YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Carp

lines on the record: 44
first: 2025-12-08
most recent: 2025-12-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“By events that Palter doesn't really have that much competition, and certainly the whole use it seem to swear by it. But this was just all part of that sort of carp is not a carp is not averse to self-mythologizing. And this is part of that, the idea that being bonkers and no one wanting to compete with you, that's part of his self-mythologizing. But it does seem to be true that contractors have to compete with. I mean, it really does, you know, there was always this discussion, you know, there was, there were sort of two views before the company went public. One is like it was either portrayed as this all-powerful technology, scariest hell, or it was portrayed as sort of pixie dust. And you hear less of the latter now. Most people seem inclined to grant that, okay, the technology actually works and seems to be quite effective. And that raises.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think that was a time when he would always describe himself as batshit crazy. It was sort of in a way patting himself on the back in a certain sense because he doesn't actually think he's crazy and he sort of likes being perceived as this mad genius. And so, you know, when people call him like crazy, he's just like, you know, he took it as a compliment. Like, okay, I'm a mad genius. I would say that, you know, his view was that this was more reflective of a broader view, that Palatroup doesn't really have competition. Most of the competition in space has been from internal companies thinking they could do it themselves. And they usually can't. And so he's always had this view. And it's been borne out.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Facing role of the CEO for Palantir. And he was a very candid and startling admission to hear this from someone who was the head of a company with evaluation at the time of $20 billion. His view has changed. After successfully taking Palantir Public, he changed his mind about that. He began to believe that he actually was the right person. He gets this cult-like following among retail investors. So he would not say the same thing now, but he did think that he did have some doubts about whether he was the best person to be sort of the public face of Palatir.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He is the fluorescent praying mantis. Just to be clear about this. This was back in 2019 when he and I first started talking and he and I have basically been having an ongoing conversation for now six years. And this was in 2019. So before Palanta goes puppets, companies succeeding, but it hasn't had that milestone, that landmark achievement of actually going public. And while he recognizes, well, he knows that he is the right person to lead Palantir internally feels that maybe he's not the best person to lead it externally, to be the face of this company. First of all, he doesn't look like a standard issue CEO with wild hair and all that, and he doesn't talk like one. And he lives a very different sort of life, not married, no kids. So he wasn't entirely sure at the time that he was maybe the best person for the public.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To keep our enemies at bay and to try to bring some order to a chaotic world. His view is very simple. He says, we have enemies who want to kill us. We should kill them before they kill us. That's kind of how he sees the world. And it's certainly true that bad times, I mean, a lot of contracts that Pennetter has gotten have been in moments of crisis for companies. I mean, you talk about bad times. I mean, so like, you know, Airbus, they're having a production glitch on the A350 airliner. They bring in Palantir for help. The relationship with Ice began in a moment of crisis after an ICE special agent was assassinated by a Mexican drug cartel. ICE needs help finding the perpetrators. The relationship with French intelligence begins after the attacks in Paris in 2015.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is what he thinks. It is a company with a very dark worldview, it's interesting. He has a very dark dystopian worldview. There's a paradox here though. Personally, he's a very content, very happy person in contrast to some of these other tech moguls who dominate the headlines and who are, I think, very clear are very unhappy people, and one might even say that they are using their vast wealth to make their misery our misery. CARP is actually a very happy person. He likes the life he's leading. He loves what he does. He loves the work he's doing. So he's a very happy person, but he's also got this very dark worldview that informs Pounder's work and always has that Palantir is building weapons essentially to destroy.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always for most of Palantir's history meant defending liberal democracy. And Carp's tune has changed about that. You don't hear him talking about liberal democracy now. You don't hear him talking about the West as a political project any longer. Now it's as a cultural entity, as a superior culture. So, you know, his way of talking about the West has changed. And I guess one simple explanation is for that, is that look at liberal democracies under assault in the United States and elsewhere in the West. And he's a savvy CEO and just kind of shifting with the prevailing winds is one way of looking at it.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The second Trump presidency is a major business opportunity for Palantir, and that's proving to be the case. I mean, the company has gotten a lot of contracts over the last year from the government. But I also think he has found ideological reasons to get on board with Trump this time around. And he says the issue that are of paramount concern to him now, national security and combating anti-Semitism, he thinks Trump is the right guy. And so, you know, with some of these other tech bros who've gotten on board with Trump this time around, the cravenness kind of drips off them like sweat. With Carp, he's actually found some policy reasons, some quote-unquote intellectual reasons to get on board here with Trump. Part of this, you know, and it's probably the most interesting dimension is because, as you said, and as we talked about earlier, this notion of palanteer as a sword and shield for the West is defending the West, defending Western values.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That break out after Israel attacks Gaza. And he sees it not just as in his mind. The protests have erased any distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but he also thinks it reflects just a deeper rot of the left. So he's very alienated from the left by the time Trump wins election again in 2024. And then he got on board with Trump, one might say there are issues, there are things that he Trump is doing, that he supports. And part of this is Palanto is a major government contractor, so you have to make nice with Donald Trump. I mean, the first rule of doing business in Donald Trump's Washington is don't tick off Donald Trump. The second rule is do everything you can to ingratiate yourself with Donald Trump. And so he's doing that. I think he also sees”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certainly during the Biden years, he made very clear he was unhappy with the Democrats about a lot of issues, not least the border, and he had said this even during Trump's first presidency. He said, look at, if Democrats and progressives don't take people's legitimate concerns about chaos at the border and about illegal immigration seriously, they're going to turn to people who do. And he felt certainly vindicated when Trump was elected in 2016, and he felt vindicated again when Trump was elected again in 2024. What happened is, and so he's increasingly unhappy with the Democrats. October 7th is a big deal in his evolution. Palantir works with Israel. CARP is a very strong supporter of Israel. He identifies very strongly with his Jewish heritage, identifies very strongly with Israel, and he is furious about the protests on American college campus.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's a great question. And to kind of unpack his journey, you have to go back to the first Trump presidency. Thial had been probably Trump's biggest supporter of the business community in 2016. CARP, both publicly and privately, made clear that he was not a Trump supporter. He was still identifying as a Democrat, as a progressive. He called himself a progressive, and he made very clear.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Platform essentially becomes the backbone for project Maven, which is then used in 2022 to help the Ukrainians try to ward off the Russian attack through among other things targeting. Again, pulling in all this sort of information, satellite imagery, telephone records, all this sort of stuff. And then the Ukrainians, as you recall, mounted much better resistance than anyone had anticipated. I mean, you know, when Russia invaded, there was the expectation that Kyiv would fall in a matter of days, and that obviously did not happen. And Palantier's technology, it would appear, played a very important role in this.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And carb C was all wrong. It was going to be proven wrong. And we are reverting to a normal state of affairs, which is chaos, disorder. And so the invasion of Ukraine is a big deal for Palatine. And of course, the company is very involved. It was involved chiefly through something called Project Maven, which is the Pentagon's artificial intelligence program. And then Palantir had become involved in that during Trump's first presidency after Google had dropped out. There were a lot of internal dissent at Google over its work on Project Maven, a lot of people at Google objected to helping the US military essentially weaponize artificial intelligence. So Google dropped out and Palatine ends up replacing them on their work. And Palantir's main software.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, he does feel vindication after Russia invades Ukraine. Vindication, because he's got this, he's always had this very dark worldview. He thinks humanity is just naturally prone to violence and chaos. Disorder is the normal state of affairs for mankind. And this is the view that has always informed Palantier's work. There's never been with Palantier any of this sort of techno-optimism you hear from other, you would hear from other tech companies in Silicon Valley. Pallantier's sales pitch was, look, we live in a violent chaotic world. Our technology can perhaps make the world marginally less dangerous. So that was kind of always their view and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is in Carp's mind affirmation that their worldview was actually spot on and that this is the after the Cold War, all this talk of a peace dividend and the end of history.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Concerns about some of the people it's working with, some of the organizations it's working with. But I also think that any fair account of the company also has to recognize that most of what it does is completely benign. It's got a huge commercial business. The work for Airbus, I mean, technology is used for things like preventive maintenance. I don't think anyone would be against that. So a lot of this is just plain vanilla enterprise software work. And then there's stuff that does raise concerns. It's a complex company. And I think you have to any fair account of what it does would have to recognize that there is stuff that should make us nervous, but also recognize that there's stuff that they've done that is actually pretty good and laudable. And there has to be recognition of both these things.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. No, I think it's a couple things. I think one look at it. I mean, to the general public, only in recent years have people become even dimly aware of this company. And I think, yeah, a lot of the coverage. I wouldn't say it's sensational. These are legitimate concerns. I mean, there are some misconceptions. I mean, Palantir, the name itself is now synonymous with surveillance, but it's important to point out. And I'm also going to plead a little guilty here because you got surveillance in the subtitle of my book. But it's not actually surveillance technology. What it is, is it's technology that, among other things, can help those who do conduct surveillance, intelligence services, law enforcement. It can help them make better use of the information they're collecting, including via surveillance technology. So Palatine is one step removed, but an important part of this. So listen, there are legitimate concerns about Palenter's work, legitimate concerns.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Peace Prize for its efforts during COVID, and people with a World Food Program will tell you that Palantir's technology, again, as a tool for managing logistics, for getting food to places where it was needed, as global supply chains crumbled, Palantir was instrumental and valuable to their work, and then that work resulted in the organization getting a Nobel Peace Prize. Palantir's a complicated company. It's done a lot of good and it's done stuff that also makes people very anxious and should.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had been a major supporter of Donald Trump. And Palantry was awarded a no-bake contract by the government, though in Palantir's defense you were in the middle of a once in a century public health crisis. It didn't seem like it would really be possible to have the normal procurement process when help was urgently needed. And it was actually a more competitive process. I mean, Palatir was tried on a trial basis. people who were using it found that it was very effective and that's how it ended up getting this contract to health with COVID response but you know it's it's i know people who don't like palantir and and were very concerned about it you know don't want to hear it but it was actually the company did play a pretty significant role during covet and then not just in the united states not just in the uk but it was also played a very important role in the world food program's covid response and in fact if you recall the world program was awarded the no”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And began pulling in all the data, began integrating all this data that was being collected all over the country, right down to the level of individual hospitals. Once Palinter got involved, they suddenly had a much clearer picture of where the disease was spreading, where supplies were needed. So it made, you know, it was a public health disaster in the United States. I think it's fair to say more than a million people died. But Palantir technology proved invaluable in giving the government some means of getting a handle on the spread of the virus and making sure that supplies got where they got to where they were most urgently needed. And then Palantir's software was an integral part of the vaccine rollout. And so the company did play. I mean, there was a lot of discussion during COVID, whether Palantir was benefiting from preferential treatment because Peter”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this was a big deal and it was interesting because, I mean, this is a company that was founded to help fight terrorism, then moves into defense, national security. So you wouldn't have expected that its real breakthrough moment would have been fighting a pandemic. But actually people who are with the company early on had recognized that there were going to be all sorts of applications for this technology and then actually fighting pandemics was one of them. So it didn't come as a surprise to everyone. COVID becomes, as I say, in the book, a true proof of concept moment for Palantir. It's used by the American government to try to get a handle on the virus. It's used by the British government as well and is very effective. As you know, the COVID response in the United States certainly was kind of a disaster. And people who were overseeing COVID response during those first weeks and months, they were flying blind. It's once they got Palantir in.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And even people at Palantir say, well, they don't really know. CARP himself has come to believe that it was actually true, but couldn't offer more detail than that, regardless. That paragraph in that book was just money in the bank for Palatir because all of a sudden it gave this fledgling company incredible cachet. It gave Palantir a mystique that endures to this day. It's the company that helped get Bin Laden”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Useful on the battlefield and to intelligence analysts doesn't say that Palantir played a part in the bin Laden raid, but people immediately infer that this means that Palantir was somehow involved. I mean, if you read the passage, that's not what he's saying. And then as a writer, it's a little disturbing to realize that reading comprehension skills may be this lagging because that's not what he says. But anyway, a lot of readers seem to infer that what the writer was saying was that Palatir had actually been involved in the strike that got bin Laden. And look, it's not impossible that it was. I mean, it was being used by military special forces of the kind that actually carried out the raid. Its software was being used by the CIA. So it's very possible that Palantier's technology did play a part in that, but that has never been confirmed.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the bin Laden rate is kind of a very important part of Palener's history. This really just came out of a book that was written about a year after the raid by a prominent American journalist who wrote a book about the mission that killed bin Laden and includes a passage in there where he talks about the military battlefield counterterrorism intelligence and then finding technology that will enable counterterrorism analysts, counterterrorism experts to better track down the people they're hunting. And he mentions Palantir as an example of, and it was a young company then. So this book came out like, you know, I think 2012 maybe. It's still a pretty young company and not widely known. But he mentions Palantir as a company producing the kind of technology that could be”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. You've got structured data, you know, spreadsheets, you've got unstructured data, video, photos. Whether in the boardroom, on the battlefield, on the factory floor is data driven. But data is not easy to work with. It can be very messy within an organization, and particularly a large organization, it's scattered all over the place, siloed in different places. Palantir helps organizations find order in this chaos and find answers.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Patterns, trends, connections, correlations in the data, stuff that would take human analysts hours, days, weeks, possibly forever to do. So it's very powerful technology. The metaphor I use is I kind of liken it to a wood chipper and its ability to pull in lots of data, massive quantities of data. And it's also very flexible, if that makes sense. It can be Palantir's technology can be used for just an astonishing array of purposes. And the company only has around 4,000 employees. It's not that big, but its reach is just incredible. And the number of areas in which it works, the different purposes that it serves is just pretty astonishing.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Organizations typically the U.S. Army is a client, Airbus is a client. You have around 50,000 Airbus employees who use Palantir on a daily basis. So you're talking about large organizations that collect massive amounts of data. And Palantir's technology helps them make sense of the data. It merges data. What are the issues that they discovered early on is that particularly with large organizations, data is off, it's all over the place. It's siloed. I mean, this gets back to the 9-11 problem. You have siloed data, siloed databases. I mean, where p stuff is not merged, people can't access the information they need. And so Palantir's software, they essentially builds virtual pipelines that allows all this data to be integrated and forms a composite view, what they like to call a single pane of glass that allows essentially an organization to essentially build a digital twin of itself. And the software then finds power.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot of it, and plumbing is a good word. They often describe it as kind of high-end plumbing. It's not glamorous work even though the company has a certain glamour which owes much to Carp, owes much to its client base, has some very interesting clients and does a lot of really interesting work. But even Palantirians will admit that the work itself is fundamentally not that sexy. It is, you know, it's, again, high-end plumbing work. Palantir is a company that specializes in data analytics. It builds software, platforms that enable organizations to make better, faster use of their own data. It's important to recognize because there are a lot of misconceptions about Palantir. It is important to recognize that they don't collect the data. They don't store the data. And they definitely don't sell the data. It is simply they are building technology that enables organizations to make better use of their own data. And we're talking about large”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Robust protection of minority rights that only in a society like that could someone with his background, with his background, with what he saw as these strikes against them, only there could someone like him survive and possibly prosper. So Pellantier, he took the company's mission very personally. I mean, I think I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that in some sense, Palantir exists to make the world safer for Alex Carp. He would say that it's also making the world safer for millions of other people. But it was a very deeply personal mission for him, and it remains so. Now, of course, his politics may have evolved, and we can get to that, but, you know.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it is. And this is really rooted in his childhood to a large degree. So as he tells it, he realized at an early age that, okay, he's biracial, he's Jewish, he's also severely dyslexic. So he realizes at an early age that he has what he regards as some strikes against him. And it gives them a sense of vulnerability, that he carries into adulthood and carries right to palante. So the idea had originated with Peter Thiel, but CARP really embraced the mission, the idea, okay, we're going to defend the United States and we're here to defend the West more broadly. We want Palantir to be a sword and a shield for the West. And his view at the time and for many years thereafter was that defending the West ipso facto meant defending the liberal democracy. It meant he put it in very personal terms. It was like, look at someone like me needs to live in a society where you have the rule of law, where you have”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has a venture capital arm called InQutell named after it's a playful name named after Q in the Bond movies. Talk to them. And actually that's how the CIA ended up as an early investor in Palantir. But this sort of the very ice cold reception that Carp had received from the Silicon Valley Venture Capital Community kind of gave him and his colleagues a kind of animus towards Silicon Valley that has endured to this day. They really saw themselves as a part, standing apart from the rest of the valley and didn't feel particularly welcome in the valley, even though the company was based there. This is kind of why even now, even though the firm is no longer based in Silicon Valley, it's now based in Denver. This is why you still hear him taking shots at the valley.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, carp goes out and tries to raise money from some major Silicon Valley venture capital firms. And they all say no. Some are nicer about it than others. Cart tells the story that one very famous venture capitalist spent the entire pitch meeting doodling absent-mindedly in his notebook. He just really went out of his way, it seems, to register his disinterest. You know, the ones who are nicer about it said, look it, we admire your patriotism. It's wonderful you want to work with the government. It's wonderful you want to help the United States government combat terrorism, but we don't really see this as an appealing business option. And so everyone says no. No one wants to invest money in Palantir. Eventually one venture capitalist took pity on CARP and the Palantirians and said, look it, if you want to work with the government and you want to work in counterterrorism, the CIA...”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was a company from the start. The early days were tough. I mean, it's a company that had a very clear mission from the start. It wanted to work with the U.S. government. And that was sort of, you know, that was unusual in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s. That was when the consumer internet, the commercial internet, was really just taking off. People wanted to put their money in things like social networks and so forth. I mean, the idea of working with the government where contracts were slow to materialize, which doesn't pay that well. It was something that just didn't read.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Taken a job with a as a development officer for a Jewish philanthropy based in San Francisco, they reconnect. Teal discovers that his law school friend is actually really good at getting people to write big checks. He's a very convincing salesperson. So they talk and teal, begins to have CARP on the side. CARP has a day job, but CARP begins to moonlight as a fundraiser for Palantir. Eventually Teal asks him if he wants to join the company. Teal had the idea originally that the CEO should be someone with a military background, someone very well connected in Washington. But both Teal and some of the other co-founders are underwhelmed by the people they meet. And at some point, it occurs to them, hey, Alex is really, he's really dynamic. He's an amazing salesperson. He understands our mission, our purpose in a way that a lot of these people don't.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At Stanford, and there's a newspaper that's delighted in provoking people. They published a lot of inflammatory stuff. So Tio was already a figure of some notoriety, and he and Carp at Stanford Law, they bond over their shared unhappiness at law school and their love of political debate. As Carp put it to me, they would debate like quote unquote feral animals. They became really good friends. After law school, Carp has no intention of pursuing a career in law, so he moves to Germany to pursue a doctorate from Governor University, Frankfurt. Theo goes on to try to pursue a career in the law, but he gives up on that pretty quickly and ends up back in the Bay Area and founds PayPal. Anyway, so after PayPal, when Teal has this idea for this company called Palantir, at that time, CARP had returned to San Francisco. He had taken a job. He had urged his doctorate.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, he's done Germany at this point. So he had gone. So the two of them met at Stanford Law School. They both went to Stanford Law after college, after Carpet, graduated Haverford, and after Thiel had earned an undergraduate degree from Stanford. They both end up at Stanford Law, and they both quickly come to regret their decision to go to law school. They just didn't find it very intellectually satisfying. And so what made it bearable for both them, particularly CARP, was the friendship they struck up. They spent a lot of time arguing with each other, arguing about politics. They had very different views. Carp was a man of the left. Thial was, as you said, an arch libertarian and already a figure of some notoriety as an undergraduate at Stanford. He had started a student newspaper called The Stanford Review, which the aim was to combat what he saw as this overbearing left-wing political correctness.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's really foundational to palant here, of course. And this goes back to a company that Peter Thiel had co-founded.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give the school a dime. That's not great for Haverford. I don't know if that's had anything to do with what the president's decision to stop down. I can't imagine it would, but he has much to say about our alma mater.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of the work that Palatir has been involved with is very controversial. And if you were invited to speak at Haverford, there would be a lot of protesters. So, you know, he's fine with that, but the school might not be as thrilled to have a riot breakout. So, no, the Haverford thing is a through line. And then, of course, it becomes a little more serious because Haverford was a lot of protests on campus over the war in Gaza. he is very unhappy, Carp with how administrators at the school handled it. One thing that has happened since the book was published is it was just about a week ago, the president of Haverford announced that she was stepping down. Cause and effect, I don't know. But, you know, the book is out and he has a lot of things to say about Haverford, including the fact at one point he says, I will never.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He is very annoyed by that. He's also very annoyed that the school hasn't made a better effort to cultivate him as a donor, which even people who even have for grads who don't share his politics, who don't like the way his politics have evolved, who don't look approvingly on Palantir, even they are like, well, it's kind of crazy that the school would not do more of an effort to cultivate him as a donor. He's the wealthiest alum and obviously a very powerful figure. The school could use the money. I mean, most schools could. Why wouldn't you try to cultivate to get him to sign over a big check? And so, you know, that is, you know, I think there's that. I think certainly the fact that he hasn't been invited to speak on campus, though, is he also acknowledges.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The focus was on racism, on college campuses, and he gave an interview sometime thereafter to the Detroit Free Press. And when she talked about how pervasive racism was on American college campuses, he blamed college administrators for tolerating this, and he also blamed then President Ronald Reagan for setting a tone in which open expressions of bigotry were permitted. Interestingly, in our senior yearbook, he was wearing a Kafiya. So, you know, just kind of signaled a commitment to a broader commitment to social justice. So this is the world that he emerged from. And obviously, had anyone said no one, certainly no one would have thought at Haverford that he would end up running a company that's at the nexus of technology and the National Security State, a very unlikely. very unlikely path to Silicon Valley, shall we say?”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My alma mater as well. We were classmates at Haverford, which is a very tiny school outside of Philadelphia. No one can really believe that we both spent four years on that campus and never managed to exchange a word. It seems almost impossible. You know, he kind of plays down how hard he worked at Haverford, but I do suspect the library saw more of him than it did of me, which may go some way to explaining how he ended up a billionaire and I did not. But Haverford was a very progressive institution and he was someone who fit in there, not just because it's a place where people work very hard. It's a very studious place, a very academically driven place. And he fit in in that sense, but he also fit in quite well politically. He was very active in black student affairs during our senior year in college. He helped organize an anti-racism conference at Yale University.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He is a very complicated figure. So pre-Palantir, if you want to go back to his childhood, he was raised in Philadelphia. His father, a Jewish pediatrician, his mother's black, an artist, it was a very left-wing household. Much of his childhood was spent going to anti-war protest, anti-nuclear protests. So this is the political milieu in which he grew up. He then goes to college locally at Haverford College”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Leadership and how he is preparing Palantir and the world for a future dominated by technological power. Let's join our host, Carl Miller, now with more.”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorenti. On today's episode, author and New York Times magazine journalist Michael Steinberger joins us to examine Alex Carp, Palantir and the Rise of the Modern Surveillance State. Founded in 2003, Palantir is widely regarded as the most interesting company in Silicon Valley, as well as its most controversial. It aided the US government in the war on terrorism and is now used by the CIA, their NHS, the US military and corporate giants like Airbus and BP. But it's billionaire, CEO Alex Carp, is not like other CEOs. In conversation with Carl Miller, Michael Steinboj joins us to discuss his new biography of CARP, The Philosopher in the Valley, drawing on his unprecedented access to the CEO, Steinberger offers a detailed account of Carp's singular approach to”
2025-12-08 · Intelligence Squared · Is Alex Karp the Philosopher of Silicon Valley? With Michael Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT