The New Pythagoreans of Los Alamos

Insiders Who Consider Themselves Outsiders Are Team Manhattan Project 2.0

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir

I am trying to get a read on Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp. Both Palantir and Karp, have been making headlines due to unfavorable articles by New Republic and The New York Times. While Karp is a tech lord, he doesn’t qualify as a Bro-ligarch like Sean Parker, Elawn Musk or Zuckerbucksberg. Karp clearly possesses a different type of intellect. So what follows is what I’ve learned with my own viewing of long form interviews and my study of his mentors prior to Peter Thiel selecting him to run his startup that we now know as Palantir. I debated waiting on publishing this until I could read more of Karp’s new book The Technological Republic, but ultimately my urge to start writing won. I hate being indecisive, but this won’t be an expose where we find that Alex and Palantir are evil incarnate, you can find plenty of those articles or podcasts quite easily. I’m going to let you judge for yourselves. That said, I don’t trust oligarchs, even when they appear to align with some of my values. In fact it makes me wonder if I have blind spots for judging their motivation. Elon Musk has many things that easily disqualifies any trust in him, Karp is harder to judge.

Amazingly Karp makes statements that agree with some of my thinking about the west, America and social media. Alex is adept, articulate, and has a far superior grasp on history, sociology, and economic systems than most Bro-ligarchs. He completed a PhD in a foreign language. Yet given his background he may be comfortable with adopting stances for the sake of advancing his own interests. He is not a bumbling Ehrlich Bachman, an absurdly self absorbed comedic character from the HBO series Silicon Valley which skillfully presents how disconnected from reality many of the Technorati truly are. I think that Karp being more serious could in fact be dangerous. Having completed his PhD under Jurgen Habermas, renowned proponent of Critical Theory at the Frankfurt Institute, Karp is not a drop out like Zuckerberg, Gates or Jobs. Karp states he is a former progressive, but I think his ability to successfully operate within the premier academic setting for Marxism is something worth considering. Does it make him a Marxist? No. But it has certainly shaped his thinking. But perhaps Thiel, a staunch right wing thinker, has influenced him even more. Thomas Sowell, a renowned conservative, started out as a Marxist as well, yet he too abandoned Marxism to become one of the leading proponents of capitalism. Like I said, I am sorting this out and presenting what I found here is part of a learning process.

Palantir: Why The Lord of The Rings Name?

The name Palantir does have some significance, and irony as well. Taken from the Lord of the Rings fantasy novels, a Palantir is the name of a crystal sphere that enables the user to view events and regions from afar. With the Palantir, it was also possible to communicate with another person who also wields a Palantir, as you are able to share your thoughts via the connection between the two crystals. As the plot develops in the Lord of the Rings, we learn that the evil Sauron is able to exert his will over others via the Palantir, leading to a warning not to trust Palantirs because something may stare back at you. There are several scenes where someone would innocently gaze into a Palantir only to encounter the presence of Sauron.

I find it fascinating that Peter Thiel doesn’t see the irony in his own description of why he adopted the name Palantir. He quickly claims that while powerful, the Palantirs were used for good. This excludes the sinister part of the plot where the most powerful antagonist is able to manipulate others who use a Palantir. Beware what stares back at you. The software platform Palantir is a mix of data modeling, data gathering, and artificial intelligence programs used in surveillance, target acquisition, behavior modeling and system analysis. Palantir has the ability to combine data from other database systems in flexible ways that help people identify relationships between different sources of information that would otherwise be difficult to derive correlation from. Palantir is built to easily “graft” on top existing data systems without altering the underlying system itself, and this makes integrating Palantir with large government or healthcare systems a less arduous task. Security and data segmentation are also at the cornerstone of Palantir, as one of its selling points is that there are rules in place to only allow those who should see information to actually interact with it. That said, rules in software applications are only as good as they are maintained. No software is inherently secure when people can perform unscrupulous acts.

One of Palantir’s slogans is “our software is battlefield tested”. While the corporate knowledge worker class may equate their daily tasks as part of a battle to win market share, Alex Karp is not lying when he says that his product line is battle tested, as it has been integral to defense targeting and intelligence gathering for years. Their earlier adoption of AI with advanced analytical algorithms was first employed by the US in 2008 in the Middle East as a system named Palantir-Gotham. The CIA was heavily involved with the development of Palantir’s first system, and many question the involvement of the deep state with Thiel’s company. Is it a front, are the public figures cutouts? The relationships are indisputable. Again, I’m not diving into that, you can easily find details on that history with a quick Google search. I’m trying to gain insight into how the CEO Alex Karp thinks.

First Impression Was the Wrong Impression

At the 2025 AI Expo of the Special Competitive Studies Project in Washington DC last week, Palantir was present as both a vendor and sponsor of the event. Some called this the DC Death Tech Summit, as vendors who supplied the Pentagon with AI enabled platforms such as Palantir, Booz Allen and GE Aerospace shared the stage with the heads of the US Department of Defense and dignitaries from Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Protests broke out during the presentations, and several people, including journalists, were escorted off the premises. Other independent journalists hoped to engage with Palantir but were equally dismissed. I wasn’t following the travails of the journalists until I saw heated exchanges on Twitter between Palantir Director of Engagement Eliano Younes and others. Younes was in super aggressive defense mode, claiming that attack journalism was being practiced based on a New York Times article claiming that Palantir was creating a master database to profile all citizens. Palantir was under fire for sure, but you know, they're playing in the big sandbox and they can take it, and certainly the Director of Engagement shouldn’t be replying “holy shit you’re an idiot” as a response to a misunderstanding from the day’s event. A long day, lots of attackers, but still, this is entitled behavior. Generally public faces of well connected corporations do not respond in crass fashion for fear that their behavior would reflect badly on their employer. Perhaps that's just old school and I’m out of touch.

Palantir claims it is not a data company in the sense that they hold information. Former Palantir member Joe Lonsdale was defending Palantir, stating the software was not a database. He ignored or didn’t notice my question when I tweeted him to clarify that they do take in or as we software devs say “ingest” data. They do - they have to in order for the software to provide you new insights and relationships between different datasets that are fed into the system. Most likely you need to store those results, and while Palantir doesn’t store them, it would be easy to do so in ancillary storage systems. Disk space is cheap. But Palantir definitely is involved in connecting different sources of information rapidly and revealing new insights, for good or for bad.

After seeing the Palantir brigade out in defense mode, I decided to learn more. My first impression of the CEO Alex Karp was that he was a combination of Einstein and Quintin Tarnatino, with crazy hair, overly gesticulating and launching aggressive defensive tirades as a means of shutting down questions. Here is his interview with CNBC where he goes into attack mode.

I’ve described in the past how the tech field cultivates a set of weird characteristics as a means of fooling you about their level of genius or ability. The weirder they are, the smarter we have been led to believe that they are. Elizabeth Holmes has been my prime example, and Karp with his hair askew and wildly waving his arms qualifies, and it sets my radar off.

There’s a vast difference with this interview with Karp and Charlie Rose from 2009, where Karp comes across as far more serious and pensive. But in the exchange at the onset of the interview, Karp made a statement that triggered my radar again. He stated that while in Germany conducting his PhD work, he was writing papers that perhaps only 30 or 40 people would understand. I could be misinterpreting this as arrogance, and perhaps he meant that he was studying in such a nice field that the audience was narrow. That said, out of all the interviews of Alex Karp I’ve viewed, the one with Charlie Rose is where he seems the most personable and astute. Less of a self caricature.

Alex Karp’s Intellectual Heritage

Karp describes himself as the ultimate outsider, coming from a family of mixed race, diverse and high education standards and a variety of artistic pursuits. In the same breath he then describes himself as being an insider in the sense that education was such a focal point for his entire family, and this tied him to the smart crowd. Yet Karp adds that even as a highly educated kid, his dyslexia made him an outsider with the group that he felt most comfortable with. You get the sense that Karp is used to perceiving life through different lenses quickly, and that he constantly examines his position in relation to the things he learns. An evolution akin to a dialectic.

My mom is black. We were pro-Israel and super erudite, heavily Jewish environment. Everything about my life was further outside the norm than I realized. I was an extreme outsider, for there's no insider bias with that. I would have loved to be an insider somewhere. The minute I could be an insider, I'm like, "Shit, I'm dyslexic." So it's like, I used to wonder as a little kid, how could this get worse?

Karp studied law at Stanford University where he met Peter Thiel, and despite their extreme opposing views, they formed a friendship based on respect for one another’s ability to present and argue for their ideas. As I stated earlier, Karp’s path is very different from the entrepreneurs who dropped out of college because it was not challenging enough for them. Karp wanted to complete a PhD yet had already committed three years to law school. Not being satisfied with Stanford, he decided he wanted to study in Germany. Having an interest in post-war German social thought, Karp cast his eyes on social theory and a tutelage with Jürgen Habermas, known for promotion of Critical Theory at the Frankfurt School. Still, Karp felt at odds with his situation at the Frankfurt School. It is amazing to me one possessing the language skills to pick up and be accepted in an institution of higher learning in a foreign school, and embarking on a PhD in that native language. An outsider, yet adept enough to be accepted into an elite group rapidly.

The longer version is I went over to study with him [Habermas]. I was in his colloquium, and I studied with him. Then we had a falling out, and then I finished my PhD with someone else, but not on bad terms. It's just I discovered while writing my PhD that the stakes were very low and the personalities were very difficult. And I also discovered partly by proximity to him, but in proximity to other people who were kind of world class, one meeting with Luhmann, watching debates between Habermas and Luhmann that I had certain abilities. They didn't have to be an academic builder. And while I was good enough to be in the room with them and argue with them on where I was a technical expert, dedicating myself to reading and writing all day was not what I wanted. And they did not seem to understand I wouldn't have put it in these terms because I hadn't built anything, but they didn't have the right personality for building.

While Karp expresses this in terms of “yeah, I did the program”, what is of significance is that he studied with one of the main proponents of academia responsible for evolving Marxism beyond mere economic interpretation. Critical Theory is an all encompassing examination on society that entails:

• Critique of modernity and capitalist society

• Analysis of commodification, reification, and fetishization

• Examination of mass culture and the "culture industry"

• Detection and critique of societal pathologies

• Emancipation from domination and oppression

This is where Marxism morphed into something all encompassing that is now aimed at all facets of our society. It is deconstructive in its practice, with a focus of liberation from the constraints imposed by the controlling factions of capitalism. At its heart, Critical Theory is normative, the practitioners seek to bring about a desired end of “better” rational discourse. This has been adopted in academia, in the LGBQ+ movement, political discourse ,critical legal studies, critical race theory, gender studies, analyses of neoliberalism, social welfare, and media representation. As with Marxism, Critical Theory seeks to take action.

Jurgen Habermus’s mentor was Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse worked with the OSS after WW2, and emigrated to the United States to teach at University of California. Herbert Marcuse was a German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist known as the 1st generation of Critical Theory proponents at the Frankfurt School. He is renowned for his critiques of capitalist society, authoritarianism, and repressive tolerance, influencing the student movements of the 1960s with works like "One-Dimensional Man" and "Eros and Civilization." Marcuse's Marxist and Freudian analyses examined the psychological and cultural forces that reinforce domination in modern industrial societies.

Admittedly I find Marcuse a bit obtuse, so what follows is my own understanding as best as I can muster. With constant shifting of meaning fueled by a dialectic, the dual meaning of terms, overstated implications and understated nuance, I find it difficult to sift through Marcuse’s theories as he presents them. However, the ideas that are built on Marcuse’s foundation are more clearly dissected, so that is the lens I will use. I am using the article Malicious Marcuse By Anthony Daniels to help keep things clear in my mind.

To Marcuse, the Proletariat Revolution did not occur because Capitalism became too adept at pacifying people by satisfying their needs, but according to Marcuse these needs are not authentic needs. Only political discourse, change and promoting a welfare for all to enable a consistent set of thinking is engendered would be, in Marcuse’s view, legitimate.

As with many of the elite like Marcuse, only a select group of people can be charged with carrying out the activities of thinking on the behalf of those who have been pacified. It sounds very much akin to Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management, or Fordism as promoted by Henry Ford. Tolerance is one of the ultimate goals, because tolerance is what will eliminate the evils of the right, and of Capitalism and mechanization.

Most people don't realize the trap they are in, so a select few must chart this course:

Note that he does not say the ascertainment of truth, but truth itself, as if the American Declaration of Independence had asserted the right not to the pursuit of happiness, but to happiness itself.

So how do you get to true tolerance? Via mandate.

… would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or who oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.

And if you must go beyond the realm of discussion to enforce these ideas, violence is implied as a proper means of achieving this tolerance.

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance . . . it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word.

While Marcuse’s writing is riddled with parallel constructions and ambiguities, his message and actions supporting Marxist protests speak loudly of his intent. Marcuse mentored Angela Davis of the Black Panthers, and was central to the protest in Paris in 1968. Clearly he identified the group that should establish new norms in his estimation. For more on Marcuse, Critical Theory and those who have inherited the quest for rebuilding society, this documentary is quite illuminating.

I want to be clear that Karp has not made such remarks about “repressive tolerance” as a tool for guiding society. Habermas and Marcuse are who he has studied, yet he is very critical of woke ideology.

Perhaps I am inappropriately ascribing meaning to Karp’s statement that his papers were only understood by 30-40 people, but my instincts sense that this is the similar elitist perspective as Marcuse and Habermas. Karp’s phrase battlefield tested is used both in the context of Palantir’s software used by the DoD as well as ideas tested in the arena of debate. Only a few survive and get to hang with the outsiders who are the insiders. It’s an exclusive club, but we need to ascertain what they mean by the right of membership in that club. Does it mean that they are destined to make decisions for us knuckle scrapers?

Despite my misgivings, Karp’s ability to dissect, re-assemble and distill concepts is exceptional. He was able to excel in academia and then jump into business, where due to his background he was an outsider yet again. As someone who has sat through word salad presentations for years, I can say he’s a far more effective communicator than Elon Musk. I think these later theatrics on CNBC are perhaps adopted to give rise to a mystique. But I don’t want to be dismissive here. Superior abilities breed superior ambitions.

Palantir Products and How They Are Presented

If I were not concerned with an inappropriate march of our nation towards a Manhattan Project 2.0, I would say that Karp and his team’s ability to communicate how their products empower business to be excitingly compelling. Business has long struggled with an impedance with how it uses what data it stores and how quickly that data can be effectively converted to actionable information in decision making. The systems suck in data, and it’s next to impossible to get information back that is meaningful without extra manipulation and handstands by your IT department. By that I mean the underlying accounting, finance, human resources, sales team workflow orchestration systems are their own islands of data where deriving a snapshot of what the business looks like is nearly intractable. It’s all stored separately, as the underlying formats do not correspond from system to system, and even the names are different between the various platforms. The data field FirstName in the human resources system may be titled FName in the project management system.

When you can name a thing, you can control that thing. Ontology - the study of being in philosophical terms - is a strong choice for a product that sits at the core of Palantir’s product line. Ontology’s job is to allow the business people to define the concepts that they use to run the business, and translate those terms down to the level of how they are stored and inter-operate in the database systems that are so difficult to coordinate. Without requiring an upgrade to an accounting system, Ontology can pull information and put it in a parlance that company leaders can understand, and also into a parlance that finance and accounting can understand without requiring the skill of a database specialist to continuously pull data into spreadsheets, and reformat. This tool is one of the factors that help get IT out of the way of those who need to interpret and run operations unfettered by delays and incomplete data sets.

It’s the holy grail of controlling your business. You can communicate concepts in business lingo and not care about the weirdo data formats. It eliminates the friction or impedance that arises from getting to the important elements easily. Karp and his key people do an amazing job of distilling the problem and solution into plain terms. I would be lying if I didn’t say I admired that skill. Here is an example of Karp’s excellent abilities as a communicator. Elon mumbles, drifts off into space and you get the impression that he’s rifling through a bunch of brilliant answers then he spews nonsense, yet people play tricks on themselves and become convinced that he’s so smart that he’s difficult to understand.

Not with Alex Karp. He distills concepts succinctly into common terms, adeptly. Note the difference in this exchange.

For my own professional career, my teams attempted this to an extent, it’s super hard to do. Really hard. Suffice to say Palantir accomplished what we dreamed and failed to do.

But to have that power in the hands of people who want to collect data on me and predict whether I will take a vaccination, and then pump propaganda my way on social media or put me on a list to keep me quiet about my choice regarding taking a vaccine, it’s frightening.

Karp is also not shy in expressing his view that his company is the best at empowering the government to achieve its tasks, and doesn’t shy away from stating with the DoD, it has met the goal of making their ability to kill more effective. He is very clear in his views that the West should win, that the West has the best skill sets to offer and that our primary national goal should be to preserve the conditions that have allowed our innovations and success. It sounds patriotic. On face value it is patriotic.

“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them,” Karp said, with a smile on his face. The CEO added that he was very proud of the work his firm is doing and that he felt it was good for America. “I’m very happy to have you along for the journey,” he said. “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West, and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”

There is an interesting exchange between Karp and Lonsdale in this interview.

Joe Lonsdale: This is what I wanted to ask about. It seems AI could affect productivity, the input to GDP, in areas like healthcare, education, and more. If we disagree on politics, we can agree those areas are important for our country. Productivity there has stagnated for decades. Will AI finally help?

Alex Karp: We have a few education clients. On healthcare, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, we had basically no clients last year. Now we power allocation between 13 to 14% of all hospital bed allocation in the country.

Joe Lonsdale: Wow.

Alex Karp: And it's simply because the people in these industries know that they need instruments to increase efficiency and productivity. Part of the reason why it was hard to do this is that their use case is very difficult because they have to increase productivity with low margins under harsh conditions, meaning they can get sued. They do get sued. There are privacy protections that are the most stringent in the world. There are issues around resource allocation that involve class and race, which means those issues where they need to track what goes into the algorithm, how the algorithm is used, and how that algorithm then leads back to efficiency without getting into hot water, either morally, institutionally or legally. Palantir is ideal for that, but again, it's precisely because one of the amazing things in business is that no one believes Palantir's deep understanding of the technical issues involved in data protection and civil liberties generated our product. If you're dealing with this use case, there's only one engine you can use because we've spent 20 years thinking and building products for this. Interestingly, the kinds of things you use to identify adversaries with software also presuppose a data protection civil liberties bias. It's not just find the enemy, it's find the enemy. Is this the stupid general we want to keep alive, or is this the general that's smart?

Joe Lonsdale: Okay, speaking of that, we got to talk about Ukraine, then speaking of stupid generals to keep alive. That's great. Let's change gears to that. You were the first Western CEO to visit Zelensky in Ukraine. I thought that was a very bold thing to do. It was very cool. You went over there very quickly. Can you paint a picture of Ukraine's capabilities pre and post Palantir in the Ukraine stuff?

Alex Karp: I have to be super general, both because every government first of all, and again, this is what I should say, but it also is true. The Ukrainians are courageous in a way that it's almost unfathomable when you're sitting here. Like, you meet people who are going into battle, the Ukrainian people. And I realize there's a lot of debate in our country, and I welcome debate as, like, kind of very much on the side of the First Amendment and kind of all the way up to it being as expansive as it can be.

Joe Lonsdale: We used to have this debate inside of Palantir, by the way, early on, on a lot of issues. Right. So that's something it's always part of the culture.

Alex Karp: The right to express yourself, including things that will upset other people, is core to a functioning democracy. And the fact that you're being offended shows you're living in a democracy. I try to empathize with the other side of that issue because I think you have to steal, man, all these arguments, but in the end, the rights you give up will be used against you. And that's something that, you know, it does place a high burden on people who have to listen to speech that they find offensive. And I engage all the way to the margin and engage with people whose speech I find offensive, and I talk to all sorts of people in all sorts of small rooms where, by the way, there's a bobcat behind you. A really nice you guys should get that on film. That is nuts.

The question remains what version of America and the West is promoted? Karp describes his admiration for the First Amendment and I can’t determine if that is just lip service. You can read many interviews where he is unapologetically patriotic and for America to retain primacy. But that could be so that he continues to have a customer and receive benefits of the client list Palantir currently has. He has also had interviews where he is proud that the Palantir platform has halted the rise of far right wing political movements in Europe.

The other thing to consider is how adept he is at constructing scenarios that advance his position - he practiced this skill for a law degree and for his PhD. He is good at dissecting. The software Palantir is also good at dissecting and modeling. This goes hand in hand with his shifting views of being the Outsider who is an Insider.

The New Pythagoreans: So What’s Wrong With A Little Deconstruction Now And Then?

My worries are that Karp being so adroit at dancing a fine line between Philosopher King and Tech Lord is going to be used to foster the Manhattan Project 2.0 and a near nationalization of tech industry resources to fight a future battle that may not manifest. But because of the rhetoric that the “AI Race is critical”, we will be forced to go along. An argument is presented to us that while we will be more ethical in the deployment of AI, our adversaries will not, so we need to maintain the technical edge. On some days it seems that if China achieves the holy grail of self learning and superior reasoning promised by Artificial General Intelligence even 10 minutes ahead of us, our nation is over. No matter what, we must win. I don’t know about you but I am not comfortable with enabling eminent domain to create large power corridors and prioritizing nuclear energy solely for the Bro-ligarchs based solely on fear.

In his book The Technological Republic, Karp presents an argument that makes a patriotic appeal to America First goals while fairly critiquing Silicon Valley’s lack of national loyalty.

This early dependence of Silicon Valley on the nation-­state and indeed the U.S. military has, for the most part, been forgotten, written out of the region’s history as an inconvenient and dissonant fact—­one that clashes with the Valley’s conception of itself as indebted only to its capacity to innovate. The United States since its founding has always been a technological republic, one whose place in the world has been made possible and advanced by its capacity for innovation.

Karp reminds us of the innovative and engineering capabilities of the Founding Fathers, recounting Franklin and Jeffersons’ ingenuity with respect to invention, natural science, design, and for praise for Franklin for being the foremost researcher in the field of electricity akin to Newton. Our Founders were adroit enough to gain a proper perspective on engineering and scientific matters which would impact our new form of government, placing science and progress as one of the cornerstones of our success and advancement as a nation. He then cites the efforts in what he terms the American Century where government was the focal point for bringing engineering and scientific talent to bear on the Manhattan Project, then responding to Sputnik with the rapid creation of NASA.

But when Karp turns his attention to the current state of Silicon Valley and the lack of government involvement, he states clearly that market forces alone are a poor impetitus for giving rise to the right products needed at the right time. According to Karp, and this really cannot be disputed, much of the technological advancement has been in regards to photo sharing and other social media frivolity.

The market is a powerful engine of destruction, creative and otherwise, but it often fails to deliver what is needed at the right time. The Silicon Valley giants that dominate the American economy have made the strategic mistake of casting themselves as existing essentially outside the country in which they have been built. The founders who create these companies in many cases viewed the United States as a dying empire

In Karp’s view, with the federal government involved, there are nobler goals that are set for industry as demonstrated by the Moon Landing, Manhattan Project and other efforts.

This clearly parts ways with the vision of the Founding Fathers, who, from Adams to Jefferson, to Madison and even with Alexander Hamilton, all stated that government directed economic goals would lead to undesirable capture, and endanger liberty. Growing to the size where it can demand the concentration of private efforts is an anathema to the intent of the Constitution. A cursory read of the Federalist Papers makes that abundantly clear. One example of the Founders' healthy fear of centralized government is that Jefferson was uncertain that the federal government possessed the power to purchase the Louisiana Territory. While Jefferson personally viewed the Louisiana Territory as vital to America’s growth and future, he was not willing to act in an extra-Constitutional fashion with outright purchase of the region from Napoleon without ensuring the act did not inappropriately expand power.

Karp does not think we have that luxury. While he rightly says that the rise of AI and the race for AI supremacy requires us to examine our values and identity as a people, there is no time, and we need to answer the call now.

Others might prefer or advocate for a more careful and deliberate division between the domains and concerns of the private and public sectors. The blending of business and national purpose, of the discipline that the market can provide with an interest in the collective good, makes us uneasy. But purity comes at a cost.

This avoids acknowledging the multitude of disastrous mistakes that other experts who span domains of public and private sector have made. It’s not a matter of purity or a contrived laissez faire model of economics and society, it comes from recent history with our CDC and FDA and medical field. The experts were all trained, and yet failed miserably with data collection during the pandemic. Or how about the SEC and FTC, claiming to have a tight hand over the banking and mortgage industry leading up to the 2008 derivative crisis while just rubber stamping rates on funds they knew to contain garbage mortgages? Does Karp think he and a select few are of a better strain of expertise and we will avoid blunderous malinvestment? Or fraud? Given the rate of hallucination in many of the AI systems purported to be sentient we need to examine how much money we continue to shower on these systems.

While Karp and Palantir speak of the specific successes with the DoD and avoid the hype of the Singularity, there is an overconfidence here with this narrow retelling of our purpose and function of government. Palantir has the inside track from what appears to be good technology, but should we accept that we have no time, and must disregard the recent past as well as the warnings of the Founding Fathers because Ted Cruz can use a committee to pump fear over China’s race for AI supremacy?

If you knew me during the Covid Pandemic, you heard me say on numerous occasions: your rights are inalienable, the crisis of the moment does not negate the fact that you can say no, that you retain them despite the collective good. We were goaded into actions by experts which proved to be disastrous just a mere 5 years ago. If we give Karp the benefit of the doubt that he is not driven by many of the same motivations similar to those who are proponents of Critical Theory, do we set aside instinct and healthy reservation for a near crisis?

The Pythagoreans guarded their knowledge, do we have confidence that Karp and the tech elite will be more or less benevolent?