Meet the Tech Billionaire Just as Dangerous as Elon Musk
Eccentric Palantir CEO Alex Karp is profiting from Israel’s genocide abroad, and wants to make money off of Trump’s immigration crackdown at home.
On a call with investors in February, the billionaire CEO excitedly shouted, “We’re doin’ it!” with his arms outstretched. “And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am!” Surrounded by smiling sycophants, the T-shirted tech mogul continued: “We are crushing it… We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America... [We are] here to disrupt and.. when it’s necessary to scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.”
Elon Musk? Nope. Peter Thiel? Not quite.
As CEO of tech giant Palantir, which he co-founded with Thiel and others more than two decades ago, Alex Karp is part of a new breed of Silicon Valley billionaires seeking to integrate their businesses with America's military-industrial complex, while dismantling the government and championing deregulation of the economy. Though he's not yet as famous as his peers like Musk and Thiel, he's just as dangerous.
The outlandish Karp, who looks much younger than this 57 years of age, whose unruly hair has its own Twitter account, and who reportedly keeps Tai Chi swords in his office, is the most influential billionaire many of you may never have heard of. The Palantir boss supported first Joe Biden’s and then Kamala Harris's presidential runs, but has become increasingly reactionary. Last year, he said that wokeness is a "pagan religion" and a "danger" to America and the Western way of life. He has been an ardent supporter of Israel's genocide in Gaza, which Palantir has profited from. At an event in March, he said, “I don’t believe that all cultures are equal." In February, Karp said that Musk’s DOGE is a "revolution" and that "some people are going to get their heads cut off."
Palantir, which launched over two decades ago with initial funding from the CIA's venture capital arm, is today a crucial partner to US defense and intelligence agencies. As Palantir grew, a bulk of its business came from the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA. Palantir works closely with the military on data analysis, surveillance, AI, and more. The tech company has been completely woven into the fabric of our national security operations.
Palantir has also played a crucial role in the slaughter of innocent Palestinians.
Last January, the company announced that it had secured a strategic partnership to "significantly aid" the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Palantir has reportedly created software to help generate "kill lists" for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and has been described as "the AI arms dealer of the 21st century." Last summer, Karp said that those protesting the genocide in Gaza are “an infection inside of our society."
But Karp doesn't just profit from killings abroad; he also seeks to leverage the Trump administration's authoritarian crackdowns on speech and immigration here in the US for Palantir's benefit. Palantir has leveraged its tech to target immigrant families for deportation and worked with ICE to identify and deport undocumented immigrants.
In Karps' view, according to the book that he recently co-authored titled The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, America is currently facing “a moment of reckoning." To survive, he argues, the country must assert its dominance through militarism. Karp believes that it's crucial America leads the charge in a global arms race, which will require the government to work hand in hand with the US tech industry and, conveniently, Palantir.
Karp believes that we must develop next-generation weapons and AI systems in order to remain militarily superior against our adversaries. In a letter to shareholders published in February, Karp wrote that we are at the "beginning of the first act” of a “revolution that will play out over years and decades… the momentum we are seeing across sectors, both commercial and government, is unlike anything that has come before."
However, Karp is less concerned about America's national defense as he is with maintaining Western dominance. In his shareholder letter, Karp quotes political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, he of the "Clash of Civilizations" infamy.
Karp echoed Huntington's belligerent sentiments, writing, "As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible 'by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence… Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.'"
Karp wants to make Palantir central to the Trump administration's "organized violence" against minorities both domestically and abroad. As defense industry analyst William D. Hartung, recently noted, Karp and other billionaires in his ilk, like Palmer Luckey, founder of military tech firm Anduril, and Musk, with SpaceX, "are convinced that, at some future moment, by supplanting old-school corporate weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, they will usher in a golden age of American global primacy grounded in ever better technology. They see themselves as superior beings who can save this country and the world, if only the government—and ultimately, democracy itself—would get out of their way."
Of course, this disdain for the government does not apply to the billion-dollar contracts that federal agencies reward companies like Palantir with. Karp, like Musk, will happily bash the government publicly while working privately to reshape government structures and US military agendas in his favor. By embedding his technology within our defense and intelligence systems, Karp aims to ensure the lucrative contracts keep coming and Palantir remains indispensable to national security, potentially undermining all conventional governmental checks and balances.
Karp's hawkish and bigoted rhetoric, combined with his desire to seize total control over our military-industrial complex, poses a major threat to our democratic institutions. As Palantir continues to expand its influence within government sectors, and Karp grows his national and global profile, he is becoming yet another Silicon Valley tech bro seeking to prioritize his business interests over democracy and the public good.
Taylor Lorenz, author of the new Zeteo column, ‘Network Effect,’ is an acclaimed tech and online culture journalist. For more of Taylor's writing, subscribe to her Substack, User Mag.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
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In other words, he abandoned his entire idealistic belief system for money and is now willing to support and profit from domestic violence as well as the genocide of Palestinians?
Karp is a crap of a human being as he is racist to the core. He lacks humanity. He claims to be Jewish but lacks Jewish values of tolerance and humanity, just another Netanyahu supporter in the DJT orbit.
Apparently his current leaning has a lot to do with his time spent in Germany doing his Ph.D. and his association with Theil and Musk (Money is the sole motivator)