Palantir CEO Alex Karp on the Zero-Sum AI Race

We were the freak show and we spent 20 years for this moment. We're doing it. We're doing it. And I'm sure you're enjoying this as much as I am. I just got three things to say. God bless our troops. God bless America.

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And gentlemen, dart your badge.

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We are the power that actually has the decisive vote, and that is with military superiority. If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white collar job here. The most important thing Palantir is doing is to make sure that American war fighters are much more likely to come home if we are going to outperform the rest of the world. Our single advantage is there is a

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version of civilization, Silicon Valley, that believes it operates outside of geopolitics, that the products it builds are neutral, that the rules of great power competition don't apply to software companies. Alex Karp has spent 20 years arguing the opposite. As co founder and CEO of Palantir, he has built technology deployed on battlefields across the Middle east and analytics infrastructure embedded in the Department of War. What has changed in the past year is harder to dismiss. American operations have demonstrated a level of precision and dominance that adversaries did not anticipate. Karp argues that is not an accident. His warning to the rest of the industry is equally if AI companies don't make common cause with the defense establishment, nationalization becomes the politically obvious move. This conversation with Alex Karp, co founder and CEO of Palantir, was recorded at the A16Z American Dynamism Summit in Washington

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D.C. Dr. Karp, it is a pleasure to finally have the OG American Dynamism founder on stage with us at the fourth annual summit. I think, gosh, if we had.

1:58

Can we do this like that?

2:10

Yes.

2:12

I think if we guys don't get that those are gang signs.

2:13

No, I think we all got the reference.

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Mehdi's in the audience. He doesn't get out much. He's like, huh, what is that?

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This is going to be a great conversation. So I think if we'd had this conversation 72 hours ago, it would have been very different. But of course there's been a lot of news. And so I want to get straight to the news and what's happening in the world because Palantir is certainly part of that story. So over the weekend, the US and Israel bombed Iran in Operation Epic Fury. Ayatollah Khamenei is dead. The Middle east is now at war. What do you think the situation means for the future of the West? Something you talk a lot about. And the Future of America.

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Well, first of all, I'm delighted to be on stage with you and for many of you in this audience, by the way, I've been talking so much I'm kind of losing my voice. I would have probably canceled on anyone but you, but that means a lot.

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We're glad you're here.

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I love to cancel, by the way, for those of you, because it's my favorite thing because actually I'm an introvert. Any excuse to cancel as Palantirians know it. But yeah, you've been such a force in public and behind the scenes for, I think, helping people in the broadly speaking defense tech or let America wins or things that are good, broadly defined. And then we also align on something we could talk about later on, like the importance of not putting our youth in straitjackets because they're divergent neurologically, which is a passion of mine and should be a passion of everyone's, since you could define our wonderful and great country as a country where everyone who was divergent in ideology, thought, religion, or quite frankly, neurologically came to this country to have a better place where they could express their freedom and had the right to a express what they thought. And there's a deep link between expressing what you think publicly and privately, first and fourth Amendment, and being able to think it. And if that doesn't work, being able to defend it with the Second Amendment. And last, not least, our founders did not structure these rights the way they are in, say, where I lived for a lot of my life in Germany as rights granted to us by other bureaucrats. They're given to us. They're inalienable from a higher being. And I would just say before I get into how the world's changed, we have American war fighters on the battlefield willing to sacrifice their lives, some of whom have sacrificed their lives. They have families and kids. Kids and families don't know if their loved ones are coming home. And we, I know in this room, but we should publicly, privately support them. And people who are not aware or somehow so effing spoiled that they don't realize what these people do for us, we should publicly humiliate them. And everyone has a role in that. And especially those of us who are riding a crest of intergenerational cultural, intellectual courage, advantage, which it is to be an American nowadays, obviously should not forget the war fighter who are disproportionately from the middle of our country and disproportionately have gotten screwed. And I'm proud, very proud, that at Palantir we get arrows and people, I mean, half the people attacking us. It'd be good if they spent two minutes on Wikipedia, at least learning the talking points they're regurgitating. But there's some legitimate criticisms of any company. But at the end of the day, the fact is the most important thing Palantir is doing, that other people in this room are doing and people like you and other people adjacent or ancillary to building more lethal and deadly weapons is to make sure that American war fighters are much more likely to come home. And quite frankly, the people who are trying to harm them know that they won't be coming home. And that's the way you stop people from attacking us, in my opinion. And then on the kind of the leading up to what's going on. But I think that there are probably people in this room who are wildly supportive and they're people who aren't. It is hard to deny that America is exerting a deterrent capability that was eviscerated. You can like or not like, that's different than ignoring. We now have a deterrent capability that no other country appears to have. And that is for lots of reasons. And obviously the war fighter people organize the war fighter, the generals, the leadership, the president. But one advantage that often gets overlooked for reasons that make no sense is war Fighting is technology. I spent half my life in Germany for familial reasons, and then I wrote my PhD there. And then the rise of America after World War II. The reason America was able to win World War II were technological advantages. And if you look what happened in Operation Midnight Hammer, what happened in Venezuela, what's so far happening in Iran, you see one society just totally dominating. That's our society. Now you could get into, I'm always in fights with my intellectual friends about it. They're like, but wouldn't it be better to have a law based system where everyone is equal? Yeah, sure, in theory. But in this world it's us or China or Russia. And I don't know how you guys feel about those decisions, but I literally believe we are doing the work of a higher purpose by making sure, and not just for America, but for the whole world, that we are the power that actually has the decisive vote. And there is only one way to do that, and that is with military superiority. And when I say military superiority, I don't mean that we're arguing on a PowerPoint. It means, so now you get to what has technology done now? Again, I think whenever people like me are talking about this, you can't say enough that it's the war fighter and their courage. And I'm not doing that. I'm sitting here and we have Palantirians all over. Like, I'm talking to them constantly. So they're putting themselves in harm's way. And I am kind of, but not directly. It's mostly all the people who yell at me. And I guess maybe there's some people who want to shoot at me. But in the lifetime of Palantir, there's been the rise of software, which essentially meant your software company that is supplying a steak dinner that's obviously parasitic is not cutting it. Those companies are being eviscerated. The rise of defense tech and now you have a hybrid software, hardware, AI where you really need all three. Interestingly, from an investment perspective, I would say the last company standing before we all have to salute the overlord of the LLM will be Palantir. But it's mainly.

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We're going to get into that, I promise.

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Mainly because it's the specificity and the security and the orchestration. But none of that has to make any sense to anyone in this room. I'll tell you what, it makes a lot of sense to our adversaries right now. How is America doing this now? Again, it's specialized ways. It's 25, 30 years of experience in fighting. It's meritocracy. The Department of War is the most meritocratic environment. It integrated in Korea before our society did. It is the most popular institution and most revered institution and probably the only institution in America that is actually revered by the American people across every demographic. And it's revered by the American people across every demographic precisely because it's been meritocratic. If you were a black American, you got your break in America by going to the military. If you wanted to be treated fairly and you were from a group that you felt that every demographic has somebody who is in the military, whose life was changed and who did something noble and wonderful for America. They also have the experience of coming home and America not sticking up for them, we should change that. Now you get to Silicon Valley. My one message for. And again, without getting in specific people, because I'm like, if Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white collar job, meaning primarily Democratic shaped people whom I grew up with, highly educated people who went to elite schools or went to schools that are almost elite, who vote for one party. And you're going to screw the military if you don't think that's going to lead to nationalization of our technology. You're retarded and you might be particularly retarded because you have a 160 IQ, but this is where that path is going. You cannot have technologies that simultaneously take away everyone's job and then be perceived again. There's a lot of subtlety here behind, behind the curtain. I've been heavily involved in that subtlety where it can be deployed. What can be deployed? There's a difference between US military and surveillance. And despite what everyone thinks, Palantir is the anti surveillance company. I know your person online thinks that's not true, but every technical expert does. So I end up in every conversation that I don't want to be in. But the danger for our industry is that America, you get a famous horseshoe effect where there's only one thing people agree on and that's that this is not paying the bills and people and our industry should be nationalized. And so the societal benefit that is going on in Iran, besides the fact that I think, I suspect the Iranian people feel like finally someone's on my side and it wasn't the Berkeley faculty that was supposed to like me. It's a big lesson for you. Yeah. But then as America, we and the people who are prominent in the tech industry, we have to find a way to make sure that we're not just popular in Palo Alto.

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Yeah. I want to get back to something you just said, which is that it's either us winning or China winning or Russia winning or another country, that it's a zero sum game. And it feels like the people in this room and Washington really understand that AI is zero sum, but that Silicon Valley doesn't. Silicon Valley doesn't like to think in terms of zero sum. They like to think that everything is a positive sum game. So how would you explain to the people in Silicon Valley who are again building the LLMs, you know, building what they would say is a brand new net, new technology that hasn't existed before and therefore it needs to be treated differently. What would you say to them about this?

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Well, I mean there's. First of all, by the way, I just want to push back slightly. They do think it's zero sum. They think it's zero sum versus each other. So they absolutely are fighting. There will be. It's my own rhetoric, but I happen to think it's true. It's going to be chips ontology and I suspect in the end, one one and a half provider. So they pretend they don't think it's zero sum, but then ask Them how they feel about their competitor. So it's very, very, I mean, these people are fighting very, very hard for the dominant position. So what they don't understand is in the world it's zero sum. But I actually think the primary issue in the Valley is it's going to be zero sum vis a vis you when America decides, okay, I interact with a lot of political figures. I have a lot of respect. I think in some are when politicians figure out this is the one winning issue, it is going to be zero sum. It's going to be your money and your company being zero sum nationalized. So that's the part they don't understand. Helping people understand that either we set the rules or de facto I'm much more on America should be strong so that we don't have to worry about the enemies, then our enemies are evil kind of thing. So I'm not super neocon. It seems to be very hard in this culture. As someone who's lived abroad a lot of my life, it's very hard in this culture to explain to people that we're in a competitive environment because things here are so good. They don't understand how different it will be and how much we will change and how much the pressure will be on America not just legally, but militarily and culturally if we fall behind. And one of the things that Again, so I personally think the better way to get people to change is to, okay, bring people like that to Iowa, bring them to D.C. and explain to our American political leadership why you make $100 million and why a soldier from Iowa can't explain to his wife he has the best technology. And then go across the hall, so let's classically Republican shape. Then go across the hall and talk to progressive Democrats about how every one of their constituencies not going to have a job and then leave and imagine what's going to happen to you. You know, the funny thing about those of us who've spent most of our life abroad, like in Germany, which is a phenomenal culture, we have a much better sense of how fragile this experiment is America, it could go wrong and it will go wrong if all wealth is going to a small number of people and those people do not appear to be on side. Now, that perception is obviously a caricature. It is a caricature in the sense this is new technology and you're not going to be able to use the same kind of framework and you're going to need people who appreciate how it's different. And there are real questions about Fourth Amendment protections like our right to privacy. What is privacy in a world where you could impute what someone's doing at home through technology? How do you protect our right to have our own thoughts, our own ideas, our own practices at home, our own health records? Those are real issues. When the technology can also help you to be healthier, live longer, have a higher economic status, potentially, certainly if you're a vocational worker. So those issues have to be unpacked. And where Silicon Valley is right, is you're going to need a forum to talk about that that doesn't pretend. Large language models is the same thing as machine learning is the same thing as software is the same thing as a bullet. They're not. But. But de facto, I very much believe, as a critique of the economic elite, especially in the technical area, to use an economic, kind of overly economic philosophical term, they reify meaning they turn it into a thing. Our rights. But those rights, you know, when I was in Germany, I was there and there were. I spent a lot of time. I did a PhD, but there were a lot of older Germans. And I would spend time with them in the countryside, in the city. Of course, they didn't know anybody who was a Nazi in the countryside. They're like, we're all Nazis. So I would ask them, but one of the more fascinating conversations is why they became Democrats or not like left right, but capital D. And it was always because it worked. And then the unwinding of it that we don't ask. If it unwinds, we will not be protected. And it's just the dialogue we have currently is not acknowledging what's going to happen politically, what is happening politically. The wealth tax is a derivative of this because everyone knows the wealth tax isn't going to help the poor, it's just going to fuck the rich. And that's enough to get it done. And if that's happening, just imagine what's going to happen when it's like there's going to be 50 unlikable people with all the money. Anybody here like that, and you guys are doing well.

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No, I want to get back to kind of the conversation about how we ensure that the Department of War continues to lead on AI, because I think this has been top of mind for everyone in the room for the last 48 hours. Our adversaries are looking at contracting wars that are playing out in press releases. What is your view on how we can ensure that we win this AI race against the PRC? If you're giving advice to all the founders and CEOs of the well the

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first thing part of what I'm doing and part of the reason besides your charm and importance, part of the reason I want to be here is I want my reputation. In the Valley you always have reputations. My reputation, which I'm not even saying the reputation is true, but in my case like I'm viewed as the batshit crazy guy who is often telling you something you don't want to hear and you may not like but is probably right.

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And that's true.

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So yeah. And that's why I want you to send this first step. We have to they're not understanding the stakes and what I nothing's going to happen until people understand the stakes. This will affect you. Now then the question is like what Hollywood did is Hollywood got together the whole rating system was Hollywood realized if we don't do ratings, Washington's going to and Washington is going to butcher it. And let's even say Washington doesn't want to butcher it but like it doesn't understand the metier. So the first step is everybody and I'm already on the phone with people saying okay great, I understand your issue but you realize the wolves are at the gate and they already have tasted blood. The second step is we have to find ways where we get together and say okay, if you just want to go through the issues, yes, there are using technologies in the context of eviscerating fourth amendment rights in America is something left and right in this country actually don't want. It's a caricature to believe that either side wants it. There are people on the honestly, I'm in private rooms, there are people on the left who don't care about these issues, who pretend to do in public. But there are people and there are people on the right who pretend not to care, who do care. Both parties have significant coalitions and the American people cares care and it's in our Constitution. But then you have to get be very granular about what's going to happen on the battlefield because the two issues Americans care about are their prosperity and their safety. So if the two things that Silicon Valley has to figure out is how are we going to ethically talk about what's going to happen to our economy? In my view, you could create a lot of prosperity with trade shaped people. Okay, but what is going to happen to the white collar workers and what are we going to do? That's one issue. And then we're not going to agree. But we have to have something like we're going to do these initiatives, just like Hollywood did. And then you're going to have to have a discussion on the battlefield where the rebuttable presumption, meaning it doesn't happen, is that we are going to do the maximal amount to make sure our war fighters come home safely. And if you are sitting in Silicon Valley making an argument that somehow would eviscerate that, or conversely, you're not able to understand what Silicon Valley is saying, meaning there's going to have to be a medium. Without going into details on all these breakdowns, because I was in the middle of it and I want to stay in the middle of it. There are substantive issues and there are cultural issues. If we could get rid of the cultural misunderstanding, we could get pretty close to agreements here. But you're dealing with worlds that never, ever, ever talk.

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Yes.

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And don't have an ability to talk to each other.

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Yeah, well. And you've been building a bridge between these cultures for 20 years. I mean, that's what's so interesting. I mean, that's in some ways why we have this conference, is to bring together people who speak two different languages to very different value sets and try to get them aligned. I'd love your advice for these founders who maybe are new. You know, it's sort of like that meme, the first time meme with the Coen Brothers film, you know, where it's like a lot of these people are having their first conversations with the Department of War, or they don't. Maybe they don't have any family in the military. Maybe they've never met a war fighter. What is your advice to some of these CEOs who are maybe new to these conversations that you've been having for 20 years now?

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Well, the best thing you could do is go to Iowa or go to a base and have a. Like. I don't think. Look, put this way, maybe the first time is probably not pg, but, you know, I'm happily not married, not divorced, so don't follow how I live. But you don't have to. Maybe if you're going to meet somebody, you really want to oppress it. Maybe not. Maybe you have an advantage if it's your third girlfriend or boyfriend, not your first. Like, go have a conversation with somebody. Like, if you're going to meet a general or somebody like that, and you've never talked to somebody who's actually done something on the battlefield or someone who has family who's done something on the battlefield and you don't have any, and because of that, you don't have an ability to empathize with their perspective. That's probably a huge mistake, and it's probably going to backfire. Secondly, though, you have to be honest about where your aptitude is. Like, you know, Silicon Valley tech builders, broadly defined hardware, software, AI. I would say we build in the military context, essentially software scaffolding. Much more like, in a weird way, more. More like hardware software. But it's in Software Managing LLMs. It is. The single biggest mistake people make in this area is because they're intelligent in one area, they assume they're intelligent in all areas. And a big failure mechanism in the Valley is every Valley person is forced to present as if they're the smartest in all areas at all time. That's like, if you don't know who the mark is, you're the mark.

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Yeah.

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Like, if you think you're the smartest. So I'm dyslexic, and I think one of the reasons I've done so well is I do think I'm one of the better people at certain things. At least I believe it. And I know I'm not at everything. It's a very small. It's like. But a failure mode for the Valley is I'm the smartest on every issue. For example, I need to be the person negotiating this contract. What if you have no aptitude for that? Just because you can do X does not mean you've imputed high aptitude at Y. In fact, it's very unlikely. It's true. Yeah, it's almost certain that you're just not smart enough to realize how bad you are.

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That's probably one of the most important lessons for company builders in the room. I actually. I want to end the conversation on Palantir is the OG American Dynamism Company. I think a lot of our founders in this room are indebted. They've worked for you. They've built their playbooks inside of Palantir. They've built new companies that are epic in their own right. But they started at Palantir in many cases. And so I want to dive into. You brought up the neurodivergent fellowship. It's one of my favorite things you've ever done. You've done a lot of great things, but I think it's one of the most extraordinary stands that you've taken in the company. But you've always looked for people who are different and somehow cultivated them and brought together people who are Democrats, Republicans on the right, on the left, people who are of all walks of Life. How do you lead such a diverse group of people? Especially at scale, like at the scale you are.

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Well, I mean it's always hard to know when you're like I view myself as an artist. So you're really. It's like, well, how do you create the art? And it's funny because I mean I look, I like the freedom money gives me and I certainly don't want to like do some bullshit philanthropy to prove that I'm good because I did something bad. Because I think what we do is very important. But it's like at the end of the day it's like an artistic thing. But you know, I had, it's always helpful. I had. My parents are among the most talented people I've ever met and I feel they don't agree with me that, you know, like they should have. They could like it's kind of weird I'm so famous, put it that way from. And I, I, I. And then there's the American thing where we are. I really believe in the magical, liberating, inalienable right for all of us to be individuals. And that's what I see as particularly moral and special in the world. I don't like these things that like I've been famously anti woke but the thing I find offensive about it is actually that it's people pretending to be different while all being the same. And so I don't like. So I tend to gravitate towards people who are unique and yeah, I don't really care their politics. I care about their ability to think and do. There is an aptitude thing where can you recognize somebody who is truly unique in something you've not done yourself is just something you're born with. I do think it's a form of neurodivergence. Outlier IQ is a. the a certain way. It's not that different than being autistic. Like you just can't, you're not going to, you're not going to decomp a problem the way somebody who is just normal smart will. And I find that very, very charismatic. The trick to doing it is you have to. It's this very hard thing where somebody who is the best. I believe the Palantirians while managed at Palantir and sometimes in many and most cases presumably after a Palantir I am helping them to express something that only they can do at that moment. And if you look at our products and what we've done, it is actually true. Even what we're doing right now all across the Middle east and obviously in America, each single product at each single part was built by the one person in the world that could have done it. And then I have to somehow get them to do things that they don't actually think are valuable, but on their terms. And that's basically my job. Because at that level of aptitude, you can't just say, do this idiot. Because they're like, why would I do that? You're the idiot. And then what I think is very special about the Palantirians, ex Palantirians and current Palantirians, is when you're at Palantir, you're not learning to actually follow my playbook, you're learning to follow your playbook, where I'm inserting some things that may not have occurred to you, maybe you don't know. I'm doing that to make sure that your playbook gets rid of your dyslexia. Basically I'm anti dyslexifying your playbook, but around you. And if you take like the, I don't know, there's so many really important ex Palantirians, what you'll see is they're a kind of clastic people and they're not going to build the same company Palantir was. They're also not going to build the same company of the next person who lives Palantir. And that's why they play such a disproportional role. And at the end of the day, that's why Palantir is like playing such a big role. Because like Foundry, pg, Apollo, ontology, the management of ontology, Maven, which is like, you know, we've just like been able to target in a way no other country can. It's like the other countries are like, what the happened here? Like we were thinking Afghanistan, like what is this meaning our retreat? Like, meaning. And like, like America has re established deterrence that actually just happened. It's happened in the last year, like that, right, left, center. I don't care what party you're in in private, obviously you can't say this in public. In private. That is a phenomenal asset that America now has that it did not have. And there are lots of reasons for it. But a one, maybe not the most important is a concatenation of the most unusual in some cases, otherwise maybe not fully functional talent built around building something that was an absolutely scandalous unpopular dream rejected by many people called Maven. And that's how this country, by the way, if we are going to outperform the rest of the world. Our single advantage is to augment neurodivergent, highly individual people to be their absolutely unique best and protect their first, second, fourth and fifth Amendment rights so that they don't get screwed.

26:12

Absolutely. Well again, the OG American Dynamism Founder, thank you so much for all you've done for the country.

31:38

Thank you.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow us on x16z and subscribe to our substack@a16z.substack.com thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investment in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com disclosures.

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