WEBVTT - Alex Karp: Silicon Valley Broke Its Promise to America 0:00:09.740 --> 0:00:14.080 The Builders is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeart, presented 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:18.820 by Ramp. Ramp is a financial operations platform that helps 0:00:18.940 --> 0:00:23.090 ambitious companies manage their finances so their teams can spend 0:00:23.140 --> 0:00:26.970 less time chasing receipts and approvals and more time bringing 0:00:27.110 --> 0:00:32.250 extraordinary ideas to life. I'm Walter Isaacs, and welcome to 0:00:32.270 --> 0:00:36.470 The Builders, my series of conversations with the most consequential 0:00:36.550 --> 0:00:42.269 minds shaping our future. In the years after September 11th, 0:00:42.550 --> 0:00:47.190 Peter Thiel began thinking about a new problem. At PayPal, 0:00:47.390 --> 0:00:51.330 he and his colleagues had developed software that could identify 0:00:51.510 --> 0:00:56.790 fraud by finding patterns hidden across enormous amounts of information. 0:00:57.330 --> 0:01:02.110 Could a similar system help intelligence agencies discover threats before 0:01:02.170 --> 0:01:06.250 another attack? The idea became Palantir. 0:01:06.590 --> 0:01:09.910 Palantir is a leader in analyzing data, a skill that's 0:01:09.950 --> 0:01:12.360 at the heart of the economy and surveillance. 0:01:12.610 --> 0:01:17.319 Demonstrators are accusing the data analysis firm Palantir of working 0:01:17.340 --> 0:01:17.759 with ICE. 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:22.319 To lead the company, Thiel turned to an old friend 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.680 from Stanford Law School, Alex Karp. 0:01:25.980 --> 0:01:28.819 Palantir's leader, Alex Karp, is an intellectual known for his 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:30.780 big hair and bigger personality. 0:01:30.860 --> 0:01:35.300 Having Karp A self-described socialist running this company gave people 0:01:35.459 --> 0:01:37.959 some assurance that the company could be trusted. 0:01:38.500 --> 0:01:42.119 Karp was an unusual choice to run a technology company. 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:46.220 While others were building code, he spent his 20s studying 0:01:46.340 --> 0:01:49.900 neoclassical social theory and philosophy in Frankfurt. 0:01:50.380 --> 0:01:53.360 Karp had no background in computer science or business when 0:01:53.390 --> 0:01:57.510 he joined Palantir in the early 2000s, and yet 20-plus 0:01:57.550 --> 0:02:00.130 years later, he has turned this company into a $ 400 0:02:00.090 --> 0:02:00.650 billion colossus. 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:09.520 Alex Karp occupies an unusual intersection. Philosophy and warfare. Silicon 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:14.360 Valley innovation and national security. So I wanted to ask him, 0:02:14.780 --> 0:02:18.780 who should be trusted with systems this powerful? Can artificial 0:02:18.820 --> 0:02:23.760 intelligence make governments and militaries more effective without making them 0:02:23.860 --> 0:02:28.500 less accountable? How do we defend an open society without 0:02:28.700 --> 0:02:34.359 building the machinery of a surveillance state? Here's my conversation 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:40.100 with Alex Karp. Alex Karp, welcome to The Builders. 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:41.880 Very nice to be here. A huge honor. 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.600 You know, one of my theories in biography is that 0:02:44.660 --> 0:02:47.590 it's all about dad. So tell me first about your father. 0:02:49.430 --> 0:02:57.050 Well, my dad, he's a very smart person, very shaped 0:02:57.550 --> 0:03:05.220 by the combination of his... German-Jewish mother passing away very early. 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.960 And I think my parents were very much in love. 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:13.240 But it was not a coincidence that my dad married 0:03:13.300 --> 0:03:21.630 a jarringly talented, excruciatingly talented, somewhat difficult black woman. I 0:03:21.669 --> 0:03:25.550 think he loved the fact that it poked his stepmother, 0:03:25.570 --> 0:03:29.649 who was more status conscious, in the eye. But my 0:03:29.690 --> 0:03:35.760 mom My mom is enormously just capturing in her level 0:03:35.780 --> 0:03:40.120 of talent, artistic talent. But the thing about my parents, 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:42.240 they hate it when I say this, but both my 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.120 parents should be, it's kind of weird that I'm the 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:48.040 most famous one. Put it this way, had they been 0:03:48.300 --> 0:03:49.860 more what I think they could have been, they would 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.900 have not have birthed me. And I had this discomfort 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:58.690 about the fact that this family that exploded in a 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:03.000 messy divorce And with parents that are complicated, created an 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:08.460 artifact that is ideally morphed for building essentially pound here. 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:13.050 You know, it's like if you take someone like me 0:04:13.090 --> 0:04:16.849 and you put it in this chaotic environment where you 0:04:16.870 --> 0:04:20.169 had the feeling you're on your own and you're subconsciously 0:04:20.230 --> 0:04:25.490 or partially consciously misaligned with your parents, you can get 0:04:25.529 --> 0:04:29.070 a deeper trust in your own ability to survive. but 0:04:29.130 --> 0:04:32.060 maybe a latent mistrust of structures. 0:04:32.690 --> 0:04:36.180 Tell me about dyslexia. How did being dyslexic give you 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:37.520 wings to fly? 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.680 You always have to walk back from where you are 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:43.780 to see where it got you. Like I viewed it 0:04:43.860 --> 0:04:45.980 as a, I mean, I was in the closet about 0:04:46.020 --> 0:04:49.260 being dyslexic until like six years ago. And then I 0:04:49.300 --> 0:04:52.260 just got tired. Honestly, I got frustrated. And then I 0:04:52.380 --> 0:04:54.360 kind of told a buddy of mine. And then from there, 0:04:54.380 --> 0:04:57.020 I just kind of, but you know, it's interesting for me, 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.380 to watch how people derided everything we did, derided everything 0:05:01.420 --> 0:05:06.920 I said, and now basically copy it verbatim. Now, why 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:10.640 does that happen? It happens because they're looking for a playbook. 0:05:11.580 --> 0:05:13.900 If you're dyslexic, the way I define it, at least, 0:05:14.100 --> 0:05:16.920 because it's a broad term, I define it as having 0:05:16.940 --> 0:05:23.510 a non-one-to-one relationship with the taxonomy of a language, written taxonomy. 0:05:24.010 --> 0:05:26.870 So even now, if you read and I read, there's 0:05:26.910 --> 0:05:29.030 more of a translation function, even though I did a 0:05:29.050 --> 0:05:31.550 PhD and I still do a lot of, end up 0:05:31.670 --> 0:05:34.610 doing a lot of the writing at Palantir. But why 0:05:34.670 --> 0:05:38.590 is that important? Because language, of course, you prefer not 0:05:38.630 --> 0:05:42.310 to be dyslexic, but the truth is, if you are dyslexic, 0:05:42.710 --> 0:05:46.630 you're not colonized by the broader culture. So when I'm 0:05:46.670 --> 0:05:49.610 interacting with the broader culture or with a tech problem 0:05:50.089 --> 0:05:53.050 or with any problem, I'm interacting with the problem as 0:05:53.089 --> 0:05:55.270 it is. So how were we able to build the 0:05:55.330 --> 0:06:00.450 anti-terror product Okay, that product changed the history of Europe. 0:06:01.230 --> 0:06:05.050 We've stopped hundreds of terror attacks, some of which would 0:06:05.110 --> 0:06:07.630 have happened in other places, but many of which would 0:06:07.650 --> 0:06:10.320 have happened in Europe. Think of the Europe you would 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.080 have if that had happened. And then later, our product 0:06:13.140 --> 0:06:15.060 is fundamental to the defense of Ukraine. 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:17.380 Well, wait, explain to me how that comes from being 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:18.880 either not colonized. 0:06:18.900 --> 0:06:21.849 Okay, so first of all, if you go to school 0:06:21.890 --> 0:06:24.469 on how to learn software, build a software company, you 0:06:24.510 --> 0:06:27.400 would have learned build a product that's not very valuable 0:06:27.420 --> 0:06:30.160 to the client where they're addicted to it, then hire 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.340 lots of salespeople and get lots of people to buy 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.160 it against their will. And that's how you build a software. 0:06:36.260 --> 0:06:39.000 And then the derivative of that is it's a simple 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:42.350 but addicting product. So it doesn't really create value, but 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:45.210 it's hard to get rid of. It's like a venereal disease. 0:06:45.810 --> 0:06:48.430 Easy to get, maybe hard to get rid of. And 0:06:48.490 --> 0:06:51.650 what you had to avoid at all costs is anything 0:06:51.690 --> 0:06:54.830 that looked like labor. We spent three years building a 0:06:54.890 --> 0:06:56.740 product That was valuable. 0:06:56.860 --> 0:06:57.040 Okay. 0:06:57.060 --> 0:06:59.669 So then you get to what is value. We said 0:06:59.730 --> 0:07:02.850 value is both that you stop the terror attacks and 0:07:02.910 --> 0:07:04.110 you protect civil liberties. 0:07:04.589 --> 0:07:04.849 Okay. 0:07:05.529 --> 0:07:08.470 That already you had two factions, one that wanted to 0:07:08.529 --> 0:07:11.370 stop terror attacks and one that wanted to protect civil liberties. 0:07:12.330 --> 0:07:15.870 So the problem was to build that product, you had 0:07:15.910 --> 0:07:19.470 to violate every single norm of how you build software. 0:07:20.310 --> 0:07:22.790 And then the biggest norm we violated is it took 0:07:22.910 --> 0:07:27.460 three years really roughly without revenue. Three years, no revenue. 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:33.320 So you would have to be completely, basically insane to 0:07:33.370 --> 0:07:36.890 do that. And I do think it took a neurodivergent 0:07:37.050 --> 0:07:39.510 person at the helm to fight for that. People are 0:07:39.530 --> 0:07:42.490 always like, I often get these comments in private from 0:07:42.530 --> 0:07:45.490 business executives. Can you teach me how to be unpopular? 0:07:46.150 --> 0:07:50.000 We're oddly kind of popular right now. But I don't 0:07:50.020 --> 0:07:53.040 think it's possible because what they're really asking me to 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.570 teach them is to be dyslexic. to look at the material, 0:07:57.150 --> 0:07:59.240 digest it, but it's not inside me. 0:08:00.260 --> 0:08:03.760 You clearly grew up feeling a bit of an outsider, 0:08:03.820 --> 0:08:06.880 another theory I have about biography. And being an outsider 0:08:06.900 --> 0:08:09.500 can be a superpower in some ways in the sense 0:08:09.540 --> 0:08:11.280 that you aren't trying to fit in. 0:08:11.380 --> 0:08:13.650 Or maybe you've tried to fit in, but it's failed. 0:08:13.990 --> 0:08:14.530 Did you try? 0:08:15.810 --> 0:08:21.170 No, but I think human beings as a species want 0:08:21.230 --> 0:08:23.850 to fit in. And I think most of us who 0:08:24.470 --> 0:08:28.650 are not trying, subconsciously realize it would have failed to try. 0:08:29.110 --> 0:08:31.970 To what extent does that help you, say, as opposed 0:08:32.010 --> 0:08:33.829 to somebody like me who kind of feels, oh, I've 0:08:33.890 --> 0:08:36.910 always fit in, good childhood, want to get along? 0:08:36.950 --> 0:08:39.880 Yeah, Jewish guy in New Orleans. Yeah, I'm not sure 0:08:39.910 --> 0:08:42.440 that's true because you would not be able to write 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.459 the things you've written if you were purely an insider. 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:48.220 But in any case, it's not me interviewing you. But 0:08:48.260 --> 0:08:51.160 if I were interviewing you, I'd push back on that statement. No, 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.140 I think being an outsider, I don't think you get 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.140 Palantir or my life story. It's very unlikely you're going 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.100 to get it as an insider. And I think the 0:09:00.179 --> 0:09:06.130 inside track is overworn and not working. And then I 0:09:06.309 --> 0:09:08.710 think if you link it to what we've built at Palantir, 0:09:08.750 --> 0:09:11.950 the culture, the aesthetics, the products, there's not a single 0:09:11.990 --> 0:09:15.010 thing we've done that an insider would ever do. And 0:09:15.090 --> 0:09:19.150 most outsiders are pretending to be outsiders. Since there's so 0:09:19.190 --> 0:09:21.949 much value in being an outsider, you have lots of 0:09:21.970 --> 0:09:23.470 people who are like fake outsiders. 0:09:24.250 --> 0:09:25.350 But that's not you. 0:09:25.850 --> 0:09:28.590 Well, I mean, I think people like me would, I'd 0:09:28.730 --> 0:09:31.500 love to go on an insider vacation. Give me like 0:09:31.510 --> 0:09:33.740 the eight weeks a year where I can be an insider. 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.300 And again, I know it'd be totally stupid, but like 0:09:37.340 --> 0:09:41.260 I want to be reborn as like a, my reborn 0:09:41.380 --> 0:09:44.600 fantasy is Catholic, Bavarian, veterinarian. 0:09:45.390 --> 0:09:49.520 Well, getting to Bavaria and to a related concept, which 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:54.610 is a collaborationist instinct that's in the human species. You 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.590 wrote about the Nazis when you were in graduate school, 0:09:57.630 --> 0:09:57.900 was it? 0:09:58.130 --> 0:10:01.320 I wrote about... It was... was a critique of Heidegger. 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.720 For better or worse, it'd be hard to say Heidegger 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.579 was not one of the two or three most important 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.740 philosophers in the last couple hundred years, along with other people, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:17.870 maybe Wittgenstein. Heidegger developed a form of phenomenology, which is 0:10:18.090 --> 0:10:21.530 a fancy way of explaining the how things in the 0:10:21.570 --> 0:10:24.110 world could impute value onto the world. And there's many 0:10:24.150 --> 0:10:27.450 different forms. His advisor was Husserl, who was Jewish. Heidegger 0:10:27.830 --> 0:10:33.650 became Bernardin's supporter of Hitler. Even though his mistress Hannah 0:10:33.670 --> 0:10:37.500 Arendt was Jewish and his advisor was Jewish. And I 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:44.079 think Heideggerian philosophy is the most important political philosophy, I think, 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:49.640 for worse in the West now, because most political movements 0:10:49.700 --> 0:10:53.439 that I would call regressive far right, meaning they want 0:10:53.460 --> 0:10:57.030 to regress to something that obviously has never worked on 0:10:57.070 --> 0:11:00.070 the far right and on the far left, pretend to 0:11:00.110 --> 0:11:03.109 be Marxist, certainly on the left, but are actually Heideggerian. 0:11:03.929 --> 0:11:07.670 And that's why I've been very early and for years saying, like, 0:11:07.710 --> 0:11:10.130 I'm still an unhappy Democrat. I've been warning the Democrats 0:11:10.170 --> 0:11:13.340 that a faction of their party is actually not progressive. 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.790 They call themselves progressive, but then they want a form 0:11:17.830 --> 0:11:25.670 of communitarian economy that looks futile. It's not even actually socialist. 0:11:26.970 --> 0:11:29.969 And they pretend to be isolationist when they're actually just 0:11:30.010 --> 0:11:34.390 focused on the groups they're uncomfortable with. That's a right-wing party. 0:11:35.450 --> 0:11:38.650 So in any case, I wrote about Heidegger. Now, the 0:11:38.690 --> 0:11:40.610 truth is also I wanted to get out of jail. 0:11:40.730 --> 0:11:43.670 I realized halfway through my dissertation, this is not for me. 0:11:44.050 --> 0:11:46.170 I need to go and build something. To your thing, 0:11:46.210 --> 0:11:51.290 I'm a builder. The interesting thing about builders is it's elliptical. 0:11:51.650 --> 0:11:54.830 So the people you've written about, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, 0:11:55.690 --> 0:11:58.030 I think you will find in every case, it's a 0:11:58.090 --> 0:12:04.990 combination of an outsider with an aesthetic proclivity that is 0:12:05.429 --> 0:12:11.030 as much humanities as tech. I think objectively, although most 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:17.340 people in tech would disagree, it's more aesthetic world importance. 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.949 and business acumen than tech, which is why the tech 0:12:21.970 --> 0:12:24.750 companies are built here and not unfortunately in Germany or France, 0:12:25.230 --> 0:12:29.840 because it's not that we're smarter, but we are producing 0:12:29.890 --> 0:12:32.120 that shape person. And part of it is most of 0:12:32.140 --> 0:12:37.460 the people building things here, their great grandparents or parents, 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:41.290 or they themselves opted to come here. That's already a 0:12:41.300 --> 0:12:41.760 big step. 0:12:42.950 --> 0:12:45.209 Why did you found Palantir? What was the point of it? 0:12:45.910 --> 0:12:48.960 Well, I mean, my version of why I founded it 0:12:49.059 --> 0:12:52.459 was I knew Peter in law school. 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:53.280 Peter Thiel. 0:12:53.300 --> 0:12:57.329 Peter Thiel. We had this– we just– I was doing 0:12:57.370 --> 0:12:59.770 no work. Peter, I think, was doing much more work 0:12:59.809 --> 0:13:02.990 than I, but we were in the same section and 0:13:03.070 --> 0:13:06.010 in the same dorm, which was like the dorm you 0:13:06.050 --> 0:13:07.430 were at if you didn't have a lot of money. 0:13:08.110 --> 0:13:11.520 And then we were both intellectually very curious. He came 0:13:11.580 --> 0:13:13.920 to me and was like, we have this idea to 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:18.030 bring a methodology that was used at PayPal– to the 0:13:18.070 --> 0:13:21.230 Intel space because basically it had worked to cut down 0:13:21.270 --> 0:13:24.309 cyber fraud and they obviously aren't good at this kind 0:13:24.350 --> 0:13:28.210 of tech. And I thought this is wildly interesting. Peter 0:13:28.510 --> 0:13:33.340 is wildly compelling. And then I just said, yes. I 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:39.080 joined because I thought the idea, look, you can take 0:13:39.140 --> 0:13:43.360 a jingoistic version of America, like everything. Of course, we've 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.679 made mistakes. And some of those mistakes are hard to 0:13:46.740 --> 0:13:52.740 understand in retrospect. Mistakes around integration, respect, I mean, you know, 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:58.640 it could obviously, slavery, I think not paying enough attention 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:03.490 to class and not having the national project be stronger. 0:14:04.130 --> 0:14:07.110 There's a lot of lists, but in my view, in 0:14:07.130 --> 0:14:11.589 the view of, I think most Americans, there's no project 0:14:11.610 --> 0:14:14.670 at scale. So you can't really compare America to like, 0:14:15.340 --> 0:14:18.720 Sweden of the 70s, right? This is like a completely 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:23.040 different the time completely homogeneous culture. 0:14:23.060 --> 0:14:25.500 Are you saying the diversity of America make. 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:29.250 With the size? It's a size and grandeur of our 0:14:29.330 --> 0:14:34.470 project and the fact that we have this Constitution That 0:14:34.870 --> 0:14:39.270 is still it's still fresh like, you know the first 0:14:39.930 --> 0:14:43.150 in my view the Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment 0:14:43.370 --> 0:14:47.610 so write a free speech and which basically also is 0:14:47.670 --> 0:14:50.570 a stand-in for free to decide your own religion, which 0:14:50.650 --> 0:14:54.290 is very radical. The Second Amendment, okay, I don't believe 0:14:54.330 --> 0:14:58.710 we should allow plastic. 50 cal guns roaming through the streets, okay, 0:14:59.470 --> 0:15:02.510 but I do believe that it's crucial to allow citizens 0:15:02.590 --> 0:15:07.490 the right to bear arms because it's often reframed as self-defense, 0:15:07.530 --> 0:15:10.970 which I'm also in favor of, but it's really about 0:15:11.250 --> 0:15:16.390 putting the government on its back heel. about mandating what 0:15:16.850 --> 0:15:18.310 official policies would be. 0:15:18.710 --> 0:15:21.050 Well, the Fourth Amendment pushes you back a bit. 0:15:21.310 --> 0:15:22.750 I know, and I'm going to get to that, but 0:15:22.850 --> 0:15:24.510 I just want to say, I just want to underscore, 0:15:25.190 --> 0:15:28.290 and again, I actually think, I've never been a neocon. 0:15:28.630 --> 0:15:31.170 I never thought it made sense to make, like the 0:15:31.210 --> 0:15:36.650 Muslim world, we have many Muslim country partners. It runs 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.340 very well, and I'm not, of course, I want a 0:15:39.380 --> 0:15:42.060 different kind of government. I actually As much as I'm 0:15:42.140 --> 0:15:45.280 on the other side of the CCP, I want America 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:47.660 to win more than I'm interested in how they run 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:51.880 their world. It seems to, they believe, I've never been 0:15:52.060 --> 0:15:54.730 of that school. But we have an ability, I can 0:15:54.770 --> 0:15:57.790 say whatever I want here, and there is no government 0:15:57.810 --> 0:16:00.810 sanction to what I say. Okay, the Second Amendment does 0:16:00.850 --> 0:16:03.490 not exist, to my knowledge, anywhere else in the world. 0:16:04.210 --> 0:16:09.190 So First and Second still exist. enormously radical. But all 0:16:09.210 --> 0:16:11.990 of that as necessary as it would be first and 0:16:12.030 --> 0:16:15.290 second is not sufficient if you don't protect people's rights 0:16:15.370 --> 0:16:18.390 to privacy. And you could say, okay, well, the fourth amendment, 0:16:18.630 --> 0:16:20.200 you don't need the fourth. I mean, I think people 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.510 would say this abroad in many countries. You don't need 0:16:23.530 --> 0:16:26.200 the fourth amendment to protect your right of thought. 0:16:26.780 --> 0:16:26.940 Okay. 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.040 But it's not true because we're language driven beings. If 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:34.040 you can't articulate your thought in some form, even as 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:37.220 a dyslexic, is it a thought? What is a thought 0:16:37.260 --> 0:16:41.280 that can't be articulated? Can a thought be extended, manipulated, 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:47.040 changed productively or non-productively without its articulation in the thing, 0:16:47.250 --> 0:16:49.570 formative thing that makes us human and is allowed us 0:16:49.590 --> 0:16:49.990 to advance? 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.370 Spoken like somebody who's read a lot of Heidegger and Wittgenstein. 0:16:53.610 --> 0:16:57.230 Well, and where it's true. And this is why the 0:16:57.270 --> 0:17:01.610 Fourth Amendment, the ability is so crucial. One of the 0:17:01.650 --> 0:17:04.710 most vile and stupid attacks on Palantir has been that 0:17:04.750 --> 0:17:08.180 we're somehow anti Fourth Amendment. No, our products are actually 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.110 built around the protection. And the only way you could 0:17:11.250 --> 0:17:13.270 use AI now is with one of our products where 0:17:13.310 --> 0:17:17.109 you protect these rights. And so, but they're vital to 0:17:17.250 --> 0:17:19.810 us as what makes us human, which is exactly why 0:17:20.350 --> 0:17:24.480 regressive political movements go after the Fourth Amendment. They want 0:17:24.500 --> 0:17:28.320 to eviscerate these things because they're a Fourth Amendment for 0:17:28.380 --> 0:17:33.380 you is their retrograde ideology that that will force you, everyone, 0:17:33.460 --> 0:17:39.540 to be standard, cut out, same thing, non-neurodivergent, non-sovereign, non-individual. 0:17:39.780 --> 0:17:43.700 And that's why they cannot stand America or the way 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.290 it's set up, because our principles are set up to 0:17:47.350 --> 0:17:50.670 build builders. One of the major reasons we have a 0:17:50.710 --> 0:17:54.410 tech scene, unlike any other country, is because our Constitution 0:17:54.510 --> 0:17:55.449 is built for builders. 0:17:56.830 --> 0:18:00.170 Don't go anywhere. There's a lot more right after this break. 0:18:13.460 --> 0:18:16.060 So we're talking about the Fourth Amendment, right to privacy. 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.760 So many people would be talking about Palantir, the cameras, 0:18:20.060 --> 0:18:23.320 gathering information on us. Doesn't that impinge on our right 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.760 to privacy or do we over-index on privacy? 0:18:26.500 --> 0:18:26.680 No. 0:18:26.740 --> 0:18:30.590 Well, first of all, one of the things I think 0:18:30.710 --> 0:18:35.090 Europe got right was basically the European constitutional order focuses 0:18:35.130 --> 0:18:38.570 on privacy both in the commercial and in the government context. 0:18:39.410 --> 0:18:39.950 In America. 0:18:41.130 --> 0:18:45.250 Our constitution protects against government overreach. And I would say culturally, 0:18:45.450 --> 0:18:48.060 I think we're not sensitive enough to commercial overreach. 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:50.649 Yeah, all my students say they don't mind Google knowing 0:18:50.690 --> 0:18:53.040 everything about them, but they don't want the government to 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:54.660 know everything about them, which is odd. 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:59.360 Yeah, no, I'm in favor of them not wanting government 0:18:59.380 --> 0:19:02.960 to know everything about them. They're underestimating. Basically, what they're 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:07.100 often imputing is, I don't care what commercial companies know 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:09.850 about me because that's my choice, which, by the way, 0:19:09.859 --> 0:19:14.260 it is, obviously. But they're thinking of their opinions as 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.060 being wholly their own. And at best, your opinions are 0:19:18.100 --> 0:19:24.340 a dialogue between your ideas and the outside consensus view. 0:19:25.060 --> 0:19:31.609 They're underestimating how much their thoughts are being influenced by 0:19:31.730 --> 0:19:36.469 the tech products they're interacting with. And because they underestimate that, 0:19:36.510 --> 0:19:38.449 they don't understand the way in which they should be 0:19:38.490 --> 0:19:43.010 more concerned about privacy. Where I'm sympathetic with some of 0:19:43.090 --> 0:19:46.220 our critics of Palantir, they've got the Palantir part wrong. 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.510 But you'll see like Palantir surveillance state, blah, blah, blah. blah. 0:19:50.550 --> 0:19:55.760 The Palantir stuff is technically and in practice the inverse 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:58.520 of what they think by the most extreme amount of 0:19:58.580 --> 0:20:01.440 any other tech company. The part that they're actually right 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:06.100 about is that if you have companies controlling all data, 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:10.350 they will control what you think or think. heavily influence 0:20:10.369 --> 0:20:10.830 what you think. 0:20:11.150 --> 0:20:14.750 But isn't Palantir part of a surveillance culture? And there's 0:20:14.770 --> 0:20:18.840 an upside to that, but also maybe a loss of autonomy? 0:20:21.980 --> 0:20:23.639 Of course, you have to get a definition of what 0:20:23.700 --> 0:20:27.119 we mean by surveillance. If you are an enemy of 0:20:27.180 --> 0:20:30.300 the US shooting at the US or planning to shoot 0:20:30.340 --> 0:20:33.340 at the US or trying to stop people who are 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:36.750 coming into your country to dismantle something you're doing that's 0:20:36.810 --> 0:20:38.550 nefarious and bad. Okay, there are a lot of people 0:20:38.570 --> 0:20:42.640 who don't agree, but okay. Yes, our products are used 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:43.000 to make. 0:20:43.140 --> 0:20:44.859 But what about when I'm walking down the streets of 0:20:44.900 --> 0:20:48.420 New Orleans and you have a system there that says, okay, 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:50.100 here's where Walter was? 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.679 I mean, the domestic surveillance is where the issue comes in. 0:20:55.859 --> 0:20:59.169 In a weird way, Palantir is used heavily in France 0:20:59.950 --> 0:21:04.270 and in other places in Europe where we're contractually not 0:21:04.290 --> 0:21:08.159 allowed to mention There's a difference between surveillance under the 0:21:08.500 --> 0:21:12.659 context of a legal mandate and surveillance where there's no 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:16.220 legal mandate. And this distinction is actually both politically, morally, 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:20.530 and technically important. So I think the political morality, most 0:21:20.570 --> 0:21:23.389 people get that. But it's very hard to build a 0:21:23.430 --> 0:21:26.710 product that, for example, in the European context, can only 0:21:26.770 --> 0:21:29.310 keep data where there's a warrant and then purchase it 0:21:29.430 --> 0:21:35.440 where the warrant expires. The hard part is, You have warrant, 0:21:35.570 --> 0:21:39.490 warrant disappears. What happens to the data? Our products allow 0:21:39.550 --> 0:21:42.270 you to work in conformity with that. Some people say 0:21:42.310 --> 0:21:46.970 that's still surveillance. You're surveilling someone the courts decide is 0:21:47.010 --> 0:21:50.270 a criminal. I think there you get into where I 0:21:50.310 --> 0:21:53.090 would say, you know, you have people that are so pro, 0:21:53.170 --> 0:21:56.590 you have the right version caricatured where they're like, just 0:21:56.650 --> 0:22:00.700 kill the terrorists and criminals. Okay, that's not a society 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:02.560 most of us want to live in. You have the 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.100 left version that I think just brings the right, which is, no, 0:22:06.260 --> 0:22:10.640 we're not going to surveil known hardened criminals. And where 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:15.139 our product is used most effectively is in Europe on 0:22:15.380 --> 0:22:23.570 criminal gains, professional criminals, meaning they're organized and trained. I 0:22:23.630 --> 0:22:27.070 imagine on border enforcement, because it's all done by professional 0:22:27.109 --> 0:22:30.270 criminals to get people in, and on anti-terror, like on 0:22:30.310 --> 0:22:34.530 terrorism cases. And There you have, in the case of 0:22:34.590 --> 0:22:38.470 domestic intel, you have essentially something like a probable cause 0:22:39.170 --> 0:22:41.740 and a construct that allows you to legally do it. 0:22:42.070 --> 0:22:46.730 So in practice, is a form of law enforcement, I 0:22:46.770 --> 0:22:50.300 think 90% of society supports. And I would say the 10% 0:22:50.300 --> 0:22:53.780 that doesn't is basically going to get us some form 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:56.600 of fascism. If the terrorist attacks in Europe that we 0:22:56.619 --> 0:22:59.580 had prevented had happened, you would have some form of 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:03.140 Far left or far right fascism would amount to basically 0:23:03.180 --> 0:23:05.560 the same thing. You are tracked all the time. 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:08.700 Let me broaden it a bit more philosophical, not just 0:23:08.740 --> 0:23:12.850 to Palantir, but the technology we have today has enormous 0:23:12.930 --> 0:23:17.070 amounts of sort of data gathering capabilities, cameras and visuals 0:23:17.130 --> 0:23:20.790 and facial recognition. It also has now with AI an 0:23:20.869 --> 0:23:25.360 enormous ability to draw things from that data. Do you 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:31.160 think this whole explosion of data collection... combined with AI 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:34.020 in some ways impinges on personal autonomy? 0:23:34.100 --> 0:23:39.460 Well, look, obviously it can and it will if you 0:23:39.740 --> 0:23:43.369 don't push against it. So now we go into AI debate. 0:23:44.470 --> 0:23:48.110 AI is, in my view, best conceived as a raw 0:23:48.150 --> 0:23:52.629 material that can be processed for good or bad, broadly speaking. 0:23:53.090 --> 0:23:56.770 So one of the most negative ways you could harness 0:23:56.810 --> 0:24:04.379 these powers is for surveillance. I would argue that most 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:06.740 of that is going to happen in the commercial context, 0:24:07.450 --> 0:24:09.830 not in the government context, but it could happen in 0:24:09.850 --> 0:24:13.070 the government context. And I'm very in favor of actual, like, 0:24:13.090 --> 0:24:15.270 I think we should restrict some of these technologies. Like, 0:24:15.550 --> 0:24:18.189 for example, if you just take AI that we use 0:24:18.230 --> 0:24:21.560 on the battlefield, we should have legislation that prevents that 0:24:21.980 --> 0:24:25.540 technology from being used domestically. We need it on the battlefield. 0:24:25.600 --> 0:24:28.060 We have no choice because our adversaries are building stuff. 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:29.399 And if we don't build it, we're going to be 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:33.679 just demolished. And I would say if you're anti-war, in 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:36.400