Alex Karp on Palantir, the AI Arms Race, and American Domination | a16z

We were the freak show and we spent 20 years for this moment.

We're doing it. We're doing it. And I'm sure you're enjoying this as much as I am.

I just got three things to say. God bless our troops. God bless America and gentlemen, start your engines.

We are the power that actually has the decisive vote and that is with military superiority. If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white collar job, you're the most important thing Palantir is doing is to make sure that American war fighters are much more likely to come home. If we are going to outperform the rest of the world, our single advantage is...

Do this like that.

No, I think we all got the reference.

Well, first of all, I'm delighted to be on stage with you and for many of you in this audience, by the way, I've been talking so much I'm kind of losing my voice, but I would have probably canceled on anyone but you.

I love to cancel, by the way, for those of you, because it's my favorite thing. I actually am an introvert. Any excuse to cancel, as Palantirians know.

You could define our wonderful and great country as a country where everyone who was divergent in ideology, thought, religion or quite frankly neurologically came to this country to have a better place where they could express their freedom and had the right to express what they thought. And there's a deep link between expressing what you think publicly and privately, first and fourth amendment, and being able to think it, and if that doesn't work, being able to defend it with the second amendment. And last but not least, our founders did not structure these rights the way they are in say where I lived for a lot of my life in Germany, as rights granted to us by other bureaucrats. They're given to us. They're inalienable from a higher being.

And I would just say before I get into how the world's changed, we have American war fighters on the battlefield, willing to sacrifice their lives. Some of whom have sacrificed their lives. They have families and kids. Kids and families don't know if their loved ones are coming home. And I know in this room, but we should publicly and privately support them. And people who are not aware or somehow so spoiled that they don't realize what these people do for us, we should publicly humiliate them. And everyone has a role in that, especially those of us who are riding a crest of intergenerational cultural intellectual courage advantage, which it is to be an American nowadays, should obviously not forget the war fighters who are disproportionately from the middle of our country and disproportionately have gotten screwed.

And I'm proud, very proud, that at Palantir, we get arrows and people, I mean half the people attacking us, it'd be good if they spent two minutes on Wikipedia at least learning the talking points they're regurgitating. But there's some legitimate criticisms of any company. But at the end of the day, the fact is the most important thing Palantir is doing, and other people in this room are doing, and people like you and other people adjacent or ancillary to building more lethal and deadly weapons, is to make sure that American war fighters are much more likely to come home. And quite frankly, the people who are trying to harm them know that they won't be coming home. And that's the way you stop people from attacking us in my opinion.

And then on the leading up to what's going on. But I think there are probably people in this room who are wildly supportive and there are people who aren't. It is hard to deny that America is exerting a deterrent capability that was eviscerated. You can like or not like that, that's different than ignoring we now have a deterrent capability that no other country appears to have. And that is for lots of reasons. And obviously the war fighter, people organized the war fighter, the generals, the leadership, the president. But one advantage that often gets overlooked, for reasons that make no sense, is war fighting is technology. You know, I spent half my life in Germany for familiar reasons and then I wrote my PhD there. And then the rise of America after World War II, the reason America was able to win World War II were technological advantages. And if you look what happened in Operation Midnight Hammer, what happened in Venezuela, what's so far happening in Iran, you see one society just totally dominating. That's our society.

Now, you could get into, I'm always in fights with my intellectual friends about, they're like, 'But wouldn't it be better to have a law-based system where everyone is equal?' Yeah, sure, in theory. But in this world, it's us or China or Russia.

And I don't know how you guys feel about those decisions, but I think we're doing, I literally believe we're doing the work of a higher purpose by making sure, and not just for America, but for the whole world, that we are the power that actually has the decisive vote. And there is only one way to do that and that is with military superiority. And when I say military superiority, I don't mean that we're arguing on a PowerPoint. It means but America. So now you get to what has technology done? Now again, I think whenever people like me are talking about this, you can't say enough that it's the war fighter and their courage and I'm not doing that. I'm sitting here and we have Palantirians all over, I'm talking to them constantly. So they're doing, they're putting themselves in harm's way and I am kind of but not directly. It's mostly all the people who yell at me and I guess maybe there are some people want to shoot at me. But if you look at the rise of, in the lifetime of Palantir, there's been the rise of software which essentially meant your software company that is supplying a steak dinner that's obviously parasitic is not cutting it. Those companies are being eviscerated. The rise of defense tech and now you have a hybrid software, hardware, AI where you really need all three.

Interestingly from an investment perspective, I would say the last company standing before we all have to salute the overlord of the LLM will be Palantir. But it's mainly...

Mainly because it's the specificity of and the security and the orchestration. But none of that has to make any sense to anyone in this room. I'll tell you what it makes a lot of sense to our adversaries right now. How is America doing this? Now again it's specialized ways. It's 25, 30 years of experience in fighting. It's meritocracy. The Department of War is the most meritocratic environment. It integrated in Korea before our society did. It is the most popular institution and most revered institution and probably the only institution in America that is actually revered by the American people across every demographic. And it's revered by the American people across every demographic precisely because it's been meritocratic. If you were a black American, you got your break in America by going to the military. If you wanted to be treated fairly and you were from a group that you felt that, every demographic has somebody who is in the military whose life was changed and it did something noble and wonderful for America. They also have the experience of coming home and America not sticking up for them. We should change that.

Now you get to Silicon Valley. My one message for, and again I don't, I'm without getting in specific people or because I'm like, if Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white collar job, meaning primarily democratic shaped people whom I grew up with, highly educated people who went to elite schools or went to schools that are almost elite who vote for one party, and you're going to screw the military. If you don't think that's going to lead to nationalization of our technology, you're f***ed. And you might be particularly f***ed because you have a 160 IQ, but this is where that path is going.

Like you cannot have technologies that simultaneously take away everyone's job and then be perceived. Again, there's a lot of subtlety here behind the curtain. I've been heavily involved in that subtlety. What can be where it can be deployed, what can be deployed, there's a difference between US military and surveillance. And despite what everyone thinks, Palantir is the anti-surveillance company. I know your person online thinks that's not true but every technical expert does so I end up in every conversation that I don't want to be in. But the danger for our industry is that America, you get a famous horseshoe effect where there's only one thing people agree on and that's that this is not paying the bills and people and our industry should be nationalized. And so the societal benefit that is going on in Iran besides the fact that I think I suspect the Iranian people feel like finally someone's on my side and it wasn't the Berkeley faculty that was supposed to like me. It's a big lesson for you.

So, and but then as America, we and people who are prominent in the tech industry, we have to find a way to make sure that we're not just popular in Palo Alto.

Well, I mean, there's so first of all, by the way, I just want to push back slightly. They do think it's zero sum. They think it's zero sum versus each other. So like they absolutely are fighting. There will be, it's my own rhetoric if I happen to think it's true. It's going to be chips, ontology, and I suspect in the end one, one and a half provider. So they pretend they don't think it's zero sum but then ask them how they feel about their competitor. So it's very, very, I mean these people are fighting very, very hard for the dominant position. So like what they don't understand is in the world it's zero sum. But I actually think the primary issue in the valley is it's going to be zero sum vis-a-vis when America decides that, look, I interact with a lot of political figures, I have a lot of respect I think in some, when politicians figure out this is the one winning issue, it is going to be zero sum. It's going to be your money and your company being zero sum nationalized. So that's the part they don't understand.

Helping people understand that, you know, either we set the rules or de facto, I'm much more on America should be strong so that we don't have to worry about the enemies than our enemies are evil kind of thing. So I'm not super neocon. It seems to be very hard in this culture as someone who's lived abroad a lot of my life. It's very hard in this culture to explain to people that we're in a competitive environment because things here are so good. They don't understand how different it will be and how much we will change and how much the pressure will be on America, not just legally, but militarily and culturally if we fall behind. And one of the things that again, I personally think the better way to get people to change is to...

You know the funny thing about those of us who've spent most of our life abroad like in Germany, which a phenomenal culture, we have a much better sense of how fragile this experiment is. America, it could go wrong. And it will go wrong if all wealth is going to a small number of people and those people do not appear to be on side. Now that perception is obviously a caricature. It is a caricature in the sense this is new technology and you're not going to be able to use the same kind of framework and you're going to need people who appreciate how it's different. And there are real questions about fourth amendment protections like our right to privacy. What is privacy in a world where you could impute what someone's doing at home through technology? How do you protect our right to have our own thoughts, our own ideas, our own practices at home, our own health records? Those are real issues when the technology can also help you to be healthier, live longer, have a higher economic status potentially, certainly if you're a vocational worker. But so those issues have to be unpacked. And where Silicon Valley is right is you're going to need a forum to talk about that that doesn't pretend large language models is the same thing as machine learning is the same thing as software is the same thing as a bullet. They're not.

But de facto, I very much believe as a critique of the economic elite especially in the technical area, they reify, meaning they turn it into a thing, our rights. But those rights, when I was in Germany, I spent a lot of time, I did a PhD, but there were a lot of older Germans and I would spend time with them in the countryside, in the city. Of course they didn't know anybody who was a Nazi in the countryside, they're like, 'We were all Nazis.' So I would ask them, but one of the more fascinating conversations is why they became Democrats, or not like left right, but capital D. And it was always because it worked. And then the unwinding of it, that we don't ask if it unwinds, our, it will, we will not be protected. And the dialogue we have currently is not acknowledging what's going to happen politically, what is happening politically. The wealth tax is a derivative of this because everyone knows the wealth tax isn't going to help the poor. It's just going to f*** the rich and that's enough to get it done.

Anybody here like that? And you guys are doing well.

The first thing, part of what I'm doing and part of the reason, besides your charm and importance, part of the reason I want to be here is I want my reputation in the valley, you always have reputations, my reputation, which I'm not even saying the reputation is true. But in my case, I'm viewed as the batshit crazy guy who is often telling you something you don't want to hear and you may not like but is probably right.