A major thing that's happened in recent years is the advent of AI. Palantir quickly realized that there's going to be huge demand among corporations in incorporating AI functions into their operations and that Palantir software could play this sort of bridging function. It just turbocharged their business. A few years ago the stock was trading at about $10 a share. A few months ago, it topped $200 a share. Palantir's Board of directors awarded Alex Karp $1.1 billion in total compensation in 2020, making him the highest-paid CEO of a publicly traded company that year.
There is a story which illustrates Alex Karp's aggressive style. In early 2023, he announced that the company was launching a new AI product that "was under development". None of the engineers in his company knew that there was any such product. He knew that AI is going to be the next big thing so he just decided there will be a product and assumed the engineers will find a way of doing it. And they did.
Although Alex Karp is very supportive of his employees, he speaks abrasively to outsiders. Trump-style, he taunts his critics and attacks the media. There's a quote from him in a Wall Street Journal story where he says, "we are sorry that our haters are disappointed, but there are more quarters to be disappointed and we are working on that too." And he goes on to say to his shareholders to stop talking to all the haters.
Much of what the company does is completely benign. It's helping make businesses operate more efficiently. Palantir has also done a lot of good. It played an instrumental role in the COVID response and in the vaccine rollout. It was being used by the World Food Program when the pandemic began. Then there's been stuff that's very concerning. Now Karp's view of what it means to defend the West seems to have changed. For much of Palantir's history, defending the West meant defending liberal democracy, the rule of law.
In the beginning, his political views provided an intriguing contrast with Peter Thiel, who was a libertarian (and who later would gravitate to the far right). But in recent years he has moved closer to Thiel's view. Thiel has spoken very disparagingly of democracy. You don't now hear Karp nor from Palantir talk of defending liberal democracy. They talk about the West now as a cultural entity, a superior culture.
Peter Thiel has been a long-time Trump supporter and is supposed to be the man behind the rise of JD Vance. Prior to entering politics, Vance had worked for Thiel’s Mithril Capital. When JD Vance contested for his campaign to be senator in Ohio, Peter Thiel contributed $15 million. He and a lot of his key people are seen very often in the White House. And many of them are now working either in White House or in Department of Defense.
Thiel has said that he no longer believes that freedom (he means economic freedom) and democracy are compatible. He wrote, “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” (He later clarified that he didn’t think anyone should be disenfranchised, while simultaneously suggesting that voting isn’t productive.) He thinks of the West as a collection of countries bound by a shared Judeo-Christian heritage and by attachment in varying degrees to free enterprise.
Thiel has a habit of ignoring or doubting scientific facts that run counter to his worldview. (He even funded an online magazine that promoted creationism.) Thiel’s idea of “freedom” seems to consist of free markets and not much else. He thinks that markets should be free of any regulation. He is skeptical about the value of competition and believes that the most compelling start-ups are those that aim to achieve monopolistic dominance in niche markets. According to him, "Competition is for losers because it destroys profits. You can survive, but you'll never thrive.”
He gave the example of disc drive manufacturing in the 1980s, which saw repeated advancements every two years, but by different companies. “It had great benefit to consumers, but it didn’t actually help the people who started these companies,” he said. Companies needed not only to have “a huge breakthrough” at the beginning to establish their dominance but also to ensure they had the “last breakthrough” to maintain it, such as by “improving on it at a quick enough pace that no one can ever catch up - that’s great for society. It’s actually not that good for your business.”
Thiel said that an Antichrist would exploit fears of the apocalypse — for example due to nuclear armageddeon, climate change or the threat posed by AI — to control a "frightened population.". The Antichrist is a deceptive figure in Christian theology who opposes Christ and embodies ultimate evil. Thiel’s overall definition of the Antichrist “is that of an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times”. He identifies the Antichrist with anyone or any institution that he dislikes – from environmental activist Greta Thunberg to governmental attempts to regulate artificial intelligence. He labeled AI safety researchers who call for strict regulation as potential agents of the Antichrist.
In an interview to the NYT, he talked about his fears of an Antichrist taking over the world. The interviewer asked him if he doesn’t think that the Antichrist who he is so worried about would use the the tools that his company Palantir is creating to take over the world; that without such tools, such a takeover would not be possible. Thiel didn’t have a good answer.
Thiel and Karp, are strong supporters of Israel. After 7th of October 2023, they took a plane load of Palantir top staff to Tel Aviv in solidarity. And then they faced a big pushback from many quarters that their platforms was being used by the Israeli military. How did they respond? They decided to hold their next board meeting in Tel Aviv.
