Alex Karp: Silicon Valley Broke Its Promise to America

Speaker 1: The Builders is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeart, presented Speaker 1: by Ramp. Ramp is a financial operations platform that helps Speaker 1: ambitious companies manage their finances so their teams can spend Speaker 1: less time chasing receipts and approvals and more time bringing Speaker 1: extraordinary ideas to life. I'm Walter Isaacs, and welcome to Speaker 1: The Builders, my series of conversations with the most consequential Speaker 1: minds shaping our future. In the years after September 11th, Speaker 1: Peter Thiel began thinking about a new problem. At PayPal, Speaker 1: he and his colleagues had developed software that could identify Speaker 1: fraud by finding patterns hidden across enormous amounts of information. Speaker 1: Could a similar system help intelligence agencies discover threats before Speaker 1: another attack? The idea became Palantir. Speaker 2: Palantir is a leader in analyzing data, a skill that's Speaker 2: at the heart of the economy and surveillance. Speaker 3: Demonstrators are accusing the data analysis firm Palantir of working Speaker 3: with ICE. Speaker 1: To lead the company, Thiel turned to an old friend Speaker 1: from Stanford Law School, Alex Karp. Speaker 2: Palantir's leader, Alex Karp, is an intellectual known for his Speaker 2: big hair and bigger personality. Speaker 4: Having Karp A self-described socialist running this company gave people Speaker 4: some assurance that the company could be trusted. Speaker 1: Karp was an unusual choice to run a technology company. Speaker 1: While others were building code, he spent his 20s studying Speaker 1: neoclassical social theory and philosophy in Frankfurt. Speaker 4: Karp had no background in computer science or business when Speaker 4: he joined Palantir in the early 2000s, and yet 20-plus Speaker 4: years later, he has turned this company into a $ 400 Speaker 4: billion colossus. Speaker 1: Alex Karp occupies an unusual intersection. Philosophy and warfare. Silicon Speaker 1: Valley innovation and national security. So I wanted to ask him, Speaker 1: who should be trusted with systems this powerful? Can artificial Speaker 1: intelligence make governments and militaries more effective without making them Speaker 1: less accountable? How do we defend an open society without Speaker 1: building the machinery of a surveillance state? Here's my conversation Speaker 1: with Alex Karp. Alex Karp, welcome to The Builders. Speaker 3: Very nice to be here. A huge honor. Speaker 1: You know, one of my theories in biography is that Speaker 1: it's all about dad. So tell me first about your father. Speaker 3: Well, my dad, he's a very smart person, very shaped Speaker 3: by the combination of his... German-Jewish mother passing away very early. Speaker 3: And I think my parents were very much in love. Speaker 3: But it was not a coincidence that my dad married Speaker 3: a jarringly talented, excruciatingly talented, somewhat difficult black woman. I Speaker 3: think he loved the fact that it poked his stepmother, Speaker 3: who was more status conscious, in the eye. But my Speaker 3: mom My mom is enormously just capturing in her level Speaker 3: of talent, artistic talent. But the thing about my parents, Speaker 3: they hate it when I say this, but both my Speaker 3: parents should be, it's kind of weird that I'm the Speaker 3: most famous one. Put it this way, had they been Speaker 3: more what I think they could have been, they would Speaker 3: have not have birthed me. And I had this discomfort Speaker 3: about the fact that this family that exploded in a Speaker 3: messy divorce And with parents that are complicated, created an Speaker 3: artifact that is ideally morphed for building essentially pound here. Speaker 3: You know, it's like if you take someone like me Speaker 3: and you put it in this chaotic environment where you Speaker 3: had the feeling you're on your own and you're subconsciously Speaker 3: or partially consciously misaligned with your parents, you can get Speaker 3: a deeper trust in your own ability to survive. but Speaker 3: maybe a latent mistrust of structures. Speaker 1: Tell me about dyslexia. How did being dyslexic give you Speaker 1: wings to fly? Speaker 3: You always have to walk back from where you are Speaker 3: to see where it got you. Like I viewed it Speaker 3: as a, I mean, I was in the closet about Speaker 3: being dyslexic until like six years ago. And then I Speaker 3: just got tired. Honestly, I got frustrated. And then I Speaker 3: kind of told a buddy of mine. And then from there, Speaker 3: I just kind of, but you know, it's interesting for me, Speaker 3: to watch how people derided everything we did, derided everything Speaker 3: I said, and now basically copy it verbatim. Now, why Speaker 3: does that happen? It happens because they're looking for a playbook. Speaker 3: If you're dyslexic, the way I define it, at least, Speaker 3: because it's a broad term, I define it as having Speaker 3: a non-one-to-one relationship with the taxonomy of a language, written taxonomy. Speaker 3: So even now, if you read and I read, there's Speaker 3: more of a translation function, even though I did a Speaker 3: PhD and I still do a lot of, end up Speaker 3: doing a lot of the writing at Palantir. But why Speaker 3: is that important? Because language, of course, you prefer not Speaker 3: to be dyslexic, but the truth is, if you are dyslexic, Speaker 3: you're not colonized by the broader culture. So when I'm Speaker 3: interacting with the broader culture or with a tech problem Speaker 3: or with any problem, I'm interacting with the problem as Speaker 3: it is. So how were we able to build the Speaker 3: anti-terror product Okay, that product changed the history of Europe. Speaker 3: We've stopped hundreds of terror attacks, some of which would Speaker 3: have happened in other places, but many of which would Speaker 3: have happened in Europe. Think of the Europe you would Speaker 3: have if that had happened. And then later, our product Speaker 3: is fundamental to the defense of Ukraine. Speaker 1: Well, wait, explain to me how that comes from being Speaker 1: either not colonized. Speaker 3: Okay, so first of all, if you go to school Speaker 3: on how to learn software, build a software company, you Speaker 3: would have learned build a product that's not very valuable Speaker 3: to the client where they're addicted to it, then hire Speaker 3: lots of salespeople and get lots of people to buy Speaker 3: it against their will. And that's how you build a software. Speaker 3: And then the derivative of that is it's a simple Speaker 3: but addicting product. So it doesn't really create value, but Speaker 3: it's hard to get rid of. It's like a venereal disease. Speaker 3: Easy to get, maybe hard to get rid of. And Speaker 3: what you had to avoid at all costs is anything Speaker 3: that looked like labor. We spent three years building a Speaker 3: product That was valuable. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: So then you get to what is value. We said Speaker 3: value is both that you stop the terror attacks and Speaker 3: you protect civil liberties. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: That already you had two factions, one that wanted to Speaker 3: stop terror attacks and one that wanted to protect civil liberties. Speaker 3: So the problem was to build that product, you had Speaker 3: to violate every single norm of how you build software. Speaker 3: And then the biggest norm we violated is it took Speaker 3: three years really roughly without revenue. Three years, no revenue. Speaker 3: So you would have to be completely, basically insane to Speaker 3: do that. And I do think it took a neurodivergent Speaker 3: person at the helm to fight for that. People are Speaker 3: always like, I often get these comments in private from Speaker 3: business executives. Can you teach me how to be unpopular? Speaker 3: We're oddly kind of popular right now. But I don't Speaker 3: think it's possible because what they're really asking me to Speaker 3: teach them is to be dyslexic. to look at the material, Speaker 3: digest it, but it's not inside me. Speaker 1: You clearly grew up feeling a bit of an outsider, Speaker 1: another theory I have about biography. And being an outsider Speaker 1: can be a superpower in some ways in the sense Speaker 1: that you aren't trying to fit in. Speaker 3: Or maybe you've tried to fit in, but it's failed. Speaker 1: Did you try? Speaker 3: No, but I think human beings as a species want Speaker 3: to fit in. And I think most of us who Speaker 3: are not trying, subconsciously realize it would have failed to try. Speaker 1: To what extent does that help you, say, as opposed Speaker 1: to somebody like me who kind of feels, oh, I've Speaker 1: always fit in, good childhood, want to get along? Speaker 3: Yeah, Jewish guy in New Orleans. Yeah, I'm not sure Speaker 3: that's true because you would not be able to write Speaker 3: the things you've written if you were purely an insider. Speaker 3: But in any case, it's not me interviewing you. But Speaker 3: if I were interviewing you, I'd push back on that statement. No, Speaker 3: I think being an outsider, I don't think you get Speaker 3: Palantir or my life story. It's very unlikely you're going Speaker 3: to get it as an insider. And I think the Speaker 3: inside track is overworn and not working. And then I Speaker 3: think if you link it to what we've built at Palantir, Speaker 3: the culture, the aesthetics, the products, there's not a single Speaker 3: thing we've done that an insider would ever do. And Speaker 3: most outsiders are pretending to be outsiders. Since there's so Speaker 3: much value in being an outsider, you have lots of Speaker 3: people who are like fake outsiders. Speaker 1: But that's not you. Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think people like me would, I'd Speaker 3: love to go on an insider vacation. Give me like Speaker 3: the eight weeks a year where I can be an insider. Speaker 3: And again, I know it'd be totally stupid, but like Speaker 3: I want to be reborn as like a, my reborn Speaker 3: fantasy is Catholic, Bavarian, veterinarian. Speaker 1: Well, getting to Bavaria and to a related concept, which Speaker 1: is a collaborationist instinct that's in the human species. You Speaker 1: wrote about the Nazis when you were in graduate school, Speaker 1: was it? Speaker 3: I wrote about... It was... was a critique of Heidegger. Speaker 3: For better or worse, it'd be hard to say Heidegger Speaker 3: was not one of the two or three most important Speaker 3: philosophers in the last couple hundred years, along with other people, Speaker 3: maybe Wittgenstein. Heidegger developed a form of phenomenology, which is Speaker 3: a fancy way of explaining the how things in the Speaker 3: world could impute value onto the world. And there's many Speaker 3: different forms. His advisor was Husserl, who was Jewish. Heidegger Speaker 3: became Bernardin's supporter of Hitler. Even though his mistress Hannah Speaker 3: Arendt was Jewish and his advisor was Jewish. And I Speaker 3: think Heideggerian philosophy is the most important political philosophy, I think, Speaker 3: for worse in the West now, because most political movements Speaker 3: that I would call regressive far right, meaning they want Speaker 3: to regress to something that obviously has never worked on Speaker 3: the far right and on the far left, pretend to Speaker 3: be Marxist, certainly on the left, but are actually Heideggerian. Speaker 3: And that's why I've been very early and for years saying, like, Speaker 3: I'm still an unhappy Democrat. I've been warning the Democrats Speaker 3: that a faction of their party is actually not progressive. Speaker 3: They call themselves progressive, but then they want a form Speaker 3: of communitarian economy that looks futile. It's not even actually socialist. Speaker 3: And they pretend to be isolationist when they're actually just Speaker 3: focused on the groups they're uncomfortable with. That's a right-wing party. Speaker 3: So in any case, I wrote about Heidegger. Now, the Speaker 3: truth is also I wanted to get out of jail. Speaker 3: I realized halfway through my dissertation, this is not for me. Speaker 3: I need to go and build something. To your thing, Speaker 3: I'm a builder. The interesting thing about builders is it's elliptical. Speaker 3: So the people you've written about, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Speaker 3: I think you will find in every case, it's a Speaker 3: combination of an outsider with an aesthetic proclivity that is Speaker 3: as much humanities as tech. I think objectively, although most Speaker 3: people in tech would disagree, it's more aesthetic world importance. Speaker 3: and business acumen than tech, which is why the tech Speaker 3: companies are built here and not unfortunately in Germany or France, Speaker 3: because it's not that we're smarter, but we are producing Speaker 3: that shape person. And part of it is most of Speaker 3: the people building things here, their great grandparents or parents, Speaker 3: or they themselves opted to come here. That's already a Speaker 3: big step. Speaker 1: Why did you found Palantir? What was the point of it? Speaker 3: Well, I mean, my version of why I founded it Speaker 3: was I knew Peter in law school. Speaker 1: Peter Thiel. Speaker 3: Peter Thiel. We had this– we just– I was doing Speaker 3: no work. Peter, I think, was doing much more work Speaker 3: than I, but we were in the same section and Speaker 3: in the same dorm, which was like the dorm you Speaker 3: were at if you didn't have a lot of money. Speaker 3: And then we were both intellectually very curious. He came Speaker 3: to me and was like, we have this idea to Speaker 3: bring a methodology that was used at PayPal– to the Speaker 3: Intel space because basically it had worked to cut down Speaker 3: cyber fraud and they obviously aren't good at this kind Speaker 3: of tech. And I thought this is wildly interesting. Peter Speaker 3: is wildly compelling. And then I just said, yes. I Speaker 3: joined because I thought the idea, look, you can take Speaker 3: a jingoistic version of America, like everything. Of course, we've Speaker 3: made mistakes. And some of those mistakes are hard to Speaker 3: understand in retrospect. Mistakes around integration, respect, I mean, you know, Speaker 3: it could obviously, slavery, I think not paying enough attention Speaker 3: to class and not having the national project be stronger. Speaker 3: There's a lot of lists, but in my view, in Speaker 3: the view of, I think most Americans, there's no project Speaker 3: at scale. So you can't really compare America to like, Speaker 3: Sweden of the 70s, right? This is like a completely Speaker 3: different the time completely homogeneous culture. Speaker 1: Are you saying the diversity of America make. Speaker 3: With the size? It's a size and grandeur of our Speaker 3: project and the fact that we have this Constitution That Speaker 3: is still it's still fresh like, you know the first Speaker 3: in my view the Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment Speaker 3: so write a free speech and which basically also is Speaker 3: a stand-in for free to decide your own religion, which Speaker 3: is very radical. The Second Amendment, okay, I don't believe Speaker 3: we should allow plastic. 50 cal guns roaming through the streets, okay, Speaker 3: but I do believe that it's crucial to allow citizens Speaker 3: the right to bear arms because it's often reframed as self-defense, Speaker 3: which I'm also in favor of, but it's really about Speaker 3: putting the government on its back heel. about mandating what Speaker 3: official policies would be. Speaker 1: Well, the Fourth Amendment pushes you back a bit. Speaker 3: I know, and I'm going to get to that, but Speaker 3: I just want to say, I just want to underscore, Speaker 3: and again, I actually think, I've never been a neocon. Speaker 3: I never thought it made sense to make, like the Speaker 3: Muslim world, we have many Muslim country partners. It runs Speaker 3: very well, and I'm not, of course, I want a Speaker 3: different kind of government. I actually As much as I'm Speaker 3: on the other side of the CCP, I want America Speaker 3: to win more than I'm interested in how they run Speaker 3: their world. It seems to, they believe, I've never been Speaker 3: of that school. But we have an ability, I can Speaker 3: say whatever I want here, and there is no government Speaker 3: sanction to what I say. Okay, the Second Amendment does Speaker 3: not exist, to my knowledge, anywhere else in the world. Speaker 3: So First and Second still exist. enormously radical. But all Speaker 3: of that as necessary as it would be first and Speaker 3: second is not sufficient if you don't protect people's rights Speaker 3: to privacy. And you could say, okay, well, the fourth amendment, Speaker 3: you don't need the fourth. I mean, I think people Speaker 3: would say this abroad in many countries. You don't need Speaker 3: the fourth amendment to protect your right of thought. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 3: But it's not true because we're language driven beings. If Speaker 3: you can't articulate your thought in some form, even as Speaker 3: a dyslexic, is it a thought? What is a thought Speaker 3: that can't be articulated? Can a thought be extended, manipulated, Speaker 3: changed productively or non-productively without its articulation in the thing, Speaker 3: formative thing that makes us human and is allowed us Speaker 3: to advance? Speaker 1: Spoken like somebody who's read a lot of Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Speaker 3: Well, and where it's true. And this is why the Speaker 3: Fourth Amendment, the ability is so crucial. One of the Speaker 3: most vile and stupid attacks on Palantir has been that Speaker 3: we're somehow anti Fourth Amendment. No, our products are actually Speaker 3: built around the protection. And the only way you could Speaker 3: use AI now is with one of our products where Speaker 3: you protect these rights. And so, but they're vital to Speaker 3: us as what makes us human, which is exactly why Speaker 3: regressive political movements go after the Fourth Amendment. They want Speaker 3: to eviscerate these things because they're a Fourth Amendment for Speaker 3: you is their retrograde ideology that that will force you, everyone, Speaker 3: to be standard, cut out, same thing, non-neurodivergent, non-sovereign, non-individual. Speaker 3: And that's why they cannot stand America or the way Speaker 3: it's set up, because our principles are set up to Speaker 3: build builders. One of the major reasons we have a Speaker 3: tech scene, unlike any other country, is because our Constitution Speaker 3: is built for builders. Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere. There's a lot more right after this break. Speaker 1: So we're talking about the Fourth Amendment, right to privacy. Speaker 1: So many people would be talking about Palantir, the cameras, Speaker 1: gathering information on us. Doesn't that impinge on our right Speaker 1: to privacy or do we over-index on privacy? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 3: Well, first of all, one of the things I think Speaker 3: Europe got right was basically the European constitutional order focuses Speaker 3: on privacy both in the commercial and in the government context. Speaker 1: In America. Speaker 3: Our constitution protects against government overreach. And I would say culturally, Speaker 3: I think we're not sensitive enough to commercial overreach. Speaker 1: Yeah, all my students say they don't mind Google knowing Speaker 1: everything about them, but they don't want the government to Speaker 1: know everything about them, which is odd. Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm in favor of them not wanting government Speaker 3: to know everything about them. They're underestimating. Basically, what they're Speaker 3: often imputing is, I don't care what commercial companies know Speaker 3: about me because that's my choice, which, by the way, Speaker 3: it is, obviously. But they're thinking of their opinions as Speaker 3: being wholly their own. And at best, your opinions are Speaker 3: a dialogue between your ideas and the outside consensus view. Speaker 3: They're underestimating how much their thoughts are being influenced by Speaker 3: the tech products they're interacting with. And because they underestimate that, Speaker 3: they don't understand the way in which they should be Speaker 3: more concerned about privacy. Where I'm sympathetic with some of Speaker 3: our critics of Palantir, they've got the Palantir part wrong. Speaker 3: But you'll see like Palantir surveillance state, blah, blah, blah. blah. Speaker 3: The Palantir stuff is technically and in practice the inverse Speaker 3: of what they think by the most extreme amount of Speaker 3: any other tech company. The part that they're actually right Speaker 3: about is that if you have companies controlling all data, Speaker 3: they will control what you think or think. heavily influence Speaker 3: what you think. Speaker 1: But isn't Palantir part of a surveillance culture? And there's Speaker 1: an upside to that, but also maybe a loss of autonomy? Speaker 3: Of course, you have to get a definition of what Speaker 3: we mean by surveillance. If you are an enemy of Speaker 3: the US shooting at the US or planning to shoot Speaker 3: at the US or trying to stop people who are Speaker 3: coming into your country to dismantle something you're doing that's Speaker 3: nefarious and bad. Okay, there are a lot of people Speaker 3: who don't agree, but okay. Yes, our products are used Speaker 3: to make. Speaker 1: But what about when I'm walking down the streets of Speaker 1: New Orleans and you have a system there that says, okay, Speaker 1: here's where Walter was? Speaker 3: I mean, the domestic surveillance is where the issue comes in. Speaker 3: In a weird way, Palantir is used heavily in France Speaker 3: and in other places in Europe where we're contractually not Speaker 3: allowed to mention There's a difference between surveillance under the Speaker 3: context of a legal mandate and surveillance where there's no Speaker 3: legal mandate. And this distinction is actually both politically, morally, Speaker 3: and technically important. So I think the political morality, most Speaker 3: people get that. But it's very hard to build a Speaker 3: product that, for example, in the European context, can only Speaker 3: keep data where there's a warrant and then purchase it Speaker 3: where the warrant expires. The hard part is, You have warrant, Speaker 3: warrant disappears. What happens to the data? Our products allow Speaker 3: you to work in conformity with that. Some people say Speaker 3: that's still surveillance. You're surveilling someone the courts decide is Speaker 3: a criminal. I think there you get into where I Speaker 3: would say, you know, you have people that are so pro, Speaker 3: you have the right version caricatured where they're like, just Speaker 3: kill the terrorists and criminals. Okay, that's not a society Speaker 3: most of us want to live in. You have the Speaker 3: left version that I think just brings the right, which is, no, Speaker 3: we're not going to surveil known hardened criminals. And where Speaker 3: our product is used most effectively is in Europe on Speaker 3: criminal gains, professional criminals, meaning they're organized and trained. I Speaker 3: imagine on border enforcement, because it's all done by professional Speaker 3: criminals to get people in, and on anti-terror, like on Speaker 3: terrorism cases. And There you have, in the case of Speaker 3: domestic intel, you have essentially something like a probable cause Speaker 3: and a construct that allows you to legally do it. Speaker 3: So in practice, is a form of law enforcement, I Speaker 3: think 90% of society supports. And I would say the 10% Speaker 3: that doesn't is basically going to get us some form Speaker 3: of fascism. If the terrorist attacks in Europe that we Speaker 3: had prevented had happened, you would have some form of Speaker 3: Far left or far right fascism would amount to basically Speaker 3: the same thing. You are tracked all the time. Speaker 1: Let me broaden it a bit more philosophical, not just Speaker 1: to Palantir, but the technology we have today has enormous Speaker 1: amounts of sort of data gathering capabilities, cameras and visuals Speaker 1: and facial recognition. It also has now with AI an Speaker 1: enormous ability to draw things from that data. Do you Speaker 1: think this whole explosion of data collection... combined with AI Speaker 1: in some ways impinges on personal autonomy? Speaker 3: Well, look, obviously it can and it will if you Speaker 3: don't push against it. So now we go into AI debate. Speaker 3: AI is, in my view, best conceived as a raw Speaker 3: material that can be processed for good or bad, broadly speaking. Speaker 3: So one of the most negative ways you could harness Speaker 3: these powers is for surveillance. I would argue that most Speaker 3: of that is going to happen in the commercial context, Speaker 3: not in the government context, but it could happen in Speaker 3: the government context. And I'm very in favor of actual, like, Speaker 3: I think we should restrict some of these technologies. Like, Speaker 3: for example, if you just take AI that we use Speaker 3: on the battlefield, we should have legislation that prevents that Speaker 3: technology from being used domestically. We need it on the battlefield. Speaker 3: We have no choice because our adversaries are building stuff. Speaker 3: And if we don't build it, we're going to be Speaker 3: just demolished. And I would say if you're anti-war, in Speaker 3: my humble opinion, looking at any part of history, you Speaker 3: have to have a strong military. So the idea you're Speaker 3: going to weaken the military and have more peace is Speaker 3: a fantasy of people who are half idiots or actually Speaker 3: who want war. But then the domestic part that you're Speaker 3: flagging is a very real issue. What are the technologies Speaker 3: we're going to unleash? Like again, the famous, you know, Speaker 3: fascist countries have no crime, no crime. When the Nazis Speaker 3: had power, the only crimes that were committed were by them. Speaker 3: That's how it works. There is only one criminal band. Speaker 3: It's the government. And there will be no other criminal band, Speaker 3: and they will take people out and shoot them, and Speaker 3: lo and behold, there's no crime. And in order to Speaker 3: do that, they shoot a lot of innocent people too. Speaker 3: Criminals are rational actors, and probably they're the people who Speaker 3: get shot the least. The people get shot the most Speaker 3: are people with political views like me, honestly. That's if Speaker 3: you go tie this back to my outsider thing. I Speaker 3: always thought from the time I can remember thinking I Speaker 3: will be the first person on the wall. And I Speaker 3: believe I will be the first or second person on Speaker 3: the wall if we have no crime. You know, because Speaker 3: the first thing that they do is define you as Speaker 3: the people with an actual view. I'm talking about things Speaker 3: that like kind of things I say that are outside Speaker 3: the norm and are transgressive and building a company or Speaker 3: having too much money or if you don't protect the Speaker 3: rights of the people you don't like, the unapologetically, unambitionally Speaker 3: opinionated people that also have money, you're going to end Speaker 3: up with a country run heavily influenced by the extremes. Speaker 3: Like take Wealth Tax. There are class inequities in the Speaker 3: society that have to be addressed. And AI is going Speaker 3: to exacerbate them. I mean, I believe AI will create Speaker 3: more jobs or higher quality jobs, especially for working class Speaker 3: vocational people. And many people are going to get retrained. Speaker 3: But even if their salaries go up twice inflation, they're Speaker 3: unlikely to stay at pace with people who are in Speaker 3: tech and in AI because those people could be 10, 20, Speaker 3: 50 times wealthier. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: Then the reaction to this, is to impose something that Speaker 3: just hurts the wealthy, it doesn't help the poor. And Speaker 3: by the way, it's going to hurt the middle class Speaker 3: for lots of reasons. Speaker 1: Well, wait a minute. If you agree that AI is Speaker 1: going to lead to greater disparities of wealth, then you Speaker 1: go back in history, 1890s, we had just as big Speaker 1: of a tech boom, led to great disparities of wealth. Speaker 1: Isn't there some reason to say, let's put more in Speaker 1: the commons? Let's reduce the disparity of wealth? Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. You have to do something. What Speaker 3: do you do? Well, my version would be, you go to, Speaker 3: you basically say, you have a 50% death tax. I Speaker 3: would go to people and say, okay, for every point Speaker 3: you pay in, you can have some point. So you Speaker 3: could basically, you pay 25% now, but the government can Speaker 3: only collect by doing half as much waste identification. Because Speaker 3: the less legitimate critique I agree with, most people agree with, Speaker 3: is you can't have people becoming 100 times wealthier when Speaker 3: they're already billionaires and everyone else is becoming 5% wealthier, okay? Speaker 3: So that's legitimate. The legitimate critique of the people who Speaker 3: are economically literate is, yes, but this isn't really going Speaker 3: to help people. Half of it is being wasted. So Speaker 3: the way I would propose it is, great, you have Speaker 3: to tackle both. And it's the same thing as you Speaker 3: have to protect civil liberties and fight terrorists. The other Speaker 3: problem with the wealth tax, by the way, that for Speaker 3: some reason people haven't talked about is to enforce a Speaker 3: wealth tax, you're going to need surveillance. Because I'm going Speaker 3: to need to know that, you know, what is the Speaker 3: bench in your house in New Orleans worth? Speaker 1: Let's leave aside the practicalities, which seem very impractical at Speaker 1: assessing each person's wealth and taxing it. Speaker 3: Sorry, let me just on this one point push back. Speaker 3: They're not impractical with AI. It's exactly the point you Speaker 3: were making. They're not impractical with AI. AI could impute Speaker 3: every single thing you own, especially with all the data Speaker 3: about it. It can impute the things. Speaker 1: You can buy. Well, then what's wrong with then taxing Speaker 1: people's wealth? Speaker 3: Because it does not, A, doesn't help the poor. It Speaker 3: breaks consensus in the society. It breaks the tech culture Speaker 3: because people are illiquid. So all those have been talked about. Speaker 3: And the logical consequence of it is surveillance into your Speaker 3: personal life. Speaker 1: So give me a good palantir way to say we Speaker 1: have too much economic disparity. We want to have more Speaker 1: common ground in our society. How do you do it? Speaker 1: besides maybe more government efficiency being the trade-off? Speaker 3: You basically do a trade-off where taxation goes up. I Speaker 3: gave you my version, but any other version besides a Speaker 3: wealth tax, it goes up under the condition that for Speaker 3: every unit of tax you raise, a half of unit Speaker 3: of waste is identified. And that transfers a lot more Speaker 3: to the government because the problem, you're trying to solve Speaker 3: two problems. The inequity, which is a problem, and the inequity, Speaker 3: Which is also a problem which is how do you Speaker 3: make the life of a poor person? Speaker 1: Better? Speaker 3: They're not the same problem. So you have one problem, Speaker 3: which is it's not fair for me to become 20, Speaker 3: 50 times wealthier and for you to become 5% wealthier. Speaker 3: That's not fair. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: That's one problem. It's not at all correlated to the Speaker 3: other problem inherently, which is Neither you nor I are Speaker 3: a working class person in the city. That's a problem Speaker 3: that has to be solved too. And the interesting thing Speaker 3: about the proposals, mostly from the left here, but also Speaker 3: honestly from the far right, is it only cares about Speaker 3: problem one. When a proposal is only focused on one side, Speaker 3: whether it's civil liberties or anti-terror or surveillance and AI Speaker 3: without like the good and the bad, the problem is Speaker 3: it's always both. AI is both a force for good Speaker 3: and bad. The reason why we have to do it Speaker 3: is because we have adversaries and our adversaries are going Speaker 3: to do this. And if they own this technology, they Speaker 3: will change how the world works. That's not good for humanity. Speaker 3: It's not good for us. It's the same thing on surveillance. Speaker 3: It's like, does anti-surveillance mean we can't have a border? Speaker 3: Does anti-surveillance mean we can't stop trained, hardened terrorist networks? Speaker 3: Does it mean We can't identify spies who are stealing Speaker 3: our IP, who are trained adversaries who've gone to school Speaker 3: and are at the best spy service in the world. Speaker 3: They're stealing our stuff. Can we not stop them? Because Speaker 3: I can tell you that isn't going to work without, Speaker 3: you know, you're going to need technology and you're going Speaker 3: to need to know how to do this. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: And then you have the same thing with wealth. How Speaker 3: do you do this where you actually have a fair Speaker 3: society because wealthy people are not becoming a hundred times Speaker 3: wealthier where the Delta is so large. How do you Speaker 3: do it as an addendum, which is not talked about enough, Speaker 3: where you don't expand their surveillance state? And then how Speaker 3: do you do it last, but I think most importantly, Speaker 3: which somehow no one seems to care about, does a Speaker 3: taking wealth from the wealthy, does it actually end up Speaker 3: in any material way that helps the poor, which somehow Speaker 3: no one cares about? But again, these things are very Speaker 3: much linked. I'm in favor of people like me paying Speaker 3: a greater share under the condition that it doesn't destroy Speaker 3: American tech, which a wealth tax would do, does not Speaker 3: expand the surveillance state, which it absolutely would do. And Speaker 3: it lands in a way that helps working class and Speaker 3: upper middle class and below. If you pick one, you Speaker 3: just divide society. And the people who pay for that Speaker 3: division are the people who have no voice. And de facto, Speaker 3: you have no voice in the society if you're actually poor. Speaker 3: Because the people repping you are interested in killing the wealthy. Speaker 3: They're not interested in helping the poor, structurally. Speaker 1: Let's talk more about digital training on information surveillance. In Speaker 1: some ways, you've been talking very strongly about digital sovereignty now, Speaker 1: that the big LLM companies are not only sucking up Speaker 1: all our data and training, they're doing it without our permission. Speaker 1: They're building on the back of us. Well, U.S. Speaker 3: Enterprises are livid, enraged, apoplectic companies. I don't know what the... Speaker 3: Because what they've discovered is they're paying a lot of Speaker 3: money for a product that has not created a lot Speaker 3: of value. Speaker 1: You're talking about LLMs at the moment? Speaker 3: Yeah, LLMs. And then, lo and behold, you find that Speaker 3: while you're paying them a lot of money, you're actually Speaker 3: paying for them, training the model. How are they training Speaker 3: the model? They train the model on your data, what's Speaker 3: data's most valuable data that's proprietary. De facto, this is Speaker 3: what happens if you use any of these products without essentially. Speaker 1: Sounds in some ways like the old McKinsey and Company's Speaker 1: management consultants. Speaker 3: Yeah, but think times 5 million and then it actually Speaker 3: shows up and your business is theirs. And they're particularly Speaker 3: angry at Anthropic. It's funny. I feel like I spend 10% Speaker 3: of my day explaining to enterprises, Dario is not the Speaker 3: caricature that you think. He's not Lord Vader. And they ask, well, Speaker 3: if they're so ethical, how can they take my data Speaker 3: and turn it into a product that's competing against me Speaker 3: while I'm paying for it? Speaker 1: So how does Palantir fight against that? Speaker 3: Well, first of all, the secret of Palantir that is Speaker 3: most obvious and most hard to replicate is we actually Speaker 3: are aligned with the interests of our partners. So mostly, Speaker 3: we're educating. People are asking us, well, how do we Speaker 3: do this? What do the contracts look like? How do Speaker 3: we interact with closed models, open models? We're publishing document Speaker 3: after document after document, not just for our clients and partners. Speaker 3: With our clients and partners, they use what's broadly called Speaker 3: an ontology now, a concept that we developed that was Speaker 3: also derided that now everybody talks about. But you can Speaker 3: think of an ontology as a contextual framework where that Speaker 3: contextual framework is de facto what you're doing. You're taking Speaker 3: random things I'm saying and putting them into a frame Speaker 3: where somebody would find this interesting and intelligible. So basically Speaker 3: the ontology is both a alpha creator, meaning it takes Speaker 3: these raw products and makes them valuable, and then a Speaker 3: protective layer, which means you can interact with it without Speaker 3: being burned. But the larger point of the sovereignty thing Speaker 3: is we believe in sovereign institutions and sovereign individuals, then Speaker 3: how do you apply that? Well, you know, that's complicated, Speaker 3: but in the end, you know, whether it's vis-a-vis consumer Speaker 3: or vis-a-vis government, it should still end up being, there's Speaker 3: an imputed version of a First Amendment and a Fourth Speaker 3: Amendment in your life. And then there's a national version, Speaker 3: like in the stuff we're doing at the Department of War, Speaker 3: which is very powerful, or the stuff that's being used Speaker 3: in Ukraine or in Israel, They have ways of doing Speaker 3: things and data sets and ways of understanding the data Speaker 3: and ways of implementing it on the battlefield that no Speaker 3: one else should understand. Speaker 1: Do you think, by the way, that more American companies Speaker 1: should be willing to enlist in our military and national ambitions? Speaker 1: And what do you think of when Anthropic or even Speaker 1: Google or people say, no, no, no, we don't want Speaker 1: to be a part of this? Speaker 3: The Silicon Valley is a wondrous, unique country. The world Speaker 3: is jealous of place for good reason. It is a Speaker 3: highly insulated island. The only institution that a super majority Speaker 3: of Americans think is indisputably noble in this country is Speaker 3: the U.S. military. Speaker 1: And the valley was born out. Speaker 2: Of the U.S. Speaker 1: Military. Speaker 3: Well, it's a hypocrisy. It would not even exist without Speaker 3: the U.S. military. Thank you for reminding everyone of this. Speaker 3: The valley was built as a hybrid. Basically, university, government, capital. Speaker 1: A Vannevar Bush model. Yeah. Speaker 3: It was mostly Stanford, the government, various departments, and people Speaker 3: who came up with the venture model. Speaker 1: And so what happened? Speaker 3: Well, a lot happened and we made a lot of Speaker 3: mistakes where I do think the government lost its coolness. Speaker 3: I think Elon, I believe Palantir and others, Palantir graduates Speaker 3: have helped bring that back. in the context of defense, Speaker 3: defense tech, defense tech adjacent. But I think a wave Speaker 3: entered this country that's unfortunate, where one of the ways Speaker 3: you can signal to your community you're smart is by Speaker 3: being craven, meaning you make other people feel smart while Speaker 3: you transfer their IP to you. And That model has Speaker 3: been very, very successful and the unit economics of it Speaker 3: are very good, like unusually good. If you're a venture Speaker 3: capitalist or you're involved in this, you can make a hundred, Speaker 3: a thousand times your money. And by the way, that Speaker 3: leads also to things that are legitimately good. If there Speaker 3: was not so much wealth creation in the Valley, the Speaker 3: bastard misfits, Palantir being the best example of this, would Speaker 3: never be able to raise money. We raise money on Speaker 3: the back of the fact that everyone's getting wealthy, but Speaker 3: we are the last people to get the money. Speaker 1: Go back to this notion of technology engineering being in Speaker 1: service of a greater. Speaker 3: But by breaking the explicit or definitely tacit covenant between Speaker 3: wealth creation and creation of value, you break other tacit Speaker 3: covenants in the society, meaning you get to get wealthy Speaker 3: and we'll leave you alone. With your vast wealth because Speaker 3: you're also creating value in the society. And if you Speaker 3: break that, you end up with a fracturing of the society. Speaker 1: So show me how we broke it. In other words, Speaker 1: was the wealth creation done on frivolous, dumb things that Speaker 1: didn't add a lot of value? Speaker 3: I think these things do create value. But if you're Speaker 3: the average, say you're sitting in Louisiana and you're a carpenter, Speaker 3: do you feel like your life is better, materially better Speaker 3: than it was 30 years ago? I don't think so. Speaker 3: And so I think right or wrong, I think the Speaker 3: perception is more right than wrong. Your perception is a Speaker 3: small group of people have gotten 100, 200 times wealthier Speaker 3: and your life hasn't changed that much. Speaker 1: And it's based on consumerism and ads. Speaker 3: Consumerism, ads. But in the end of the day, these Speaker 3: things become micro subcultures and they're very divisionary where everyone Speaker 3: in that microculture is in the culture because they are Speaker 3: the same. But the differences that keep you, get you Speaker 3: kicked out of the culture, get smaller and smaller and smaller. Witness, Speaker 3: many Democrats refused to accept me as a Democrat because Speaker 3: I thought they were part of the party that was Speaker 3: going nuts. But we're struggling to find commonalities. Okay, so Speaker 3: that's the backdrop. Then AI comes, you're taking already a Speaker 3: fire that's burning and you're dumping gasoline on every part Speaker 3: of it. because the people who are running these labs Speaker 3: are saying, your life is gonna suck. Okay, so it's not, Speaker 3: by the way, the people doing most damage here, in Speaker 3: a normal political movement, you'd have the people doing the Speaker 3: movement saying, hey, this is gonna be good. No, you Speaker 3: have the people in the movement like, your house is Speaker 3: gonna suck. You're gonna have no job. And when you Speaker 3: have no job, you can rely on me To give Speaker 3: you money, oh, but by the way, I'm going to Speaker 3: be worth it. Speaker 1: Well, it seems we've lost actually two things. One, your Speaker 1: life will be much better, that we're not just creating Speaker 1: some consumerism, ad-driven stuff. And secondly, a national ambition, a Speaker 1: national greatness. Both those things seem to have been lost. Speaker 3: And they're very linked because if you have a national ambition, Speaker 3: you have to talk about things that will actually make Speaker 3: your life better today, tomorrow. Not about the way how Speaker 3: bad your life is going to be, building a dream Speaker 3: that you don't belong to. And by the way, they're Speaker 3: linked because part of the reason the Valley goes so Speaker 3: wrong on these things is they're not talking to anyone Speaker 3: in America and they don't care. There's like it's an island. Speaker 3: On that island, you're cool. Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this quick break. talk about Speaker 1: the anti-government sentiment, especially coming out of the 60s and Speaker 1: 70s in Silicon Valley, but there's a strong anti-government sentiment Speaker 1: on the right now. Where's that come from and is Speaker 1: that dangerous? Speaker 3: Well, again, you know, I, we at Palantir are always Speaker 3: interested in what is the legitimate version of maybe a Speaker 3: retrograde argument. So let me start with If you have Speaker 3: a rise of a powerful technology that could be used Speaker 3: to abuse you, used to undermine the imputed rights that Speaker 3: you actually have under our Constitution, directly or indirectly, and Speaker 3: you've seen mismanagement of issues, call it COVID, which I Speaker 3: think most people would say in some form or another Speaker 3: was mismanaged, and you have no national purpose measurement, maybe Speaker 3: the the lowest I've ever seen. So you have high Speaker 3: mistrust in government. You have low national purpose. You feel Speaker 3: like people who claim to believe in things are just liars. Speaker 3: And you have the people who are doing the best Speaker 3: seem to be not so tethered to you. You'd be Speaker 3: a little bit weird if you didn't have skepticism of Speaker 3: the government. Now, where I think it's very nonproductive, again, Speaker 3: on the right and on the left, but I Again, Speaker 3: just for clarity, I think the right you're referring to Speaker 3: and the left I'm referring to are not actually right. Speaker 3: So I think that right is actually left and the Speaker 3: left is actually right. And that's one of the reasons Speaker 3: like fascist movements tend to do this. It's somehow very charismatic. Speaker 1: Did you learn that in Germany? Speaker 3: Well, I spent a lot of time with Nazis, ex-Nazis, Speaker 3: when I was in Germany because I wanted to understand Speaker 3: like real ex-Nazis. You had to go to the countryside Speaker 3: to meet them. Because in the city, there were no ex-Nazis. Speaker 3: Everybody was like, we hated Hitler. Just in the country, Speaker 3: people were honest about it. And most of the people who, Speaker 3: I actually think that the anti-Semitism was a motivation, but Speaker 3: I'm honestly, for the record, I think a lot of Speaker 3: the motivation was that's not our battle than overt anti-Semitism. Speaker 3: It was the charisma of Hitler to them and the Speaker 3: national abuse of a national mandate, which is justified. and Speaker 3: abuse of patriotism, which is necessary to humans. And you Speaker 3: see this, why is the regressionary left and the regressionary Speaker 3: right very different movements? Why are they so charismatic to Speaker 3: their peers? It's because if you go to the right, Speaker 3: which has been indoctrinated with a capitalism is always good, Speaker 3: which is a simplistic thing, the correct narrative is it's Speaker 3: better than the alternatives. That's very different than it solves Speaker 3: all problems. And the classic right of center institutions sell Speaker 3: capitalism as it solves all problems, when in fact that's Speaker 3: obviously wrong. It solves problems that other systems don't solve Speaker 3: in a way they don't solve them and therefore is better, Speaker 3: but it has negative externalities. Speaker 1: Such as? Speaker 3: Egregious wealth dislocations. that then obviously impinge on political power Speaker 3: and a dislocation of societies and narrative because you're not Speaker 3: living in the same world if you have a billion Speaker 3: dollars or if you have $ 100 in your account. Capitalism Speaker 3: inherently assigns a dollar value to human life, and that Speaker 3: dollar value is a derivative of your net worth. If Speaker 3: you get hit by a car and you go to court, Speaker 3: The driver hits you, will pay a different sum, presumably, Speaker 3: depending on whether it's you or a working class person, Speaker 3: unemployed or me. So it inherently does that. Speaker 1: Let me end then with a question on what you Speaker 1: just talked about, which is what does it mean to Speaker 1: be human? And you look at, you know, I'll go Speaker 1: to Creech Air Force Base where they now have drones Speaker 1: and you've worked with that quite a bit where humans Speaker 1: are almost not in the loop anymore. That to me Speaker 1: seems a bit of a metaphor of what we're facing Speaker 1: with this new technology, is to what extent do humans Speaker 1: not only have to be in the loop on things Speaker 1: like systems, but to what extent when there's intelligence and Speaker 1: maybe even consciousness in machines, what is the role of humans? Speaker 3: Well, what is special about humans when our core capacity Speaker 3: and our claim to superiority has been our cognitive intelligence. Yeah, Speaker 3: but what happens when we birth a species where that's Speaker 3: no longer true. And this is where I, again, think Speaker 3: the founding fathers of our country were something beyond genius Speaker 3: level wisdom people, because you have a different setup in Speaker 3: Europe where the constitution is birthed by parliamentarians. Our rights, Speaker 3: according to our constitution in this country, are given to Speaker 3: us because of a granting and presupposition of a higher figure. Speaker 3: That means there is something in the human spirit as Speaker 3: protected under law and internalized by Americans, a reason why Speaker 3: I'm very skeptical of bringing open migration because it's very special, Speaker 3: where we believe deep in our hearts because of what Speaker 3: we were given in this country, that there is something Speaker 3: in us above and beyond just our ability to speak Speaker 3: and our cognitive abilities, which at some point will be surpassed, Speaker 3: which is called human, which is artistic, individual, particular, special, Speaker 3: and more valuable and needs to be protected. And that setup, Speaker 3: for lack of a better word, is unique to this country. Speaker 3: And we should make sure we fight to keep it. Speaker 1: Alex Karp, thank you so much. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Alex Karp is hard to pin down. In Speaker 1: some ways, he's cast with the other tech bros that Speaker 1: are on the right or libertarian, but he's not that way. Speaker 1: In many ways, his philosophy and his politics are unpredictable, Speaker 1: but he has a strong sense that when we build Speaker 1: new machinery and new technology, it's got to be in Speaker 1: service of our republic, in service of our nation, in Speaker 1: service of our democracy. And that's something that hadn't really Speaker 1: been part of the ethos of Silicon Valley for the Speaker 1: past 50 years. It's clear to me that Alex Karp Speaker 1: is different. And I think he's being sincere. But what Speaker 1: I keep coming back to is the trade-off that people Speaker 1: like Karp force on us. He's intellectually honest about surveillance, Speaker 1: about Palantir, about the government using these tools. But the Speaker 1: thing I'm left wondering is whether a man this rational Speaker 1: This comfortable-with-trade-offs the rest of us might flinch at fully Speaker 1: appreciates the fears people have about the surveillance state. That's Speaker 1: it for today's episode. I'm Walter Isaacson. I'll see you Speaker 1: next time on The Builders. Speaker 5: The Builders is a Kaleidoscope and iHeart production. This series Speaker 5: is hosted by Walter Isaacson. It's executive produced for Kaleidoscope Speaker 5: by Oswald Lishen, David Weisbord, and Mangesh Hetikadur. Sheena Ozaki Speaker 5: is the producer. Julia Nutter is supervising producer. Eva Zorich Speaker 5: is our consulting producer. Fact-checking by Eamon Whalen. Research by Speaker 5: Gloria Thiel. Maria Paz Mendez-Hodes is head of video. Marketing Speaker 5: by Christy Mirabal and Elle Liu. Production support by Dara Speaker 5: Look Potts. Music for the series was created by Spencer Stevenson, a.k.a. Speaker 3: Botany, and it was. Speaker 5: Mixed by Steve Bone. From iHeart, the series is EP'd Speaker 5: by Alistair. Perry and Katrina Norvell. Special thanks to Bob Pittman, Speaker 5: Conal Byrne, Will Pearson, John Sykes, Nikki Etorre, Carrie Lieberman, Speaker 5: Binky Urban, Julia Prosser, Jeremy Blum, Alison Goldberger, WYES, and Speaker 5: ASL Studios. For more from Walter Isaacson, be sure to Speaker 5: check out his newest paperback, The Innovators, How a Group Speaker 5: of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. It's Speaker 5: available wherever fine books are sold. And for more videos Speaker 5: and podcasts from the Frontiers of Discovery, be sure to Speaker 5: check out kaleidoscope.nyc.