Anatomy of a Silicon Valley Hawk
Palantir CEO Alex Karp is trying to save the West. Will he help destroy it in the process?
Alex Karp is no stranger to contradictions. He is a billionaire and weapons contractor who considers himself a socialist and peace activist. He is a champion of surveillance software and a passionate supporter of civil liberties. He says AI is dangerous but wants to forge ahead full speed with its development.
For almost two decades, Karp has been the CEO of Palantir, a big-data firm that he co-founded in 2004. During that time, he has helped to change the landscape of both defense and tech. Palantir has major contracts with the Pentagon for targeting and logistics software that has been put to use in war zones like Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. Law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe employ Palantir’s data software, and so do private organizations in fields from healthcare to aviation. The company boasts a market cap of over $80 billion, and its shares have more than doubled in value this year. It joined the S&P 500 on Monday.
Karp has long enjoyed a steady if low-key place in the public eye, but lately he has become much more prominent. He can be found on military tech panels at major confabs in Davos and Aspen, flanked by former NATO commanders and top US military brass. Last month, Karp was the subject of a long and favorable profile by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. This month, he was a guest of Bill Maher on HBO.
There is no shortage of explanations for Karp’s growing visibility. The deployment of Palantir’s software in Ukraine has helped turn that country into what Time Magazine has called “an AI war lab.” And Karp is an absorbing character. He speaks in frantic bursts, and his hair, a tall stack of unkempt curls, always looks as if he’s been lightly electrocuted. He also has a knack for provocation: Just this year, he has slammed elites for an alleged commitment to the “thin pagan religion” of wokeism, accused Wall Street short sellers of “pulling down great American companies so they can pay for their coke,” and suggested campus anti-war protesters try out an “exchange program” in North Korea.
As if all that weren’t enough to keep Karp in the conversation, he energetically espouses a view of America’s international mission that has become more popular among elites in recent years: The US must lead western democracies in a global fight against the forces of illiberalism. Authoritarian adversaries, notably China, Russia and Iran, are determined to destroy our way of life, Karp believes. “They are working together against us,” he has said, “and we have to work together against them.”
Karp belongs to a new breed of military contractor—one part Silicon Valley tech optimist and one part Beltway hawk. And he is a particularly intense—perhaps the most intense—representative of the species. Karp the hawk promotes a dramatic, even Manichaean, view of world affairs in which the West faces a life-or-death battle with an axis of evildoers. Karp the optimist says that the good guys will win—provided they rely on Palantir. Palantir’s products aren’t just software; they’re “embodiments of a cultural and particular way of seeing the world that I do believe is superior”—embodiments of the western way of life. If the US pursues “enormous growth” and “really deadly weapons systems,” including AI-enhanced armaments, it will achieve security.
Many people in Silicon Valley and Washington seem to agree. Venture capitalists poured an estimated $35 billion into military tech startups in 2023—fully one-fifth of total investments by US-based VCs that year. By exploring new frontiers in surveillance and high-tech weaponry, Karp and his allies are helping to bring the world to the cusp of momentous transformation. But will these efforts save the West, or will they help lead it to its undoing?
Karp has always seen himself as an outsider. Born in 1967 to a Jewish doctor and a Black artist, he recalls his childhood in Philadelphia as unconventional and full of hippies. Karp grew up with a sense of alienation that was increased by dyslexia. He nevertheless managed to make it to Haverford and then to Stanford Law School, where he struck up a friendship with a fellow student and dorm mate named Peter Thiel. The two bonded during a series of knock-down, drag-out arguments about politics and philosophy. “He was more the socialist, I was more the capitalist,” Thiel told the New York Times in 2020. What the two had in common was a reverence for civil liberties and a shared belief in the superiority of western civilization.
Karp pursued a doctorate at Goethe University, where, after learning German, he studied neoclassical social theory and wrote a dissertation that he later described as “a critique of Heidegger from a structuralist perspective.” Karp adored German culture and thought, but he didn’t love academia. After earning his PhD degree, he moved to London and founded a wealth management company, an enterprise that was cut short by an unexpected overture from his friend Peter Thiel.