Alex Karp Defends Palantir’s Work With ICE

Summary

DealBook Summit: Alex Karp Defends Palantir’s Work With ICE

Podcast: DealBook Summit | Host: The New York Times (Andrew Ross Sorkin)
Guest: Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies
Date: December 4, 2025
Recorded: Live at DealBook Summit, NYC, December 3, 2025

---

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode features a candid, often combative conversation between Palantir CEO Alex Karp and NYT journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, probing Palantir's controversial government work (notably with ICE), moral responsibility in technology, the CEO’s polarizing political views, and the complexities of defending Western values in a new technological, geopolitical landscape. Karp vigorously defends Palantir’s mission and practices, critiques both elite liberal and conservative narratives, and reflects on the personal philosophy and upbringing that inform his approach to leadership and national service.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Controversy, Palantir’s Core Mission, and Western Power

• Palantir’s Role: Known for “helping governments make sense of complicated data,” especially in intelligence, law enforcement, and military contexts. Business booming with advances in AI.
• Karp on Support for Israel: Palantir is outspoken in support for allies like Israel (clients include the IDF and Mossad). Karp draws a distinction between supporting Israel’s position versus endorsing every Israeli decision.

  “It doesn't actually mean that you support every decision. It means you support them having a superior position to their adversaries.” (02:09)

• Western Values and ‘Organized Violence’:
  • Karp references his book, quoting Huntington: The West’s supremacy isn’t from superior ideas, but from the superior application of organized violence.
  • Karp insists that Western ideals matter, but without the capacity for deterrence and defense, values alone are not enough.

  “No one would listen to the spirit of our ideas if our ability to organize in violence was inferior.” (03:46)

2. University Culture, American Meritocracy, and Cynicism toward ‘Progressivism’

• Critique of Elite Institutions:
  • Says academia and elite circles have shifted from defending foundational American principles to undermining meritocracy and core values.

  “What’s being called progressive is in any way progressive is a complete farce… That was 50 years ago. That's what it means to be a progressive. Growing up, the concern was illegal immigration undermining American workers—not open borders or meritocracy-free systems.” (06:41)

• Skepticism toward Imposing Values:

  “I'm skeptical of imposing values… I don’t think cultural assimilation has worked in the last 50 years and that’s an obvious truth you’re not allowed to say.” (05:23)

• Critique of Modern Progressivism: Claims that handouts and non-meritocratic reforms don’t help the poor, particularly Black Americans in cities.

3. Political Identity, Immigration, & Deterrence

• On Alleged Political Shift: Karp argues that parties have shifted, not him. Outspoken that his core issues are immigration and deterrence, not social ones like abortion or LGBTQ rights.
• Media and Influence:

  “The media at the Washington Post and New York Times doesn’t always like me. That’s great, because about 10 million people do… I’ll use my whole influence to make sure this country stays skeptical on migration and has deterrent capacity that it only uses selectively.” (09:29)

4. Palantir & ICE — Technology, Empathy, and Selectivity

• ICE Collaboration: Sorkin presses Karp on Palantir’s involvement with ICE and harsh immigration enforcement. Does he have misgivings about the human cost?
  • Karp counters with the claim that American empathy is “selective,” typically excluding poor and working-class (especially white males); society cares about certain victims but not about the working class or former inmates.

  “There is selective, instrumental use of empathy that somehow is only applied at the point where it would help…” (11:56)

  • Strongly argues that calls for rule-of-law and precision in enforcement only bolster the case for Palantir’s software.
• Surveillance Allegations and Human Rights: Repeatedly, Karp claims Palantir’s product cannot easily be abused for surveillance because of built-in transparency.

  “Our product is the single hardest product in the world to abuse. …Every single step that you take is absolutely transparent.” (18:52)

• Red Lines: When pressed about potential abuses, Karp notes Palantir has refused contracts with regimes or agencies engaged in racial profiling, surveillance of Muslims, or adversarial nations (Russia, China).

  “We pulled our product from law enforcement institutions that were purely doing profiling … we refused to do it.” (21:41)

5. Press Criticism & Public Dialogue

• Media Frustrations: Karp unloads on the NYT for “technically illiterate” stories, arguing credibility is lost with technical audiences, which ultimately undermines democracy.

  “When you write a technically completely illiterate article, you lose a lot of credibility with people who are technical…” (20:54)

• Call to Speak Up: Urges the audience, especially those who quietly agree, to be more vocal:

  “If you do not speak up, the people who are disagreeing with me or think I'm stupid… you have to speak up. And you cannot blame the far left...when they speak up for their views. Do you speak up for yours?” (32:16)

6. Business, Government, and Risk

• On U.S. Government Investment: Sorkin asks if Palantir would take public money in exchange for equity if pressed by the government.
  • Karp’s view: Bailouts are fundamentally unjust if failing leaders keep bonuses while taxpayers absorb risk. He prides Palantir on absorbing full risk of failure; says the only people who pay full price for failure are the poor.
  • Quote:

    “If you want to make your stupid decisions and then you go to the White House and ask for money, you should absorb the full risk of that… The only people who pay the price for being wrong... are poor people.” (28:35, 31:45)

• Company Mission: Emphasizes that Palantir isn't a "normal" company but values-driven and combative by design.

7. On Trump, Fascism, and Political Identity

• Is Trump a Fascist? Karp, who wrote his college thesis on fascism, dismisses the notion:
  • “Of course not. I think that's stupid, honestly… We have a democratic society, and he won in a landslide. I don't see any sign of him being [a fascist].” (26:47)

8. Authenticity and Leadership Style

• Candid Speech: Sorkin highlights Karp’s unusual outspokenness; Karp admits he doesn’t say everything he thinks, but close (“That would get awesome…” (34:03)).
• Why candor?
  • “When you’re not saying roughly what you think… what the people in the audience actually perceive is you’re lying. …You lose the smartest people inside… they know he’s telling them the truth.” (34:09–35:00)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On selectivity in empathy and coverage:

  “There's a selective, instrumental use of empathy that somehow is only applied at the point where it would help.” — Alex Karp (11:56)

• On American meritocracy and military deterrence:

  “Every single person in the world believes, outside of the faculty of Harvard, and certainly all of our adversaries know to be true, is that no one would listen to the spirit of our ideas if our ability to organize in violence was inferior.” — Alex Karp (03:46)

• On modern progressivism:

  “Being progressive doesn’t mean just, oh, it feels so good to be involved in dysfunction… That’s not progressive, that’s pretend. That’s honestly cowardly.” — Alex Karp (06:41)

• On the price of being wrong:

  “The only people who pay the price for being wrong in this culture, in complete fashion, are poor people. The rest of us somehow outsource all the times we’re wrong and stupid to the whole society.” — Alex Karp (31:45)

• On Palantir’s controversial reputation:

  “I divide the world into Palantir, essentially, and Palantir derangement Syndrome, Palantir skeptics and Palantir haters. My biggest fans started off as Palantir skeptics and Palantir haters. I believe that someday almost everyone in this audience is going to agree with me.” — Alex Karp (12:54)

• On speaking up:

  “The one thing I would say to people in the audience, a lot of you think I’m right… You better speak up... Do you speak up for your views?” — Alex Karp (32:16)

---

Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Introduction & Palantir’s mission — 01:08–02:50
• Karp on Western power and violence — 02:50–04:33
• University critique & values — 04:33–07:56
• Karp's political evolution, priorities — 07:56–10:44
• Palantir’s work with ICE, empathy & the working class — 10:44–15:47
• Ex-employees' critique & surveillance discussion — 15:47–18:52
• Human rights, red lines, and product choices — 21:20–24:34
• Trump, fascism, political nuance — 26:35–27:56
• Palantir, US government investment, and risk — 28:16–32:13
• On authenticity and leadership — 33:09–36:15
• Personal background: dyslexia & motivation — 36:49–39:17
• Philosophy of helping, agency, American exceptionalism — 40:19–43:50
• Conclusion — 43:50–44:14

---

Tone Notes

• Karp: Blunt, combative, sometimes caustic, unapologetically intellectual, passionate, occasionally dismissive of both right and left. Emphasizes realism, skepticism of conventional wisdom, and the importance of agency.
• Sorkin: Persistent, probing, respectful but direct, seeking clarification and accountability.

---

For Listeners New to the Episode

If you want a front-row seat to one of tech’s most polarizing and influential CEOs, speaking with unusual frankness about the intersection of technology, national security, politics, and culture—in a way that challenges both progressive and conservative listeners—this episode delivers. Alex Karp vigorously defends Palantir’s work, including with ICE, critiques the limitations of empathy and the failures of elite discourse, and calls for a renewed focus on meritocracy and American agency in an era of strategic competition and technological upheaval.

---

End of summary

Transcript

[A]

This episode was recorded at the 2025 DealBook Summit. This year's Dealbook Summit sponsors include premier sponsor Accenture, associate sponsors U.S. bank Vanguard Invesco, QQQ and University of Michigan supporting sponsor Capital One and contributing sponsor Invest Puerto Rico.

I care about two issues. I care about immigration and re establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. And on those two issues, those two issues this president has performed.

[B]

This is Andrew Osorkin with the New York Times and you're listening to interviews from our annual Dealbook Summit recorded on December 3rd in New York City.

Good morning everybody. Palantir's Alex Karp is here and we are going to get into it. Alex, thank you for being here.

Palantir is named after the seeing stones in JRR's Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Palantir has a complicated, let's say sometimes secretive, controversial business that helps the US and other countries and governments around the world make sense of complicated data. That's what they do. Its business has soared in the age of artificial intelligence. Today it is among the top 30 most valuable companies in the world. It is worth $4,400 billion. And after October 7th, Karp has been perhaps singularly the most outspoken CEO in America. To support Israel. Week after the attack, he took out a full page ad in this newspaper. The New York Times had four words on it said Palantir stands with Israel should say the IDF and Mossad are clients of of Palantir. There are a lot of questions about what they are doing here in the US including their contract with ICE and their work around the world. And we are going to talk about all of it. Alex, thank you for being with us.

[A]

Couldn't imagine why we're controversial. Couldn't imagine.

[B]

Let's discuss this because I think, by.

[A]

The way, I see that as we're on the side of, I mean, you know, when you support allies in funny in Israel, which I guess typically is the most controversial in public, interestingly often the least controversial in private. And I do support all those things. It doesn't actually mean that you support every decision. It means you support them having a superior position to their adversaries. That really starts with America, which is I think one of the real problems that the non controversial companies have is they can't admit what they think in private, which is they believe what they are doing is better and superior to what other people are doing.

[B]

I want to get into all of that, but I'll tell you where I want to start. I Want to start with this? You wrote a book last year called the Technological Republic, and you quote Samuel Huntington in it that argues the following. Argues that the rise of the west was not made possible, quote, by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. What do you mean by that? And is that what Palantir ultimately does?

[A]

Well, I think one of the most interesting about that, about the quotes that quote is it's indisputably and obviously true.

[B]

You genuinely believe that the US this idea of ideas, values, religion, has nothing to do with it? You think it really is about organizing violence?

[A]

No, no, no, no. Sorry. I didn't say that our ideas aren't important. Obviously. I come from an academic family, and I was planning to be an academic before I realized it was worthless and I'd be better at building things.

[B]

We should talk about that, too.

[A]

But, like, okay, one of the biggest problems we have in our elite institutions, especially our Ivy Leagues, is this indisputable truth that no one would listen to the spirit of our ideas if our ability to organize in violence was inferior. That every single person in the world believes outside of the faculty of Harvard and certainly all of our adversaries know to be true, is viewed as something that's kind of worthy of great discussion and dispute. And the primary reason they dispute it, honestly, is because at their core, they want to undermine the superiority of Western values, which are meritocracy, rule of law, accepting that inputs and outputs are not the same, that are the basis of building the superiority on the military plane.

[B]

You think that the university culture is trying to undermine that?

[A]

Well, I think it's one. I think it's moved from the 50s where it was trying to explain why our Constitution is the best way to organize our lives, not others, why meritocracy is necessary, even if it means letting in immigrants to your institution, why inputs and outputs aren't the same, why the first, second, third, Fourth Amendment are unique, and why it was worth standing up for. These values has literally been transformed, especially in the humanities departments, to. Of course, none of that could work because no one like us is good at doing that, basically. I mean, that's like. And therefore the whole thing couldn't work. And downstream of that is enormous dysfunction. And you see this all in all sorts of issues. Our primary and most important adversary, I say adversary consciously and not enemy, is China. And we will decide. AI and the ability to implement it on the battlefield primarily will decide the values, that is the norms, the laws, and the spirit of the laws that are imposed upon us across the globe. And if you think for a minute they believe anything that we're being taught in our idiotic faculty, you are even more idiotic than the professors teaching you it. And I'll tell you, if you actually believe in these values. Again, I, I'm not a neocon. I never was. That's why I'm skeptical of immigration, because I don't think cultural. All this cultural assimilation hasn't worked in the last 50 years and that's an obvious truth. You're also not allowed to say I'm skeptical of imposing values on other people. I never believed we should or try to make their Middle East Wilsonian people like a Wilsonian ideal imposed upon them. If you believe for a second that anyone else outside this country believes that we are going to defend our values without superiority of moral violence, you're just living in a world that doesn't exist. It does not exist. And no matter how much you try to impose it on the rest of us, it still won't exist.

[B]

Okay, I want to talk about you for a second and your own politics and your shift in politics. By the way, there's a piece in the Washington Post about you this morning that gets into some of this.

[A]

You grew up only because I have great respect for you. I don't interrupt you immediately. I didn't shift my politics. The political parties have shifted their politics. The idea that what's being called progressive is in any way progressive is a complete farce. I've been progressive since the beginning of Palantir. I continue to be. I grew up in a highly intellectual, mostly Jewish, incredibly left wing environment. And every Saturday and every Friday I heard a lecture about how the conservatives are going to destroy this country with illegal immigration because it's going to undermine the fabric of the American worker. That was 50 years ago. That's what it means to be a progressive. Being progressive doesn't mean just, oh, I, oh, it feels so good to be involved in dysfunction. Things that can never work. A form of socialism that's never worked, having no meritocracy, that's not progressive, that's pretend. That's honestly cowardly. And most people, half my old party knows it. They don't speak up. It's bullshit. It will never work. You know the biggest problem with that is it's not helping the poor people that they claim served. If you think that's helping a black person in the inner city, you're ridiculous. The last thing anyone in this country needs is a dysfunctional educational system and handouts that have never worked and are not going to work.

[B]

Okay, let me ask you, though, because I know you say you didn't shift your view, but I do want to read you something that appears as if you shifted your view. This is back in 2017, about Trump. You said, quote, I respect nothing about the dude. It would be hard to make up someone I find less appealing.

[A]

You know, there's a lot of things that are about quoted about me that were, like, not quoted in public. Like in this book that, you know, biography, there's tons and tons of quotes. I'll give you a different version of this. A lot of these, quote, not, you're not really doing this. And I have actually, we've been at this for almost a decade. And he was kind enough to interview me when I was a complete clown and joke to everyone else besides me and our Motley Crue appellant. And I greatly appreciate that.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

One of the biggest lessons and just a slight detour to the wonderful and very important country of Germany that is seeming to be crashing its German functionality and competence into the ground of political correctness that it somehow can escape for historical reasons, the minute you judge somebody by anything but the issues you agree with. So in Germany, the Green Party and the Socialists have convinced the majority party they can never really vote with the far right. On immigration, I care about two issues. I care about immigration and re establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. And on those two issues, those two issues, this president has performed, and those are the two issues I care about.

[B]

So what were the issues that you didn't agree with? And when you said he was not an appealing dude before, well, what was that?

[A]

Well, first of all, you're quoting somebody who's quoting me off the record. That's in the public record. I care about two issues. I am not going to be proxy corralled into having no power by something of like. Well, I care about these two issues. By the way, I was a supporter of the Democratic Party. What two issues did the Democratic Party not perform on? Does anyone think the Democratic Party performed on migration or deterrence? That's crazy. Now you can care about different issues. I'm pro choice. Not my number one issue. I'm wildly pro gay rights. It's not my number one issue. The minute you allow yourself to be corralled into. I disagree with this person. I disagree. You've basically transferred your power to one party, Palantir, and I am not transferring my power and our influence which, honestly, the mainstream media at the Washington Post and at the New York Times doesn't always like me. That's great, because you know who does like me? About 10 million people. People, primarily dudes in this country. And you know what? I'm going to use my whole influence to make sure this country stays skeptical on migration and has a deterrent capacity that it only uses selectively.

[B]

Okay, let me ask you this. And this goes to maybe, I don't know if it has to do with just being a blunt instrument, compassion, what have you. I think you could argue in terms of immigration policy that you don't want to have illegal immigrants in the country or you want to prevent illegal immigrants from coming into the country, et cetera. We are now seeing ICE working its way around the country and oftentimes taking people, ripping people off the streets with masks on. You and Palantir are working hand in hand with ice. That's public. What do you make of that? What do you make of the. It's not necessarily the policy, but the approach to the policy.

[A]

Let me give you my critique of what I would call. I think you're the. This questioning is proxy culpable of. Our country has selective empathy for everybody but working class, particularly white males. So when you look at coverage in mainstream newspapers about the constitutionality of blowing up boats that are bringing fentanyl here, I guarantee you if that fentanyl was killing people at schools we went to, potentially your kids are going to. It would be constitutional to blow up those boats. There is selective.

Instrumental use of empathy that somehow is only applied at the point where it would help. Sorry, sorry. You asked the question. You're going to get the full answer. You don't want the full answer. You don't want. You brought me on stage. You know what you're getting, okay? And by the way, I'm on stage, and I know a lot of the people on stage brought are skeptical of me. You know why I'm on stage here? Because at Palantir, and I encourage you to think of this, I divide the world into Palantir, essentially, and Palantir derangement Syndrome, Palantir skeptics and Palantir haters. My biggest fans started off as Palantir skeptics and Palantir haters. I believe that someday almost everyone in this audience is going to agree with me. You may not like me now, but you're going to agree later. I'll also tell you something. Look to the left, look to the right. The person you think is offended by this Actually agrees with me. That is 100% true.

[B]

Okay, well.

[A]

Okay, sorry. And yeah, it's 100% true. And keep that in mind. I would tell you, I will tell you a secret that I hope the New York Times and the Washington Post doesn't listen to. Okay, sorry.

[B]

I just want to bring us back to this one issue, which is. No, no, you talked about the rule of law and you talked about things being constitutional. And so here we're talking about these boats, for example, that were blown up, right. And whether you have empathy for them or not, given the folks who are getting killed by fentanyl, the question is whether this is being done on a constitutional basis and being done in the right way. And if it's not being done in the right way, how do you feel about that?

[A]

Of course. But part of the reason why I like this questioning is the more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you're going to need my product. So you keep pushing on making a constitutional. I'm totally supportive of that. You know, a constitutional, you would need to understand where the things are going, how are they going, under what conditions, where do they belong.

[B]

But I'm asking you, just as a person, on a sort of, sort of a moral basis, as a human. When you see young people, mothers and fathers and families getting ripped apart with the masks on, with the ICE folks, with how you, what you think of.

[A]

That, of course, but you're, this is, you're at this point, you're abusing empathy. Because I of course don't like that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

No one likes that. No, American, this is the fairest, least bigoted, most open minded culture in the world. Okay, but if you don't like, and.

[B]

You say, hey, government, you're gonna let me finish, please.

[A]

Okay, so in this country, you have 1% of the country in prison, 1% who were in prison and therefore have no rights. Do you know what happens to you when you go to prison? They take you away from your kids. You know who that happens to? Disproportionately Working class, disproportionately black and Hispanic men and white men in the underclass. Where are the thousands of articles about them? Nobody cares. And they don't care because it does not either serve the ability, the desire to force me to vote for one party, which basically takes away all my power. That's effectually what it does. If I agree to say this is the worst thing in the world, I essentially have given up my vote. My vote is not for You. My vote is for these two issues. The second reason they don't care is because somehow no one has empathy with any of those people, because none of us really deal with those people. At Palantir, we are on the side of working class Americans. We support people who go to the military, we save their lives, we bring them home safer. And our AI actually makes workers more wealthy, more valuable. And the 10 to 15 million people that love me, despite what's written, half of them made a lot of money on us. And you know what they're like? They're like people like me who think, you know what? We have to do better. Of course we have to do better.

[B]

What do you say to this then? Take me out of it. Take the media out of it. There's a group of 13 former Palantir employees who wrote an open letter to you and they stated, quote, that Palantir's leadership has abandoned its founding ideals.

[A]

We have 5,000 ex Palantirians and 4,000 current Palantirians. And by the way, we encourage a culture of disagreement which you know, exists. Anyone can come visit us. You'll find half the people disagreeing with me, at least on any issue. But I just want to say we have 5,000 ex Palantirians. You have 13, half of whom were like in the humanities department of Palantir, which is a little bit like being in the printing press part of New York Times, a very important part. But no one's really listening to your opinion. So it's like, it's. Yeah, you know, if you, if you have an organization, I'll tell you what. A lot of Palantirians, Palantirans are mostly uncomfortable. Most Palantirians are like you. Okay, I don't know who you are because you're an objective journalist, but they broadly are okay with.

[B]

They.

[A]

They like the work we do in Ukraine. By the way, could Europeans finally stick up for us since we're basically between us and Russia?

But they're very proud of that in general, although that's also very controversial in non elite circles. That's important to remember. They're pretty okay with Israel stuff, especially since a lot of the BS written about us on the right, primarily, not primarily on the left, that somehow we're doing facial recognition stuff and we're building a database. Any technical person knows that's bs, by the way. If you've heard that and you believe that, listen to the person who told you that. Do 10 minutes of research and you'll see who has credibility for you.

[B]

Well, let me speak to that directly, though, because people talk about surveillance, they immediately say, surveillance, Palantir, that you are helping the US Government in a massive surveillance program, given the amount of data that's coming in from all sorts of different agencies.

[A]

Now, first thing before I will absolutely get to that. The biggest misconception about Palantir is none of this. Palantir is an absolute dominant juggernaut in US commercial and AI. Our revenue grew 121%, the most important metric in enterprise software. We have the highest number ever recorded. It's well over 2x any number. That would be highly respectable. So we're like the Michael Jordan on the numbers in US Commercial. And that really pisses a lot of people off. That's true. Most of our money, 75% of our revenue comes from America. That's growing 77%. And most of our market cap comes from that. So we are just crushing it in the most meritocratic environment in the world, U.S. commercial. Okay, so the surveillance stuff, you know, there's the pally annus version of this, which, you know, which is like, our product can never be abused. What is true is that we are highly ethical, but don't believe us on that. We are not obviously not building a database. We're not. I mean, the most absurd one is we've built a database in Israel. We're bringing here. Okay, that is complete nuts. First of all, we were in this country from the very beginning. And second of all, you don't need us to build a database that's like, oh, I'm like, I have a ruler so I can. A ruler and a pencil so I can do math. Oh, I got a calculator. You know, so it's just. That's like you're selling your people like corn syrup, corn flakes or something. Okay, so you get to the big issue. Are we building a database that can be used for surveillance? No. Okay. But the more subtle version is if you're legally surveilled, we don't even really work heavily with the FBI or doj. Could you put it in our product? Yes. Are our enemies surveilled using data that goes into our product? 100%. And I completely support that. The most interesting thing about the lie that we are doing this is not that our product couldn't be abused. Any workable technology that's ever been built has been abused. Electricity has been abused. Gasoline engines have been abused. But our product is the single hardest product in the world to abuse. Because every single step that you take is Absolutely transparent. So if you want to abuse, if you want to use our product to abuse human rights, you've created a record of you doing it. I can tell you. And this is the part where you can get into the low trust environment. And you don't have to believe me. The environments that abuse data in this world, mostly sigint, meaning from satellites, have never liked our product. And we were the first place to act. We were the first and to my knowledge only company that said we're not gonna work in Russia, we're not gonna work in China. And by the way, on the issue everyone would think for. Because they somehow think I'm like, only care about. We were the first company to say we would not build a Muslim database. And we ended contracts in this country with, with institutions that were essentially there to surveil Muslim Americans. And the only. The primary reason for these attacks is on the far left. People are like, they do not like us because we stand for meritocracy, independent. We hire and promote independent of all variables. We stand for the rule of law. We stand for competence. And we call out the complete bullshit that this. On the far right, they don't like us because they think I'm somehow a Jewish conspiracy because two of the four or five co founders are Jewish. I'm like, okay, great. You know, a lot of Jews are successful. It's not all conspiracy. It is a fact.

Those are just the facts.

And I'm a little bit pissed at the New York Times, honestly. But since you. And the main reason is. I believe. If you're listening, I believe in your mission. When you write a technically completely illiterate article, you lose a lot of credibility with people are technical. And that's just a fact. That article about us being a surveillance thing is like, where it's all implied what we do. Yeah, but the problem is you lose credibility with anyone who goes on the thing, and that's damaging for our democracy.

[B]

Let me ask you this question, though. Is there a red line for you, meaning if you saw your software being used in a way that you genuinely believed was unconstitutional or illegal, are there conversations you ever have, back channel or otherwise, where you say, guys.

This is not cool. We're not doing this?

[A]

You know, there's a term that was unfortunately coined called constructive engagement. First of all, again, we did not sell our product to cigarette manufacturers that wanted to sell their cigarettes to poor black neighborhoods. We pulled our product from law enforcement institutions that were purely doing profiling. In certain countries in Latin America, racial profiling is just part of how they do credit scores. We could have made a lot of money on that. We refused to do it. We've said no to many countries across the world. We said no to China. We didn't say no. But we didn't work in adversarial countries. So there's always, have you done this? I think is the most important. And we did this at points where it was critical and we were in desperate times financially. So we did this when it absolutely could have crushed our country, our company. So the obvious answer is yes. Then there's the more subtle answer. All these countries and people I defend in public, like, Israel's a perfect example. I think most of the critiques of Israel, not all, not all, but a lot of people just have, like, Israel derangement or Jewish derangement syndrome. It's like they're like hobbyists. It's like they think about Jews all day. It's like, I don't know. I grew up in the Jewish community. How often do you think about Jews? I don't think about Jews very often. So it's like, hey, of course I'm going to defend in a way, publicly that I can assure you privately. People have less present conversations than the one we're having. Like I told the Israeli government from the beginning, maximum violence to the people, organizing violence, minimal violence to the people on the front end. And I told every single person, do.

[B]

You think that they lived up to that? We're gonna talk to Prime Minister Netanyahu this afternoon.

[A]

You know.

I could tell you I feel that if somewhat ill, modestly, if people listen to me more actively in Germany on migration, on Israel, on these issues, and on lots of other things, we'd have a better world. Or primarily, my Democratic Party, it's like, do we really have to pretend that it's immoral to have a border?

[B]

In other words, you don't think that they have done it as well as.

[A]

Well, I'll put it this way. In a world where people didn't have so much derangement syndrome, I would. Would be a lot more critical. In this world, I think you have to compare them to what, the competence level of any other country. And you say, yeah, these things are very hard and brutal, and watching these things happen is very difficult. But yeah, it's a very hard world because in the end, we are in a world where there really aren't high integrity partners on any side of the debate. So the minute you admit that in public that someone is wrong, you're really just serving somebody who has no interest in advancing the debate at all. They have an interest in their party winning. That's not my interest. My version is we advance America as the superior country in the world and we remove a lot of the dysfunction by argument, by persuading people, which I'm notoriously bad at. Palantir, we believe we're notoriously good at being right.

[B]

Alex, you founded this company with.

[A]

Not at persuading people we're right. We leave that to New York Times.

[B]

You co founded this company with Peter Thiel. And for a long time there was a view that Peter, who's been on this stage many times, was the conservative and you were the progressive and that that served the interests actually of the company in a certain way because you were effectively bipartisan. I'm curious how you think now, now that there's a view that you and Peter are all in with this administration in particular, that if in fact Democrats come to take over the White House in 28 or 32 or whatever it is in the future, that that will make it more complicated for the company.

[A]

Well, first of all, I don't think that view, like most of these views, makes any sense. I'm an independent. My vote is up for grab if you are willing to talk about having a closed border and maintaining deterrence. So I don't think that's at all true. And I'll tell you something else that's true. If the Democrats, my former party or current party or however you want to look at it, ran someone who agreed with me even in private, they would win. So, you know, maybe you should stop winning in the faculty lounges. Start winning. You know, we have a saying we're apparently not supposed to say anymore, but we always said we're, we're, we're hot. We're cold in the streets and hot in the sheets. Democratic Party should think about that one a lot.

[B]

Okay, let me ask, let me ask you. So can I ask you the question, by the way?

[A]

Let me answer the more the second derivative of your question. We're not doing at Palantir what's in the best interest we do in Palantir what we think Will is right. And you know, you know, the funny thing is because, you know, of our ability to build, I guess the 30th, I think it's like top 20 US companies, something like that. And we're accelerating in year 20, which no one has ever done a lot of stuff no one else has done. And we are the backbone of us to turn. People assume that we're more in fact, we have this problem at Palantir. We have people who join, they're like, they think they're joining a normal company. We're not a normal company. We are fighting for what we believe. And we're putting in a product to give the people that agree with us a standard, superior position.

[B]

Okay, so I want to ask you this, and it's a Trump question. You wrote your college thesis on fascism.

There's a view, and I'm curious where you land. Do you think that President Trump is a fascist?

[A]

Of course not. I think that's stupid, honestly. And you know what? Again, you can go all day on this stuff. It's honestly idiotic. I grew up half my life in Germany. I spent time with actual fascists. I went and talked to lots of former Nazis.

We have a democratic society. And he won in a landslide. I don't see any sign of him being. Look, of course I don't agree. I don't know what the point of these. It's like.

[B]

Well, the reason I was asking it was because you did study this, this was your thesis, and there's a lot of people who have different views about this. I was actually asking. Let me ask you a different question. But maybe it's related. You. You know, the US Government has been taking stakes in lots of different technology companies recently.

[A]

Okay, sorry. If you want it, with all respect, I am running the most important tech company in the world. If you want to talk about banalities, about who I support, how I support, why I support it, you can ask them. All day. I keep answering the same question, which is, I believe your questions. Basically, the third derivative of them is I transfer all my political power to you by. By being boxed in the same way the Green Party boxes. Boxes in. No, no.

[B]

Let me just ask you this. So originally the CIA, do you remember this, was an early investor in qtel, the venture capital arm, was an early investor in Palantir. This is why I'm asking the question, actually, because I think there's a lot of people who are looking right now at the industrial policy of the country. The country is taking stakes in businesses that they think are important national security issues and the like.

[A]

But isn't that a classically social democratic view?

[B]

Well, maybe it is, but my question to you, it was just going to be, you know, if the White House came to you and said, look, hey, Alex, we really like you, we think you're important to this country, you're a very important part of this. And we. If we're going to continue to give you these contracts. We want a piece of the action. How you would. What you would think of that.

[A]

I mean, we'll cross that road when we get there. My understanding is people who are in dire trouble go to the White House and ask for money. And they say, we've made terrific business decisions and we want your help. Why wouldn't the American people participate? Like, you know, one of the biggest problems. If you get to. Okay, let's just take what is the biggest problem in this culture? I'll tell you the biggest problem. No one believes the institutions are credible. And why don't they believe they're. And I struggle to believe they're credible too, because these business leaders make completely stupid decisions and they get bailed out. A year later, they're getting huge bonuses. A and what do the American people get? Nothing. That's a huge problem if you make So I think the real version is I made a lot of decisions when we began talking, annoying each other 10 years ago. Hopefully I'm annoying you as much as 10 years ago or more. You know this. Every decision Palantir made, FDA's going public, building products enterprise, large data sets, going to government, acknowledging American superiority, being pro meritocracy, launching an AI platform, calling into question that AI models would actually be able to perform without orchestration. Every single one of those was viewed as stupid. You know what I actually have grown to appreciate about capitalism? All the people who made the right decisions, went broke, are going out of business, or now have to copy us Microsoft Launch Ontology. Everyone wants to do FTEs you. Everyone basically copies me and Palantir. That's what I love about this country. If you want to make your stupid decisions and then you go to the White House and ask for money, you should absorb the full risk of that. And I'll tell you the full risk of that. Somehow your salary should be capped to the point where you make a lot of money for the American people. If I was absorbing the full risk of our stupidity. You were absorbing the full risk of my stupidity by putting me on there and knowing all the crazy shit I was going to say. And you're going to have to sit there and listen to it and you did it. And again, if I. Yes. And we're both absorbing the full risk of each other's splendor. At the moment. Yeah, at the moment. At the moment, where I am wrong, I have to pay the price for it. Just like you know, you're at the top of your game whether we want it or not. You're at the top of your game, everybody wants to talk to you. Okay? Sometimes that's annoying. Okay? You know, it's like I was talking to you when, you know, there were other people, people above you. Now I'm talking to you when no one's above you. Okay, now, yeah, it's true. And people think I'm moderately successful now, okay? So we at Palantir absorb the full risk of our failure, and everyone else should too. And, you know, I constantly. The critique I get in Wall street is I'm an arrogant prick. Okay, great. Well, you know, judge me by the accomplishment, the delta between what I've done and my arrogance. That's the definition of arrogance. If you're right a lot, maybe asserting that you're right, gonna be right tomorrow is pretty important. And when we're not right, I pay the price. Every day. Every day. That's why we have this incredibly painful internal structure of flatness so I can hear how wrong I am all day. And we absorb the risk of that. And I think in this culture, not enough people. Again, the. The only people who pay the price for being wrong in this culture, in complete fashion, are poor people. The rest of us somehow outsource all the times we're wrong and stupid to the whole society. But if you're poor and you're a soldier or you're poor in the ghetto, when you're wrong, you go to prison or you die.

[B]

I got a different question, and no one cares. I got a different question for you.

[A]

The one thing I would say to people in the audience, a lot of you think I'm right. And, you know, your spouse, your relative, your child, the person at work would be horrified if they knew it. You better speak up. Because everyone who thinks I'm ridiculous, fascist, they're speaking up. They write about it every day. If you do not speak up, the people who are disagreeing with me or think I'm stupid, oh, well, I disagree with myself. So you have to speak up. And you cannot blame the far left. Far right idiots when they speak up for their views. Do you speak up for your views? Where do you tell your colleague? I bet you at the New York Times a lot of people read that article about us and were ashamed. Did you go to your editor and say, how could you write something that's technically illiterate? The guy might be a fascist, but this is technically illiterate.

[B]

Let me ask you a different question.

[A]

Did you or didn't you? Because I'm the only one speaking up. You're going to Get a world of technical illiteracy on the right, on the left and in the middle.

[B]

Alex, help me with this. A lot of people come on this stage or publicly, and I think this goes to the issue you're talking about to this audience saying, speak up, and they come up on a stage or they go on television or they talk to a reporter or whatever it is publicly, and they're timid. They don't tell you actually what they think. They've got talking points, they've got plans, all of that. You don't have any of those things.

You have been willing to say. I genuinely believe, and I think the audience can see it, what you think. And my question is, A, do you worry about that ever? And B, to the same point, when you see your peers in the business not speaking up on these issues, not talking about not just these issues, but whatever they actually think, do you think we would be in a better world? And can you see a world where people would actually say exactly what they think the way you have?

[A]

I don't say exactly what I think.

[B]

You don't?

[A]

Well, no. That would get awesome. I mean, like, yeah, you know, it's like, I don't know, but it's very close.

[B]

What do we have here?

[A]

I avoid the whole personal stuff as much as I can. But first of all, let me give you again, I think a lot of these things are downstream from AI. The people who are not speaking up are making huge mistakes. First of all, you're underestimating your audience when you're not saying roughly what you think. Let's get to a mark that's realistic. Forget 50%, 20% of what even 20% would be 20 times what's actually happening. What the people in the audience actually perceive is you're lying. Now, they don't know what you're lying about, and therefore they impute you're lying about something you're probably not even lying about. And so I have the problem that I heard. I blow up things all the time. People quit all the time. People are offended. Family members stop talking to me on occasion for years until they discover I'm right, and then they are even more ashamed. And that could take another two years. But there's really two problems, two big problems. One, people impute your lying, and you're not actually lying. But people assume someone of your level of intellect does not believe the stupid things you're saying. Then the biggest problem is you lose the smartest people outside. And the problem that they underestimate is you lose the smartest people inside. Because when I'm speaking here, everyone at Palantir, current, past and present, knows, hey, he's speaking. He's doing exactly what he does at home. So he's telling me the truth when he says, hey, I don't believe this product's going to work, or I am telling you the truth as far as I believe it. And I have a history of being right. And that's the problem. Now there's a societal problem, which is that we have all the basically obviously ridiculous people, especially the ones who do not even know that they're ridiculous, because there's like, some kind of derangement syndrome that has abrogated their ability to think. They speak up all the time and they intimidate the rest of us. And that's a big problem for our society because I'll tell you, we are not living in a world in the absence of delivery. If America does not deliver, we will be under the rule that's defined by our adversaries. This is just a fact.

[B]

Let me ask you this, because we're going to run out of time, and I just want to talk to you about you personally for a moment and what this is all about. We're all watching you talk. I think very openly about your views, and I want to know where you think it all comes from, where the energy comes from. Your biographer says it comes from your childhood. You grew up dyslexic. You grew up to a Jewish pediatrician, was your father, African American artist, was your mother. And I want to know what you think has led to all of this. What's driving you?

[A]

It's very hard to know these questions. Answer these questions. I mean, my parents are extraordinarily talented to the point where I think most of the issues they confronted were just. Everyone says they want to be around extraordinarily smart people till they're around extraordinarily smart people. And everyone thinks interaction with my parents will school you on what the level of aptitude is in the world and the rest of my family. But I think for me, people always write about my parents and their background, and the far right hates that I grew up in a Jewish family and defend Jews against the most disgusting and obvious vehement attacks. And the far left thinks because of my background, I should somehow give up real progressive thought and support ideologies that only hurt the people they claim to support.

So I think those ways of thinking don't clear a certain level of thought philosophically. And so I tend to find them fairly boring and wish the world. Someone else would speak up. The dyslexia thing, which I was totally in the closet about, is the formative moment of my life. And it's simply because if you are massively dyslexic, you cannot play a playbook. There is no playbook a dyslexic can master. And therefore we learn to think freely. And so, you know, one definition of dyslexia would be. There are many definitions. One definition that I think is a clearing function is you have attenuated relationship to text, meaning a non dyslexic will read the text and the text will become them. The more you lead, the more the text becomes you. No dyslexic works that way. And so there are huge disadvantages. Honestly, I would have cut off my arms and legs, probably, or at least something to get rid of the dyslexia. But the central advantage is I process in a way that has very little to do with what anyone else thinks. And that has powered a lot combined with obviously obvious aptitude. And I believe in what we're doing. So we work with. Were very aggressive in making it work. I don't know. But I really. Where it comes from. But I really believe in the primacy of winning, not for money, which I love, the freedom of money, but because I do think what people believe will be downstream of what has worked at some point in the future. And I believe in what we're doing.

[B]

Let me ask you this, and I want to know whether you think this drives you. You told a story. Your mother passed away from cancer and you were interviewed. No.

[A]

Was it. She did. That's wrong.

[B]

But that's wrong.

[A]

She didn't pass away. No.

[B]

Oh, my goodness. So luckily, I don't know why.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Why that note said that. I hope she didn't. I thought you were talking about this. The jeweler.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Who helped your mother when she had nothing. But I was struck by this. I was struck by a quote where there was a jeweler who helped your mother.

[A]

When my parents got divorced, my mom had no money, and there was a very kind family that took her in.

[B]

But you said this about life and the jeweler helping your mother. And you said, in general, people don't help you. And I remember watching you say that. And I thought, is that what's driving this? Meaning this view about how you think the rest of the world views all of each other helping each other or not, that the world is actually not trying to help you?

[A]

I do not believe it's accurate to say the world will help you. And my grandfather used to say, be careful who you help. They'll never forgive you. And.

I think the more you want, the true progressive position is obviously, help someone to help themselves. And I do believe that the negative side of helping people. I mean, there's a positive side of helping people, but the negative side of helping people is you are conveying the idea that they need your help and they need it in perpetuity, which dehumanizes and.

Takes away agency from them. But I do believe that America and strong individuals, realistic individuals, recognize that you are largely on your own. And the more you recognize that, the better we will be as a society and a world. And that's why I'm very skeptical of, like, all these, like, you know, international, whatever. It's all a way of curtailing and constraining the obvious fact that some cultures are superior. We live in the superior culture as culture that defends our right to argue, defends our right to back that up with arms, defends our right to privacy. So the First, Second and Fourth Amendment. I believe Palantir and I are fully aligned with the First, Second and Fourth Amendment. No one believes the Fourth Amendment, but it's arguably as important as the others. The First Amendment was put first for a reason. And we protect individuals in this country. And our Constitution derives that protection from a higher force, God. It is different than any other country in the world. And the basis of that is protecting our agency as humans. And why do we have that agency? Because it is somehow magical in an artistic sense, or maybe in a religious sense. It's somehow divine. And that agency is how we help others and how we help ourselves. And. And if you expect people to do more than that. Now, some people do the family. I don't know if I should say their name because I don't want them to get protesters. Although I've had a lot of people asking, can they go buy jewelry there? Especially people I've made very wealthy. And I'm proud of that. There are people who manage to help at key moments. And those people I have great reverence for. And you will see in your life that there are very few of them. Like, I had this advisor when I went. We transferred into a magnet school at Central, and I got, you know, it's very American. You're already at an elite school. I got an IQ test, and she was like, you know, what are your grades? In any case, she's like, you should have the best grades in the. Like. She intervened and took care of me, and I revered that and I hope people at Palantir, when you come to Palantir. Palantir is the single most elite educational brand in the world currently. And if you have just defined by it's like being at Harvard or Yale in the 50s, if you are at Palantir, you will have a job immediately independent of how you did there, which is no other school can claim anymore. And part of the reason people come and stay at Palantir is we actively engage in cultivating minds. One last sentence before you go. We cultivate minds by being exceedingly difficult. The minute you are not difficult is a French saying, qu' I am bien chatis bien, which basically means if you love greatly, you are exceedingly difficult. Witness all the love I'm giving you.

[B]

And the New York Times I've said that one of the things we try to do at this event every year is to go inside the minds of the most consequential people in the world. Alex Karp, you are one of them. And we have now seen and gone inside your mind. And we want to thank you for the conversation.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Thank you very, very, very much.

[A]

Appreciate it. Thank you.

[B]

Dealbook summit is a production of the new york times. This episode was produced by evan roberts, mixing by kelly piclo and katie mcmurran. Original music by daniel powell. The rest of the dealbook event's team includes julie zahn, hillary coon, melissa tripoli, beth weinstein, angela austin, haley hess, dana prucowski, matt kaiser, chantal rainier and yen wei liu. Special thanks to sam dolnick, nita lassom, christina josa and maddie masiel.