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War Dot Com

·28 min·7 clips

Lizzie O'Leary opens by setting up a conversation with journalist Jacob Silverman about Palantir CEO Alex Karp. They start from Karp's New York Times DealBook Summit interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Karp comes off as constantly moving, frenetic, and braggadocious. The show uses that performance as a way into the larger Palantir story. Silverman walks through the company's bets on government work, public markets, enterprise, large data sets, and AI. A lot of those choices once looked foolish, and now they are harder to dismiss. That tension sits at the center of the segment. Palantir is presented as a company that already touches everyday life through hospitals and health care systems as well as government. It is also working with ICE, and the show keeps coming back to that point. Silverman notes that the company has faced dissent and protest over those contracts. He also says Palantir has tended to move with the politics of the administrations of the time. In that sense, the company looks less like an outlier than a very aggressive adapter. Karp himself is the other subject. He is described as endlessly fascinating, but also as someone who helps cultivate that fascination. The phrase 'fluorescent praying mantis' is held up as an example of his odd, literary self-mythology. The show asks how much of that is authentic and how much is performance. It also turns to his silver hair and the story behind it. Karp's black mother explains part of the look. His mixed-race background and his Jewish identity are described as important to him. Silverman says those parts of his identity mattered to him from a young age and stayed central through high school and college. The result is a portrait of a man, and a company, that invite skepticism for different reasons.

As heard by us

A skeptical look at Palantir's reach, with Karp's performance in the background.

What Next uses Alex Karp's frenetic DealBook appearance to get at a harder question: what Palantir actually does, who ends up using it, and why it still leaves people uneasy.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If Karp's public persona puzzles you, this is the clearest way in.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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