OUR DAILY THREAD: Palantirs Of A Clown
Harping On Karp
THE SET-UP: “Not only was the patriotism right, the patriotism will make you rich.”
That’s Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s response when asked how politics have “changed in Silicon Valley” and, in particular, the “defense tech sector.” He was being interviewed at the Yahoo Finance Invest Conference on November 13, 2025 … ostensibly to opine on the future of A.I. blah-blah-blah … but, it seems, he was intent on clarifying Palantir’s totally-not-Neocon project to ensure the US dominates the world:
Pure ideas don’t change the world. I’ll tell you what changes the world. Pure ideas backed by the military, in this case, hopefully the US. Doesn’t mean you have to use the military. If you’re strong enough, like this is where I’m like Palantir is not a Neocon project. Our project is to make America so strong, we never fight. That’s different than so almost strong enough, so we always fight.
It seems that Karp’s totally-not-Neocon project is make sure that, thanks to Palantir’s unique ability to surveil threats and identify targets, the awesome lethality of the Military-Technological Complex will preemptively “dissuade” anyone who might consider challenging US power. That, in turn, will mean the US doesn’t have to “export our values abroad” … it can simply dictate the terms of any debate by being so dominant on the battlefield that it essentially can make the world an endless series of offers it simply cannot refuse:
So your ideas get listened to if you are dominant on the battlefield and hopefully so dominant you don’t have to listen, use it, but if you do use it, people are like, yeah, I’m not screwing with those.
I do love the Freudian slip there … “hopefully so dominant you don’t have to listen” kinda says it all because the kind of all-encompassing, globe-spanning lethality he is actually talking about absolutely means the wielder of said power doesn’t have to listen to a smaller country that objects anything the US sees fit to do.
Here’s a newsflash for Karp: that’s not all that different from The Project for a New American Century. I know people like to hang “nation building” on the Neocons … but that wasn’t the point of what they were doing. The point was to exert a level of control over the world’s energy supply that would guarantee the 21st Century was an American Century. If he thinks the Neocons actually cared about the future of the Iraqi or Afghan people, he’s probably a little too drunk on his own Kool-Aid to see that they were not building nations. They were building out the empire.
But despite a clear military advantage largely rooted in superior technology, Iraqis and Afghans ignored the “don’t screw with us” message and decided they don’t want to be dominated by the US. People throughout history have not liked being dominated by a superior military power and they usually fight back. And they often do it despite their opponent’s technological advantage. It’s called asymmetrical warfare and it’s fought with low-tech solutions like punji sticks and IEDs. And, it seems, the more the superior power imposes its technological advantage on a population, the harder their resistance becomes. Lethality breeds defiance.
Karp should know this firsthand. Palantir is believed to be instrumental in developing and managing the surveillance-rich, AI-driven targeting systems that laid waste to the Gaza Strip and killed eight civilians for every two Hamas fighters. One such system in the “Lavender” targeting ecosphere was called “Where’s Daddy?” because it identified a potential Hamas fighter but refrained from ordering the drone or airstrike until the individual made it to their confirmed home … where their family lived. So, when a Palestinian child asked “where’s daddy?” … her question was ultimately answered by a missile that wiped out her entire family.
That’s the kind of “idea imposition” Karp is selling.
And he wants to keep on selling it … just like he’s selling Silicon Valley on a future Military-Technological Complex that differs little from the behemoth Eisenhower warned of back in 1961. The race to AI dominance is not dissimilar from the nuclear arms race … or any arms race throughout history. Perhaps the difference Karp sees is his company’s leading role in data mining and surveillance systems. And that’s true … Palantir has had access to government databases and is working hand-in-glove with ICE and CPB and the Department of Homeland Security to bring a less lethal version of their Gaza tech to bear on Trump’s immigrant purge. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out their technology is being used in Trump’s war on speedboats.
Essentially, his company is incubating a kinetic corollary to the Chinese Social Credit system. That’s what they rolled out for the Israelis … an AI-powered rating system that hunted down anyone with a suspected link to Hamas and converted them … along with anyone who happened to be in the same apartment building … into a confirmed kill.
Karp is unfazed by error rates or criticism because it isn’t just about money for him … he thinks he’s in a struggle to save Western Civilization from Woke barbarian hordes. To save it, he and all the other AI pitchmen have attached themselves to Trump like lampreys on shark.
The ultimate irony is that he thinks lethal technology will end the struggle and make the US a winner in perpetuity … all thanks to the superior execution of superior ideas that necessarily come from the “meritocratic” apotheosis that is the United States. Let those ideas flourish as lethal tech on the battlefield and voila! Game over. We win.
That sure sounds a helluva lot like the paradigmatic hubris that led then-Neocon Francis Fukuyama to announce “the end of history” after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Game over, thought Fukuyama. We won, he declared. And he’s been repented ever since he saw history keep on going in Iraq. Karp, on the other hand, is doomed to be the “last man” to realize he’s just another Neocon shilling for a perpetual war-footing that, in a ghoulish coincidence, could make him and his shareholders a lot of money. - jp
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Really good writing! I hope you sent it to Alex Karp. Amazing that the life's work of someone so rich and powerful and potentially useful to humankind instead consists of using all of his wit and energy to degrade the human condition.