PALANTIR: War, Surveillance, Artificial Intelligence

Part 1: The Heretic of Silicon Valley

Chapter 2. The Philosopher CEO: Alex Karp's Worldview

Attorney Kyungjin Kim

A. From the Frankfurt School to Defense Company CEO

(1) Why a Neo-Marxist Philosophy PhD Leads a Defense Company

In the late 1990s, winters in Frankfurt, Germany, were cold and damp. In a worn-out cafe near the Goethe University campus, an American graduate student was sipping coffee and reading a thick German-language academic text. His name was Alex Karp.

He could have graduated from Stanford Law School and become a lawyer, but instead he crossed the Atlantic to the birthplace of philosophy. Just a few blocks from where he sat stood the Institute for Social Research, the home base of the Frankfurt School. It was the very building where Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer had returned to teach after fleeing the horrors of Nazism into exile.

Karp had his reasons for choosing Frankfurt. He wanted to understand how power works. Studying law, he had grasped the forms of power, but the essence of power remained a mystery. Why do people obey? Why do some societies slide into totalitarianism? Why does a civilization that pursued rationality produce barbarity like Auschwitz? These questions drew him to Frankfurt.

His doctoral advisor, Carola Brede, was an expert in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Karp had initially intended to study under Jurgen Habermas, but for some reason, the two parted ways. In 2002, he finally received his PhD. The title of his dissertation was "Aggression in the Lebenswelt." It was an abstruse work exploring how human aggression permeates everyday language and culture.

Had the story ended there, Karp would have become a professor teaching critical theory to students in some university lecture hall. But he felt that the world of academia could not answer the questions he harbored.

"Academic discussions are interesting only to those within them." That is what he said in a later interview. The world did not operate according to the theories in books. Power was not an abstract concept but a concrete force. Data, information, and technology were becoming new sources of that force.

During his Stanford days, he had befriended a unique individual named Peter Thiel. Thiel was a former chess prodigy turned law student who, like Karp, saw the world differently. The two debated endlessly about philosophy and politics. Thiel was a libertarian, and Karp called himself a socialist. They appeared to stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but the two agreed on one point: freedom does not preserve itself.

On September 11, 2001, the world changed. Thiel called Karp. He had already become wealthy co-founding PayPal. What Thiel proposed was a new company. The idea was to take the technology that caught credit card fraud at PayPal and use it to build software that tracks terrorists. Karp hesitated at first. Joining hands with intelligence agencies was, from the perspective of the critical theory he had studied, an act of serving state power. It was precisely what the Frankfurt School's teachers had warned against.

But Karp decided to think differently. What he had learned in Frankfurt was not that power itself is evil. It was that power becomes evil when it is uncontrolled. Nazism was born not because power existed but because of the concentration and abuse of power. The question was not how to eliminate power but who holds it. If the power of information and data was going to emerge regardless, should it not be in the hands of democratic nations? That was his conclusion.

In 2003, Palantir was founded. The CEO position was given to Karp. A philosophy PhD who could not code leading a technology company defied Silicon Valley's common sense. But Thiel judged that what Karp possessed was more important than coding ability.

It was the ability to ask questions. The ability to ask not what technology can do, but what technology should do.

Karp had another secret. He had dyslexia. The condition, which makes letters appear to dance, had set him apart since childhood. Because he could not absorb text at face value, he had to think for himself. In a 2025 interview with Fortune, he said: "If you don't have dyslexia, when you read a text, the text becomes you. The more you read, the more the text controls you. If you have dyslexia, it doesn't work that way." This cognitive independence became Palantir's culture , a culture that does not follow consensus but moves according to conviction.

A neo-Marxist philosophy PhD leading a defense company appears paradoxical. But for Karp, this was not a betrayal but a logical conclusion. He had learned the fear of totalitarianism in Frankfurt. His way of putting that fear into practice was to place the most powerful technological weapons in the hands of democratic nations. He left the theory in the lecture hall and chose to transform reality through code.

(2) "Technology Is Not Neutral": Fear of Totalitarianism and Defending Western Democracy

At the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Alex Karp addressed the audience: "Technology is not neutral." He stood on stage in athletic wear, his hair sticking out in every direction. Before the world's financiers and politicians, he directly repudiated Silicon Valley's mythology.

Silicon Valley's engineers had long regarded technology as a value-neutral tool. A knife in a chef's hands is a cooking tool; in a robber's hands, it becomes a weapon. Algorithms are the same , a good tool when used for good purposes, a bad tool when used for bad ones. Therefore, the technologist's responsibility is to make the tool well; how the tool is used is the user's affair. This logic is convenient because it frees technologists from moral responsibility.

Karp called this a naive delusion. Sophisticated technologies like artificial intelligence and big data are different from a knife. Such technologies restructure society in and of themselves. The way data is collected, the algorithms used for analysis, and the form in which results are presented already embody specific values. For instance, the moment one determines that certain data is "important" and other data "can be ignored," value judgments intervene. Those judgments are etched into code, and code changes reality.

This perspective directly connects to what he learned at the Frankfurt School. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer warned that reason and technology could degenerate from tools of human liberation into instruments of domination and control. Nazi Germany was living proof of that warning. Hitler's empire was barbaric yet simultaneously thoroughly rational. Train schedules were precise, and the bureaucracy was efficient. Auschwitz demonstrated the horrifying truth that industrial-scale massacre requires a sophisticated logistics system.

Karp never forgot this history. What he fears is not a science-fiction future in which artificial intelligence dominates humans. It is the present, in which the methods by which humans dominate other humans are becoming more sophisticated. Data and algorithms make that sophistication cheap. China is already surveilling its citizens through its social credit system. It tracks Uyghurs with facial recognition technology. This is the reality of the "non-neutrality of technology" that Karp speaks of. The same technology is used to catch terrorists in democratic nations and to suppress dissidents in authoritarian ones.

In Karp's logic, the crucial next step is this: if technology is not neutral, then who holds that technology is decisive. He puts it this way: "If we don't build it, they will." While the democratic camp hesitates over AI development, authoritarian states are charging ahead unchecked. If one is paralyzed by moral deliberation, one hands the technological advantage to an adversary unencumbered by moral constraints. In Karp's words, "the naive idea that our adversaries are more moral because they are less adept at AI" is dangerous.

In response to criticism that Palantir's software could infringe on civil liberties, Karp offers a rebuttal. His argument is that if terrorism goes unchecked and society is gripped by fear, citizens will ultimately surrender their freedom in exchange for security. A terrified public delegates unlimited power to authoritarian leaders. This is what happened in 1930s Germany. Therefore, to preserve democracy, security must be secured first. And for that security, the most advanced technology is needed.

Karp does not hide the fact that Palantir's technology "is sometimes used to kill people." In a letter to investors at the time of the 2020 IPO, he wrote directly: "Our software is used to target terrorists and keep soldiers safe." In the war in Ukraine, Palantir's technology was used to track Russian tank positions and transmit those coordinates to artillery units. When reports emerged that the Israeli Defense Forces were using Palantir's platform in the Gaza Strip, Karp publicly declared he would stand with Israel.

Such positions naturally provoked fierce criticism. Critics call Palantir "a tool of the surveillance state." Civil liberties organizations denounce its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). On university campuses, protesters blocked Palantir recruitment events. Some of Karp's own employees resigned in opposition to the company's direction.

Karp does not retreat from this criticism. He appears to regard being criticized as evidence that he is doing the right thing. In a 2024 New York Times interview, he warned that the United States is likely facing "a three-front war against China, Russia, and Iran." The best way to prepare for this war, he argued, is to develop autonomous weapons. His logic was that while the West and the authoritarian axis are approaching technological parity, the West is at a disadvantage because it has moral constraints against using nuclear weapons.

Karp's worldview is straightforward. The world is dangerous, freedom is fragile, and good cannot be protected without strength. This is a philosophical journey that begins in the Frankfurt School's critical theory and lands in cold-eyed realism. That is why his leading a defense company is not a contradiction. Fear of totalitarianism is the engine that drives him, and defending Western democracy is his destination. Technology is the fuel for that journey.

B. The Break with Silicon Valley's Mainstream Culture

(1) Big Tech's Refusal to Cooperate with the Pentagon and Palantir's Choice

On April 4, 2018, tension hung in the air at Google headquarters. A petition signed by more than 3,000 employees was delivered to CEO Sundar Pichai. The petition's title was clear: "Google should not be in the business of war." At issue was "Project Maven," a Department of Defense contract.

Project Maven was a program the Department of Defense launched in April 2017. Its goal was to use artificial intelligence to analyze vast amounts of drone-captured video footage and identify targets. The volume of footage pouring out daily from unmanned aircraft flying over Iraq and Syria exceeded what human analysts could handle. If AI could do this work instead, the time needed for target identification would be dramatically reduced.

Google agreed to provide its TensorFlow AI technology. The contract was not large , under $70 million in the first year. But for the employees, this was not a matter of money. Google's longstanding motto, "Don't be evil," was at stake. They could not accept the fact that their code was being used to improve the accuracy of drone strikes.

The petition read: "Google will be placed on the same line as companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics." At the time, Palantir was an object of contempt among Google employees. It was perceived as a shadowy company that partnered with intelligence agencies to build surveillance technology. The idea of Google being grouped in the same category as such companies was intolerable.

The protests intensified. At least 12 employees resigned. More threatened to strike if the company continued developing military products. Finally, in June, Google's management capitulated. They announced they would not renew the Project Maven contract. Officially, the contract ended in March 2019.

This incident symbolized Silicon Valley's culture. For California tech companies, the government and military were seen as outdated, inefficient, and sometimes immoral entities. They dreamed of a borderless internet world and wanted to define themselves not as American companies but as global companies. Having the mission of "making the world more connected" placed next to the phrase "building weapons that kill enemies" was a brand catastrophe.

At that very moment, one company made the opposite choice. It was Palantir.

Alex Karp publicly criticized Google's decision. He pointed out that Silicon Valley's elites had forgotten where the freedom and prosperity they enjoyed came from. Companies that grew on the foundation of security maintained by the U.S. military and the rule of law, yet refused to help maintain that very foundation, were guilty of hypocrisy. He said: "While sitting in the safe offices of California enjoying moral superiority, someone else is risking their life fighting on the front lines."

Palantir did not hesitate to fill the vacancy Google left behind. In 2019, Palantir became Project Maven's new partner. In May 2024, the Department of Defense awarded Palantir a sole-source contract worth $480 million for the development of the "Maven Smart System" prototype. This contract was later expanded to nearly $1.3 billion.

Karp's choice was considered "suicide" in the tech industry at the time. At recruitment events, students held protest demonstrations, and investors shook their heads. The company's reputation within Silicon Valley hit rock bottom. But Karp did not back down. Instead, he turned this conflict into an opportunity. He established Palantir's identity as "the antithesis of Silicon Valley."

In the prospectus (S-1) filed at the time of the 2020 IPO, Karp wrote: "Our software is used to target terrorists and keep soldiers safe. If we are asking someone to put themselves in harm's way, we will provide them with what they need to carry out their mission."

We have an obligation. We chose a side." Including such a statement in a securities filing was unprecedented. It was a political declaration in a document sent to investors.

Karp dismissed the attitude of American companies that do business with the Chinese Communist Party yet refuse to work with their own military as "the logic of losers , incomprehensible and unsustainable." He criticized Silicon Valley for wasting its resources "satisfying the fickle demands of consumer culture." While the brightest minds are devoted to "trivial conveniences" like ride-sharing apps, photo-sharing platforms, and advertising optimization algorithms, the truly important issue of national security is being neglected.

This choice made Palantir not just a software vendor, but a company with an ideological identity. When everyone else was exploiting user data for advertising revenue, Palantir declared it would protect and use data for national security. This was simultaneously a business strategy and a culture war.

(2) Headquarters Relocation (from Palo Alto to Denver) and Patriotic Technologism

One day in August 2020, Palantir quietly packed up. The company had decided to leave Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley where it had been based for 17 years since its founding. The destination was Denver, Colorado , a place where the rugged wilderness of the Rocky Mountains unfolds.

When the news broke, people speculated about the reasons. Economic factors like high rents, taxes, and cost of living were mentioned. Denver's cost of living was far lower than San Francisco's. Colorado's tax structure was also business-friendly. Geographic proximity to major clients like the Department of Defense and Northern Command (NORTHCOM) was likely also a consideration.

But the reason Alex Karp gave was different. He had already foreshadowed it in a May 2020 interview with Axios: "I've grown sick of the increasing intolerance and monoculture of Silicon Valley." He said he would move the headquarters to a location closer to the East Coast than the West Coast. He added that Colorado was a strong candidate.

The term "monoculture" was significant. Silicon Valley pursues diversity technologically, but is remarkably homogeneous politically. Most tech industry workers hold progressive views. There is an atmosphere in which displaying patriotism or supporting the military is treated as unsophisticated, or sometimes immoral. Companies that cooperate with the Pentagon are considered morally inferior.

Karp saw this culture as unhealthy. He criticized Silicon Valley for being detached from the values of America as a whole, trapped in its own ideological bubble. In the IPO prospectus, he wrote: "Our company was founded in Silicon Valley. But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector's values and commitments."

The move to Denver was the physical manifestation of this cultural separation. The new headquarters was located in the Sugar Cube building at 1555 Blake Street in downtown Denver. Palantir had already been operating a small team there for two years. The official headquarters relocation was announced ahead of the public listing. The timing was deliberate , it was a message to investors: "We are different from Silicon Valley."

Denver was an appropriate choice in many respects. Politically, Colorado is a "purple" state. Democrats and Republicans compete neck and neck. Unlike San Francisco's overwhelmingly progressive orientation, diverse political views coexist. also, Colorado already had an established defense industry ecosystem. Traditional defense companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman had offices there. The headquarters of Space Force and Northern Command were also nearby.

The move was not a Palantir-specific phenomenon. It was part of a larger trend. From the late 2010s, several technology companies began leaving Silicon Valley. Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise went to Texas. Tesla's Elon Musk also left California. High taxes, strict regulations, and soaring costs of living were the surface reasons, but cultural fatigue could not be ignored either.

Karp himself did not stay in one place even after the headquarters move. He is known to work from a barn in the woods of Lyman, New Hampshire. When reports emerged that he owns ten homes around the world, he answered as if joking: "That should be redefined as ten cross-country ski cabins." He sometimes appears at video conferences wearing ski goggles. Such eccentricities demonstrate that he is deliberately distancing himself from the stereotypical Silicon Valley CEO image.

Palantir's relocation symbolizes a new current called "Patriotic Technologism." This term embodies the philosophy that technology is not merely a tool for making money or satisfying engineers' intellectual amusement, but must serve the survival of the nation and society. Karp emphasizes that the values of the American Midwest , diligence, integrity, and devotion to country , are more important than Silicon Valley's elitism.

He argues that the roots of the American software industry lie in the Midwest. Bob Noyce, co-founder of Intel, was from Iowa. Many of the engineers who led the early semiconductor industry came from the Midwest. They had a culture that was open, collaborative, and committed to national goals. From Karp's perspective, Silicon Valley has forgotten these roots. Only borderless capital and profit maximization remain.

This trajectory opened the way for other defense startups. Figures like Palmer Luckey of Anduril and Elon Musk of SpaceX began shaping a culture that takes pride in "building weapons for America." In December 2024, Anduril and Palantir announced a consortium for collaboration on Department of Defense projects. A new generation of defense tech companies is filling the seats that Silicon Valley refused to take.

Palantir in Denver has become a bridge connecting the severed link between Silicon Valley and Washington. They transfused the hot blood of patriotism into the cold logic of technology. To critics, this looks like dangerous militarism; to supporters, it looks like necessary realism. The taste varies depending on the reader's political constitution.

C. "We Chose a Side": The Declaration as Guardians of Western Civilization

(1) "Peace through Strength" and a Realist Security Vision

There is an old unwritten rule in the business world: do not make enemies, because customers could be anywhere. Coca-Cola sells cola to communists, and Apple sells iPhones to citizens of dictatorships. Political neutrality is a survival strategy for global companies.

Palantir broke this unwritten rule spectacularly.

The opening line of the prospectus filed just before the 2020 IPO shocked investors: "We have chosen sides. We support the United States and its allies." It was a political declaration unseen in ordinary corporate filings. Karp hammered in that the company would never do business with adversary nations of the United States, such as China or Russia. The Chinese market with its 1.4 billion people is a vast opportunity, but for Palantir, it is off-limits territory.

Many investors expressed concern. Voluntarily limiting one's market could be seen as undermining shareholder value. But for Karp, this was a non-negotiable principle. He believes that helping regimes incompatible with Western values is a betrayal of corporate ethics.

Karp's security vision is thoroughly realist. He does not believe that peace can be maintained through goodwill or dialogue alone. "Peace through Strength" is his creed. This concept, used by President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, holds that strong military capability and technological superiority deter war and maintain peace.

Karp reinterprets this logic for the 21st century. Just as the atomic bomb brought about "the long peace," he argues that artificial intelligence will become the new deterrent. He says: "The nuclear age is ending. We are at a similar crossroads in computing science." In the era of large language models, the United States needs "a new Manhattan Project to maintain exclusive control over the most sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence on the battlefield."

Karp frequently quotes historian Samuel Huntington: "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence." Karp adds that Westerners often forget this fact, but non-Westerners never do. This is a realist recognition that moral superiority alone is not enough; it requires physical force to back it up.

This belief was put into practice during the Ukraine war. When Russia invaded in 2022, Karp was one of the first Western corporate CEOs to fly to Kyiv. He met President Zelensky and offered to provide Palantir's technology free of charge. This was not a business meeting but a declaration of participation in the war. Palantir's software played a decisive role in enabling the Ukrainian military to defend against Russia's large-scale forces.

After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Karp did not hesitate. He publicly declared, "We will stand with Israel." When reports emerged that the Israeli Defense Forces were using Palantir's platform, some employees pushed back and resigned. Karp acknowledged this but did not change his position.

In a 2024 New York Times interview, he warned that the United States likely faces "a three-front war against China, Russia, and Iran." The best way to prepare for this war, he argued, is to develop autonomous weapons. He also expressed support for military conscription. His logic was that while the West and the authoritarian axis are approaching technological parity, the West is at a disadvantage because it has moral constraints against using nuclear weapons.

Karp's rhetoric is sometimes aggressive. He says Palantir's technology "should instill fear in our adversaries." In February 2025, at an event promoting his book, he said: "I like the idea of sending drones with light fentanyl-laced urine to spray on the analysts who tried to ruin us." Even as a joke, it was a chilling expression.

But his logical structure is consistent. Deterrence is the art of making the adversary believe in your will. To achieve that, you must have actual capability. And you must demonstrate the willingness to use that capability. For Karp, Palantir's very existence is that message. "We hope our software brings fear to our adversaries and reassurance to our allies."

Critics worry that such a worldview promotes war. But Karp's counterargument is clear. If America loses its technological edge and appears weak, events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine or Hamas's attack on Israel will occur more frequently. Only credible deterrence can maintain order in a chaotic world.

(2) The Vision of the Technological Republic

In February 2025, a book co-authored by Alex Karp and Palantir's head of corporate communications, Nicholas Zamiska, was published. The title was The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The book rose to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list immediately after publication. NPR selected it as a Book of the Year.

George Will of The Washington Post wrote in his review: "Since Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind in 1987, there has been no cultural critique this comprehensive." The Wall Street Journal called it "a searing cry against the tech industry's abandonment of its history of helping America and its allies."

The book's core argument is straightforward: Silicon Valley has lost its way. In the 1950s and 60s, Pentagon funding drove Silicon Valley's early growth. The internet, GPS, and semiconductor technologies all originated from military research. The engineers of that era were dedicated to solving national challenges. But at some point, that spirit vanished.

Karp and Zamiska criticize the fact that Silicon Valley's finest minds today are being wasted building "photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms." "Narrowly pursuing the demands of a late-capitalist economy has become their vocation." The question is whether optimizing chicken finger delivery algorithms is really what the best engineers should be doing.

The book diagnoses this complacency as having spread beyond Silicon Valley to the entire West. "Intellectual weakness" has become pervasive in academia, politics, and corporate boardrooms. Rather than pursuing truth, people seek to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Rather than enduring ideological confrontation, they choose ambiguous neutrality. Karp warns that this is eroding the West's competitiveness.

The core concept of The Technological Republic is the combination of "Hard Power" and "Soft Belief." Hard Power is the physical capacity to build and defend , military strength, industrial base, and technological superiority fall under this category. Soft Belief is the moral clarity that guides what to build and why to defend it. Karp diagnoses the West as losing both.

The book warns that the democratic world faces an existential choice. While authoritarian regimes are integrating artificial intelligence into military, surveillance, and economic systems, democratic nations are dithering. They face "the risk of re-establishing their own national project based on democratic values, institutional strength, and technological excellence, or becoming geopolitically irrelevant."

Karp's prescription is clear. The partnership between government and the technology industry must be rebuilt. The public-private collaboration model that made possible the Manhattan Project, the Moon landing, and the development of the internet in the 20th century must be restored for the 21st century. Through agencies like DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), "asymmetric power" must be created to deter adversary nations.

The book also provides a window into Palantir's internal organizational culture. Karp explains that Palantir's structure draws inspiration from the honeycomb of bees. It is non-hierarchical, relies on collective decision-making, and uses group voting dynamics. It adopted the root cause analysis method learned from Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System. When problems arise, surface-level assumptions are avoided, and the real reasons for failure (often rooted in interpersonal dynamics) are sought.

Critics express concern about the vision presented in The Technological Republic. The argument for fusing military and technological power and placing software engineers at the center of national defense could be read as a vision for a "militarized technological oligarchy." There are concerns about the paradox of actually strengthening authoritarian control under the guise of defending democratic values.

One reader on Goodreads wrote: "The book suggests that citizenship means conformity, technology means weaponry, innovation means militarization, dissent means disloyalty, and the republic itself is a garrison state built to Palantir's specifications." Another critic assessed the book as "more a manifesto of frustration than evidence-based strategy."

Karp pays no heed to such criticism. His conviction remains unshaken. "The importance of defending Western values and opposing those who would undermine them" is his passion. He asserts that these values are "inherently superior." He sees America as "a unique entity embodying meritocracy and fairness, capable of uniting individuals from diverse backgrounds."

In 2025, Karp was named to Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Time described him as "a new kind of Silicon Valley billionaire: the avatar of techno-nationalism, unapologetically projecting Western power." The Economist named him CEO of the Year for 2024. Palantir's market capitalization at one point exceeded $500 billion. Karp's personal wealth reached $18 billion.

Whether the vision of The Technological Republic will be realized remains to be seen. But one thing is clear. Alex Karp has presented the most controversial yet influential vision of the relationship between 21st-century technological capitalism and democracy. His journey from philosophy PhD to billionaire defense company CEO is a living case study of how power and values intersect in the age of technology.