culture in the world and we got. But like the thing that becomes dangerous is when you have like derangement syndrome. And the derangement syndrome comes from. Yeah, you know, if you're classic. The classic liberal inputs have to be really, really fair, as fair as we can make them. And outputs are never going to be fair.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

Alex, can I ask you about China for one second? So we talked with Tulsi yesterday and one of the things, you know, just to connect the dots, like we were able to designate these cartels as terrorist organizations. There's all this drugs flowing in. We're trying to shut that down. The precursors are still coming in very aggressively from China. And so I'm just curious, what is the geopolitical frame that we need to think about China in how much are they facilitating everything that's happening at the southern border? How responsible may they be for the fentanyl epidemic in the United States? How should, what should we do about it?

[Alex Karp]

Well, you know, it's funny, like, obviously Palantir and I are wildly skeptical of the ccp, but you know, I think I'm the highest ranked Tai Chi practitioner in corporate life in the world. And it's like in you, you have.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

You'Re like, sorry, say that again. You're like S level Tai Chi.

[Alex Karp]

Like, well, you know, like that video, that was very high level internal martial arts. I'm not at that, that level, but I, I mean, among my corporate peers, it's like, yeah, I have the equivalent in V2 max terms of like a 72, right. Or something like that. And in Tai chi and the, the you, you, you. The. The way, the way. The kind of part of the culture that I admire works, like in Tai Chi is you, you put pressure on all parts of the system to expose the weak part. Part of the system internally of your adversary. And that is just the way Chinese, like, at least Tai chi martial arts works. They're not useful for fighting, but it is very useful for thinking Tai Chi or as useful for fighting as you know. And if you want to engage, the way an engagement with China works is you make your. Or in Tai chi terms, you want to engage with China, you better make sure the internal dynamics of this country are very strong. Just magically the external dynamics over there will shift.

[Interviewer/Host]

Are they trying to destabilize our country with fentanyl, with TikTok? And do you have concerns about.

[Alex Karp]

Well, okay, obviously, yeah, obviously. But again, I'll tell you what. So they're obviously, I'm in full agreement. No, yeah, no, but, but like, but my version always of this is it's their job to destabilize us. It's our job to be stable. And like, you know, it's like when you're. Most people here running successful businesses, it's like, well said.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

It's our job to be stable.

[Alex Karp]

It's our stable. Like if you want it, the Tai chi version of like, you're not gonna have to enter the fight if you're strong. There is no fight. If there's a fight you like, the famous martial arts thing is like, if you're in a fight, you're not a martial Artist. Correct. So, and this is like the same thing in business, like, when you get to the point where you're competing with someone you've really sucked, fuck something up. Like if you look at the Palantir version. Yeah, do FDEs, do ontology. Do. Do ontology. Orchestrate them at scale grow 93%. People don't want or work with the US government. People are like, that's kind of hard and really unfun.

[Interviewer/Host]

Let me give you a precise question here about these cartels who are bringing fentanyl into the country. They're killing 100,000Americans a year. Nine, 11. We lost 3,000 people, tragically. If they're not terrorists, then how would you define them? And should we be using the same test as to our engagement with them? And should we be eliminating them as terrorists with prejudice?

[Alex Karp]

Well, I obviously agree with that. I think, honestly, the problem is they even think they can get away with this. One of the more interesting things is when you read people who are against America taking out, you know, these narco terrorists, it's always something like, we've got to use a reified, meaning overly deterministic form of law to the point where America has to die. Back to your question.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, due process for Al Qaeda makes no sense.

[Alex Karp]

Well, it's like the interesting thing here, actually, with a point of agreement, is if you allow. Okay, just take like an obvious example of, like, for example, fraud. Human Rights Watch, okay, so they'll take a standard, they'll move the standard, and then the downstream consequences of it is that we've got to disappear and die. Right? But then, even worse than that, they're actually paving the way for a fascism because Americans and no one else are going to tolerate that level of dysfunction. These fuckers are killing 50, 100,000 of our people. The fact that they think they can get away with this is a real problem. We should just. And it's like. And the fact that somebody's going to say, again, you have the European version. It's like, you know, or any. It's like, if you allow, you have to protect the data and find the terrorists, because otherwise you get a form of fascism. You get it on the left because we have terror attacks and fentanyl across our street. And you get it on the classic far, far right, which is, Alex, what.

[Audience Member/Questioner]

Did you mean earlier when you said progressives want you to be poor? I may be paraphrasing and critical, but.

[Alex Karp]

The modern progressive movement is clearly not progressive. Progressive is defined by the working class do better tomorrow than they did Today and know it. Right. Okay. To do that, you need things that you can do at scale now. Vocational training on AI based systems, making our laborers more valuable, obviously, closing the border so that you don't reduce the amount that you pay people and also eviscerate legal protections. This is not progressive. It's not progressive, by the way, to have so little competence or willing to use force that we get overrun by drugs. Who do those drugs go to? Disproportionately poor people of color?

[Interviewer/Host]

Yes.

[Alex Karp]

It's not progressive to have crime rates. You know, to be a civil war zone. To be a war zone, you have to have five deaths per hundred thousand. That's like half our cities. How's that progressive? What you mean you care about poor people so much you're just gonna let them kill each other?

[Panelist/Questioner]

All right, can you shift gears here? So, Alex, I think you've developed a little bit of a reputation of a defender for the west, and you've talked about that here. I'm wondering, can you criticize any aspect of Western foreign policy? Like, for example, during the war, if on terror, was it a good idea to occupy Afghanistan?

[Alex Karp]

I've never been in neocon. Like, this is the thing. It's like, I've never been a neocon. I actually don't think that's the pro Western. The pro Western superiority thing is we do what we do really well. Why are we trying to make people us? I've never understood this, by the way. The neocon thing, the pro migration people and the pro occupation people abroad, it's. It's the same philosophy. I don't actually think migration is working in the west because people don't want to change, I don't think. And why are we teaching the Arab Middle east how to live better? The countries that I won't go into names that seem to love and revere me and Palantir, they're doing really well. They have a way of living their life. It works really well. It largely involves different ways of living than we would. There's no First Amendment. There's really not a Fourth Amendment. And I'm not that interested in that. And by the way, I think that destabilizes everyone. So I completely. I am against. I am very in favor of using force where it's needed, but force where it's needed and doing occupation are completely different things. And you will see across the world, people who want to convince, like, I don't know, convince Afghani villagers to be pro feminist will also explain to you that the people that end up coming here are going to be pro Western in their values. Three generations out. It's completely.

[Interviewer/Host]

I want to thank you for being on our side and I want to thank my wife for buying your stock at $20.

[Alex Karp]

Thank you.

[Moderator/Host]

Alex, we deeply appreciate you being here and I think that your voice is one of the most important voices in the world today. And I thought this was such an important voice to bring forward. I don't see you do a lot of long form. I don't see a lot of your long form get public. I think this is so important for everyone to hear, to swallow, to digest, and hopefully to evolve and grow from it. And I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for being here today. Please join me in thanking Alex Carr.

[Alex Karp]

Thank you. Thanks.

[Interviewer/Host]

Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah.

[Alex Karp]

Thank you, sir. Thank you. That's right.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.