Alex Karp: How Palantir is Changing the Course of History

00:0020 years ago this was like from Mars freak show all these views. The west must defend itself. The in the best the people producing this thing called software must be aligned with our government. We should not allow institutions software institutions to sell to our adversaries but not sell to the US government. Uh the world would become disjointed and more violent. uh simultaneously uh startups would rise and become a very large in terms of market cap and and footprint and that these software companies Palanteer and I hope others someday will change the course of history as you've as you've seen and and are in ways that no one believes or or some ways that are classified um and that um but simultaneously and that you

00:45can conver get people to believe by seeing the success and the impact And last not least, and our adversaries would completely act up because without them acting up, I still think people would not believe us. We've come closer to the norm. >> Yeah. >> And so like now all these things are like you walk around and people are I don't think everyone's saying it believes it, but they are beginning and and you know and that that's that's kind of very gratifying. Um, and it's probably good that they've forgotten that they all called us 20 years ago. It >> it was really interesting to live knowing obviously Palanteer had helped stop some really major attacks that were not public and people just thought we

01:26were weird and didn't appreciate it. And so it's you're finally getting some public appreciation I guess after maybe not for everything we've done but for some of the new things. A lot of the things we've done we've done can never be publicized. And I do I do I do in some ways wish they were more wellknown both for Palunteerians and because these institutions that you know I rever like um our military institutions and others would would get even more support if people understood the impact they were having in clandestine services positive impact. Now there are reasons they can't talk about these things and probably shouldn't. It has changed from we are like essentially the X-Men in a very deep cave and uh and then being shuffled

02:09back into the cave and told you know and but there's still a lot of that like I you know I I always get in trouble for saying the obvious fact that besid with without PG Europe would be completely different politically. >> Oh yeah >> and this is just just a fact. >> I think I think US might be as well. We probably shouldn't talk too much about this because you don't see as a big of a problem. But I mean, I think a lot of the battles we're having that are cultural wars right now over things might not be the battles we'd be having if there had been multiple successful attacks, right? I think the culture would have transformed in a very different direction. Yes, the America is there was there's a lot that has gone

02:44into the the the the some of the luxuries we have including certain uh dialogues that are clearly um luxury product. >> So Alex, we started American Optimist to push back against cynicism and pessimism you see in a lot of parts of our country. Uh what innovations and breakthroughs make you most excited about the next 20 years? What what gives you hope for the next next few decades? America is by far the best at enterprise software. You see this, you saw this before AI and large language models. I think at this point it's kind of hard to ignore. We have we continue to attract and retain the best talent in the world. We have cultural and cultural systems for managing that talent and turning that into productive companies like some

03:25of the ones you support in finance and I would say most notably Palunteer. Um and um I think a lot of the kind of uh and then we have uh there's a way in which uh our adversaries who are really focused on hurting us galvanize and bring the best out of America and allow us in many cases to look past divisions that are quite obviously less important than us unifying uh to outmaneuver and be stronger than our adversaries and leave them so scared that they act up less and quiver at uh the idea that uh rule of law, free speech, protecting protection of property and in general respect of humans is a basic human right.