Alex Karp’s Fight for the West

There is no more apt, appropriate, perfect place for me to be interviewing Alex Karp, one of the most important builders in America and in the West, than at UATX, a school where students are not just consumers but where you are builders yourselves. Alex Karp, my guest today, is many things. He is a cross-country skier, he is a long-range shooter, he's a Tai Chi expert, and he may be the only person in the world who knows how to wield a sword but doesn't know how to drive. He is also a collector of extremely prestigious degrees;

his PhD thesis was called—and I actually have to read this—"Aggression in the Life World: The Extension of Parson's Concept of Aggression by Describing the Connection between Jargon, Aggression, and Culture." At least that's what I think it was called. I do not speak or write German; he wrote it in German. He's fluent in many languages. Since 2003, Alex has also been the CEO of Palantir, a company that I find very hard to describe in a single sentence, but I'm going to try. Palantir is a software and data analytics company that does defense and intelligence work. If

that sounds a little too neutered for you, think of it as a company that stops terror attacks around the world while also helping sports cars go faster and pharmaceutical companies build better drugs. We're here today not just because of Palantir—although we'll talk a lot about it—but because Alex has just co-written an important new book called "The Technological Republic," which just debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The book offers a vision of how Silicon Valley lost its way and how the future of America in the West hinges on its finding its

way back. [Music] Alex Karp, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, thank you. Um, I hope this is working. I am very honored to be here with you. Tell us about the world you were born into: Jewish father, Black mother, leftist household. Tell us about the Karp family and the way that your family shaped you. Um, well, I think the primary thing in my family—so my family, my mother, father, but also extended family—could be imagined like something from the physics department at Princeton, me, an art colony. My mom is a professional artist,

and my dad is a pediatrician for underserved communities. But the larger family is kind of a caricature of very talented, very high IQ individuals. What is super interesting was that we were pretty— I mean, in retrospect, we didn’t have a lot of money, but we were very focused on intellectual and historical rigor to the point where I almost wanted to vomit all the time. I was interested in some of this, but there was like super overkill. Give me an example of dinner table conversation. Um, well, you know, first of all, there's—my mom has, or you

know, she’s 85 now, but she has encyclopedic knowledge of almost any irrelevant fact you could ever want to know. So like, it might be that people used to call and they're like, “Oh, we're having a tour guide at Binmar; nobody knows who the architect of this building was,” but we knew one person would know, and my mom, of course, would know. And it would be like a 40-minute lecture. And then there probably would be some discussion that was kind of political about—I mean, they—of course, I remember vividly telling my parents, “But Reagan seems like such

a nice person,” and they were like, “Get it wrong.” So, a lot of discussions about ethics, human rights, literature, and to some extent math; my dad's very mathematical. It was exceedingly intellectual, very Jewish—my mom became Jewish, but it wasn’t really—it’s just like everyone there was. And then, um, so high IQ and intellectual, but you were dyslexic forever. Yeah, no. Um, so I—I know. I was in the closet; it’s funny. I should be in the closet about my social life and when I was younger and all sorts of other things. I never was. And, um, but

I was in the closet about being dyslexic until, say, seven or eight years ago. And then I don’t—I just felt tired of being in the closet about it. And, um, and yeah, I was very, very good at certain things and dyslexic at others. There are many different definitions of dyslexia; my current fixation is having an attenuated relationship to broader tones. And, uh, and then I was lucky to be in an environment where they were like, “Hey, there’s something wrong here,” and then I got help, and then I ended up doing very well in lots of

things. But, um, but yeah, I have a very different structure than the rest of my family. They are born to be in a lab or in an art colony, and I—I did very well in academia, but I am actually a builder. And, um, and that attenuation to larger structures means the disadvantage is that when you’re reading and writing, you are bringing extra energy to the game that you wouldn’t have to bring if you were not dyslexic. The advantage I have, if you want to make it, I usually just explain as the attenuation allows you to

be creative. But since we’re in an academic audience, I would say, um, there’s a—there's a... Combination. There's a concept of, uh, hermeneutics, which is just a fancy way of saying, uh, what overlay do you put on the thing that you're interacting with—in this case, a text. The classic discussions, uh, which you may be reading, are important parts of the intellectual Germanic tradition, the hermeneutic tradition. You can think of dyslexia as forced hermeneutic because I have to engage with the text with an interpretive layer that allows me to actually understand and process the text in a

way that you don’t. But then the massive advantage of this is the text actually becomes you; it's like the famous Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic, which I think you should read if you haven’t. Basically, the thing is: a slave becomes the master; the master becomes a slave. You see this in businesses all the time. One of the typical things in a business is that people hire staff instead of equals, and they like that because the staff says yes all the time. The person in charge then gets addicted to the person saying yes all the time. In fact,

the people who are your staff become your master. You see this, but it's much harder to create that dynamic if you're dyslexic. As much as I would like to interact one-to-one with the underlying text, I can't—or with the underlying business, the underlying business plan, or the way you're supposed to build a software company, or the way you're supposed to build a relationship. And this, you know, I was the odd duckling in my family. Although my dad is actually kind of slightly dyslexic and my uncle's slightly dyslexic, it’s not as pronounced; I got the full-on dosage

of having a really hard time reading and writing. Yet you go to college, then you go to Stanford Law School, and then you go and get a PhD at Goethe University, which is famous, of course, for the Frankfurt School, the Marx group of Marxist intellectuals. Yeah, I mean, describe the origin of the Frankfurt School. I’m upping the book behind the book here, so since we're going to get to the book in a second, we don’t have to get to the book now. I wanted to ask you, what do you respect most about Marxism? Well, the

Frankfurt School isn't fake; it's not actually Marxist. The Frankfurt School—I mean, there's a definitional question of who started it, but generally people would say Horkheimer or Adorno, but a lot of people would include Benjamin from others. It's like any school; it's actually elliptical. The modern version of it is actually neo-Kantian and pro-American, as much as you’re allowed to be as a German intellectual. I was particularly interested in the second phase of the Frankfurt School, like Horkheimer and then a very famous thinker, Luhmann, who I don’t know how much detail you want to go into. But

you're at a university, so we don’t need to get deep into that. I was super interested; we want to get to, like, killing terrorists. Great, I'm happy to talk about that, and I'm proud of that. You should know that having pride in occasionally using violence is one of the main things that our universities have screwed up. It is in the service of our nation, and with great thought and applying the ethics of war, which America does, sometimes you have to kill the other side. It’s a fact, and it's not always a bad thing. But okay,

on the Frankfurt School side, it really was, you know, first of all, Benjamin was actually a poet, and I don’t think he was in any... Horkheimer and Adorno were actually closer to Hegelian thought. Their whole idea of a ratcheting bureaucracy taking over our lives might be familiar to us; it’s not. The later people, especially Luhmann, is the most important figure no one reads in German thought. Luhmann was built on Parsons, and Parsons was this incredibly important thinker who got banned because he wasn’t willing to be left-wing, basically. The Parsonian way of looking at the universe

was taken over by Germans and is absolutely essential for any work you do in Germany. Luckily, because of Horkheimer, I knew a lot about Parsons, and that was why I was a super hit in Germany—because I was a technical expert in something very important that no one had ever understood. By the way, this is a lesson for life: if you’re a technical expert in something that is important to somebody, the two people in the world who are most important probably Luhmann... if they were, would be fixated on this one thinker that no one was reading

because it wasn’t politically left enough. Lo and behold, I was the only person they could talk to who knew more about that than they did, which is actually hard with Horkheimer and Luhmann because they just... like, these... another lesson from academia that I would say... like Germany’s... Got a lot of problems, but when I was there, I dealt with the best of the best of the best of the best, and that taught me I was good enough to be a professor at Columbia in a tenure. But I was not going to be them. And by

the way, wait—pause—why you were good enough but you weren't going to be them? You didn't want to. First of all, I didn't. That's the second. I did. I wasn't going to be them because of the dyslexia. Honestly, it was like to be Luhmann, you have to write a book every three months— a world-class book. He had read everything, and the attenuation with the language... it wasn't just a German thing, but I was writing in German, and that was going to create huge problems. Also, I discovered in talking to these people, they're not builders. I mean,

I wouldn’t have been able to explain it this way, but I figured out pretty quickly, huh, they're better at reading and writing, and also, I'm better at building. The thing I thought vividly that I think has turned out to be completely true is, and again, this goes back to point one, the building of the idea is more important than the academic version of the idea. It’s really important to build and win. You could have long discussions about how the world should be structured with Luhmann, Haars, or Gottmann, or if you could meet any incredible thinkers.

But I thought somewhat arrogantly that I had a rare idea, a rare ability to build. God knows why I thought that; there was no evidence. But I did think that, and I thought, screw this, I can build the idea. But how did you realize that in yourself? You know, when I prepared that question, I was not expecting you to go from Adorno to Benjamin. Your mind clearly is so interested in those ideas. Even still now, how do you, given that you had proclivities for that, realize you can go and run one of the most valuable

and mysterious defense companies in the world? How do you go from that? You're also crushing it in commercial, and the most successful... I just want to say he is so modest too, you know. I do get accused, but you know, one of my heroes is Heinrich Heine, and he was, Heine was an incredible poet. There’s no reason to learn German except to read Goethe, and Goethe was essentially like Shakespeare, but he wrote in modern German. We struggle when we read Shakespeare because it’s like being dyslexic; you have to translate it. You don't have the emotional

vibe that you would have if it was modern English. Goethe, it's modern German, but it's Shakespeare. It’s so valuable. I would highly recommend everyone here read Dr. Fuss, and once a year, like, it’s the most therapeutic, most insightful piece of literature. But in any case, my other hero was Heinrich Heine, who was a German Jewish poet, so prominent in German culture that when the Nazis couldn't really get rid of him, there were all these pieces of poetry that they then turned into being anonymous. He wasn't that modest, so whenever I get accused of being immodest,

I think, well, you know, we all have our... and, uh, a classic liberal. By the way, Heinrich Heine was essentially what you could call a classic, you know, modern American liberal. But the academic version of this is having a deep enough understanding of an academic subject, whatever it is. I don't actually think it matters as much what it is; it sharpens your mind to understand what a plausible argument is. You know, in business, there are many different ways of doing business, by the way, and you'll find the king reflects the court. There are some business

leaders here I really admire and look up to. I would never know how to run a business the way they do, and we look like a freak show to any normal business person on the inside, and we kind of are, and it works. But there is a thing of what is the rigor at which the argument is true. One of the things you can think about is Wittgenstein. You know, Wittgenstein wrote his first piece of work and sent it in to his adviser. His adviser said, “The amazing thing about this is there's nothing in this

work that's wrong.” So you can think about that; it took Wittgenstein to write a paper where nothing is wrong. One of the things Academia can help with, of course, is the disaster we have in modern Academia— you are essentially learning a religion. But if you are learning Academia, the rigor at which an article, an argument, or a concept could theoretically be true is a real rigor—not even that you’re right, but that you’re not wrong. I think like, you know, obviously there's a translation function when you know most people at Palantir here are not particularly interested

in having a lecture on Hegel. When they ask me for my feedback—which honestly, they don’t always ask for, and often don’t listen to—like, we have fans here; they all attest to that. We do not have a culture where people follow my orders inherently, but I can mostly convince them. The rigor of "Is this plausibly true?" is a rigor that I got at home because, um, the other thing is it's like interacting and negotiating with two highly intelligent, unusual, and difficult people—my parents—and trying to get my way is really hard and builds up a lot of

skills. This is why I think partner selection, by the way, is crazy important, because you want children, business, or romance, or both, in everything. You need the rigor of how to convince my parents of something, even if I was wrong and they were right, which is very hard. So that sets a standard, but then that standard is high. It's just like convincing a world-class professor—who's not politically biased—of something is actually hard, and it's that rigor that sets the standard for doing important things in any part of life. Here, I completely agree with my parents. It

sounds like I have this thing where I'm interested in things that are true but not plausible, so this is a true but not plausible statement. I really believe doing something important is crucially important for fulfillment. That part is true and plausible, and I don't believe that the money part of it is more valuable; you just need enough money so you don't have to think about money. If you stay off meth and you live below your means, you'll probably have enough money for that. So then, it's like how do I do something important with my life?

The rigor of what it means to be plausibly right, certainly not wrong, is a skill that will save your life—in your career and in your personal life—over and over again. That was an unintentional segue to your book, because what the book is about—I think the premise of the book is about how Silicon Valley is full of some of the brightest, cleverest minds in the world, and they are focused largely on building things to make our lives slightly more luxurious and better—on apps, and social, and things that will be forgotten. They're unmoored from a broader national

project. Tell us a little bit more about that thesis and, more to the point, how that happened. How did Silicon Valley lose its way? The pretext of the book is that Silicon Valley lost its way, and you could look at something like the Manhattan Project—the marriage there between tech and government—as the high-water mark. How did it happen? Then we'll talk about Doge and maybe how Doge is trying to remarry those two things. How did Silicon Valley lose its way and become unmoored from a sense of having a sense of purpose beyond really the market and

beyond these little companies? How did it become untethered from a sense of a broader commitment to America and the West? Well, there's a lot to that question, and I think I don't know exactly where to begin, but I'll start with what it should look like. I think, and again this is where I'm super into academia still, the classic positivist way to look at the world is that you'll have something like the value of an object measured by the market, and the value of the object will correspond; it'll be something called "proto-optimality," which I'm sure you

guys spend time thinking about here. Have you guys heard of that? They love that; this is a conservative school, probably every so. But it's basically that the market is fair, and I believe that. I see an AI riff on this, but I think that true talent—management of talent—so let me do the management of talent for you: How do you avoid becoming a sophist, a successful person who's super unhappy? That should be like, let's assume everyone here can be Su. I think you want to do endeavors that are larger than yourself, that are more meaningful than

yourself, and where that endeavor probably can't be fully monetized. Some people have that in their personal life; some people have that in their professional life. I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that the market is rational, and that the market will price things in terms of their true value. It was better for our society, and arguably better for everyone in the society, to have our most technical people building things that were both good for government and good for society, but it's much more difficult, and it's much more dangerous to build them. Again, I think what's in

the book is that our educational institutions have really done us a disservice. One of the reasons I wanted to come here was... And what is that disservice? Well, the primary disservice was somehow teaching people that it's better to believe in nothing than in something. Whatever that something is, like what you're really learning at an elite school is that there's an idea that the world is already understandable, and you should just follow this preordained arc. That preordained arc has a set of steps where you say you believe in something, but actually, you believe in your self-advancement.

And that, then, I think is what happened in... Silicon Valley, by the way, there's been, again, a testament to America—a huge shift. I think, you know, it's like, and so like, and that's partly because the ideas changed, but quite frankly, somewhat ill-modestly, it's because Palantir did so well, and now other companies are doing very well. People say, "Well, I can do something that is a higher purpose and make money." And so, and that again, I'm not arguing for a non-free enterprise, because like, if you couldn't make money building Palantir or other defense tech startups, the

idea would be an idea they study in some faculty by people who can't get a job. But I think we went way too far on this. You know, we are going to build things in the easiest way possible, and those things are, at the margin, going to be detrimental for our society. But the other way academia really screwed us was, I think, it's very hard to build things if you don't have a hierarchical notion of what's good and bad. Like, why would you build something for the U.S. and our nation if all nations are equal

or our nation is worse than other nations? Why would you take the risk and the effort to build something hard and difficult, you might fail at, that would advance our defense? If you're defending us and the people we're defending ourselves against are as good, as rational, as moral, as likely to behave rationally, as willing to protect the rights of various groups that have received discrimination, why would you do that? The obvious answer is, you would only do that if you're a zealot or insane. That's why the reaction to us in the beginning was so negative,

because we were calling into question the very hierarchy of norms—meaning the non-hierarchy of norms—that powered the decisions people were making. Then you can ask, getting to these, why have we had such a corrosion of legitimacy? One of the things I like to ask people in private rooms who are defending things I don't think are defensible is, I ask these people, "Okay, I'm a kind of reformed old-school liberal progressive who was very unhappy and now had to leave the Democratic Party and whatever, but I asked them in private, name an institution that's run by the things

you believe in that actually works." Any institution that works is more, less put into the system that goes out. And the answer always is basically, "I don't accept your frame," which is, by the way, one of the most disingenuous. The number of times I, because I love to have these fights kind of in private rooms where people can be more honest—I like that—and I run into very famous people, and I ask them about all sorts of things. Like, how can you possibly accept my favorite rant? Obviously, you built a party or an institution. Other universities,

the primary focus of universities in the last 20 years has been anti-discrimination. Good! I'm not in favor of non-meritocratic discrimination, nor is anyone I've ever met in favor of discrimination. Okay, well if you're so not in favor of discrimination, how can you accept discrimination against the people that have the longest history of discrimination in the history of humanity? The answer is, "I don't accept your frame." If I asked, "How can you possibly tacitly defend Hamas?" The response again is, "I don't accept your frame." How could you explain that? I've quoted, "Judge them by the fruits

they bear." How can you explain your ideology where there's not a single institution that you can say, in private—no one's putting you on the spot in public—that you believe is actually working by the very basic standard that you put in? You put in two units out; you get two and a half. You put in two units; you get out more than two units. The answer is, "I don't accept your frame." Now what's fascinating to me—and is in the book, is in most cases—it's because they're doing this thing that you will encounter everywhere in your life,

and something that academia, and I think actually my book, can help protect against, which is they are actually a product of some ideology. They become a product of some ideology that presupposes a universalistic, undiscussable presupposition behind which there's a grift. That preproposition, they cannot, they will not allow—it becomes religious in the sense that you cannot problematize it in academic language, and not academic language would be to discuss it. It creates a system where the dysfunction of the institution does not matter because the dysfunction cannot be discussed outside the frame which they defined, which cannot be

called into question. The whole institution is sinking, and you still can't mention it. This is, I think, what classic education prevents. It prevents you from becoming a product. One thing that you've talked about a lot is this idea of, for lack of a better term, wokeness as a kind of—You've called it a pagan religion. Why do you think it has been so seductive to people, and why has it succeeded stealthily, and then, I think, in full blossom over at least the past two decades, at conquering pretty much all of academia, pretty much all of the

legacy press? We could go on. and on and on, why has it been so effective if it's so morally corrupt? I mean, just today, like as the Buis children were being buried with their mother in Israel, at Barnard College, you know, one of the most expensive schools, one of the most elite schools in the country, you had students taking over a building, basically, you know, covered in cheering for Hamas, would be a polite way to put it. How has that happened? Well, there's the Pagan religion, which I would call the—so why is it? You could

say, well, Pagan religion, the religious side, and I'm pro—it’s not like we have Judaism, Christianity, Islam, which are ancient religions; this is a thin new ideology that probably, I don’t think it’s going to survive. But it is religious in the technical sense that you can't verify the assumptions, because asking if the assumptions are right is heresy, and so that's the religious side. I think the Pagan side of the religion really comes out when they’re praying to their high god of anti-Semitism. And then you have a separate issue of why this movement is pretty fixated on

violating its core principle of anti-discrimination by discriminating against Jewish people—the oldest minority in the history, the consistent minority in the history of human civilization. And I think the reason why it's particularly aggressive on those issues is that it is violative of the core premise of the religious side of the equation that you would have a minority that is discriminated against and successful, and that's pretty enraging. So, I also think obviously the Jewish community stands in for larger, you know, Western culture, or participants in Western culture, particularly people who would be viewed as West, i.e., white

males are bad. So, but it's like a hyper version of that. And then there's something I think quite subtle that, you know, I talked about more in my dissertation than I do in the book, which is people assume that a contradiction will render an ideology ineffectual. But I think in a political context, contradictions can be quite charismatic. And so the obvious contradiction of this turns it into a feeding frenzy of, you know, the ideology can’t make sense, and therefore it’s sensible, and therefore we can, you know, burn effigies. I mean the pure aesthetics of it—it’s

like if you had—I mean, I’m very pro-First Amendment, so I’m in favor of annoying, inappropriate speech right up to the standard as elucidated by the Supreme Court. So, danger, direct threatening—but if you just like turned off the volume and watched what’s happening at these conferences or on these campuses, you would think it’s a reaction of the KKK. Like, everyone’s masked; they’re burning things; it looks kind of like the KKK. But, you know, it’s like—so even that should be an aesthetic. But it’s in that inversion that I think the movement becomes quite charismatic. And so, it

is, and one of the most interesting things about that movement is a charismatic thin Pagan religion can bring together Hamas and the feminist department in university. You know, it’s like these are people that don’t work well together, you know? But there’s no actual—the contradiction is charismatic. Now, on the more positive side for the rest of us, we’re like, this is nuts, and we’re getting out and we’re going to start fighting. And I think I would say what’s very— you know, the positive side of this is, I think a lot of people, I’d include myself, were

like, “Okay, guys, you know, you’re doing your—this is dangerous, and we’re going to have to fight back.” Let’s talk a little bit about politics broadly, and then more specifically. The first page of your book has this incredible quote I had never read by Michael Sandel; I think he’s a professor at Harvard. It says, “Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread.” And I think if there’s a line—I’ll just repeat it: “Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread.” I think if there’s a line that summarizes the giant sort of big picture politics of the West

right now, it’s that. It’s basically the center-left, the center, even the center-right in some cases, is too afraid to touch topics, let’s say, like Islam, immigration, borders. And so what happens is that right—genuinely right-wing and sometimes nationalist populist right-wing movements are rising to power. Do you see that trend abating? Is that sort of the world that we are going to be living in for the next decades of our lives? What did you have in mind when you put that at the front of the book? Well, I mean, one of the things I’m actually proud about

is the book was written a year ago, and you know, it’s like I’ve had to reread it. It honestly feels like it was written last week; it feels very fresh. And I’m happy, and by the way, Nick did a phenomenal job. And I would say, in complete candor, all 95% plus of the ideas are mine; 90% of the writing is his, and the writing is phenomenal. And there’s a complexity in there because I think one of the things he really did very well was take more kind of dyslexic, crazy batshit stuff combined with like Germanic

education and put it in a form where the ideas are intelligible, and that took 10 years of me screaming at him. But then the book went really quickly. "Um, uh, there are a lot of basic— and I mean this like foreign to how you would teach, uh, academia in this country. Uh, it's very Germanic under the hood, um, and but in a completely fluent way. And so, um, I think like if you look at what's happening in Germany, you have historically— in Germany, you had really three big parties. I won't go into complete detail here,

but you had essentially a center-right party, which would be equivalent to basically old school Republicans; you have the Social Democrats, which would be, you know, equivalent to Democrats if Democrats were focused on the working class; um, and you have, uh, essentially what they would call classic liberals. I think there’s some real subtlety; there’s a small party called the FDP, but— and then more recently, out of this '68 kind of revolution in Germany and in France, you had the Green Party, which was started in Frankfurt. Um, and you have now a couple of parties: the very

left-wing party— I won't go into all the details, but it's a super interesting history. You more recently have the Alternative für Deutschland, which is the solidly right party. But it's actually different than how— but, um, the thing that's very relevant to education is about 30% of Germans, um, probably would welcome more migration, but only about 15% of those people— it's like issue number one, and 100% of those people vote for the Green Party. And so, the Green Party has a rational reason; their constituents believe in this. Basically, no one else does. And it's like the

classically left-wing party— most of their constituents are against it; everyone in the conservative party is, and everyone, obviously, voting for the right-wing party is, and even on the new left-wing party, most of them— this is not issue one. And what's relevant for this book and for your life is the Greens have set up a situation where, because they say you could never coalesce with the far-right party, as a matter of practice, they control 100% of migration politics in Germany. So, you must never allow someone to control what your policy is based on who would support

it, and like this is a classic thought trap. They completely have controlled, and in my view, uh, created a situation that is crazy dangerous because every time, in Germany, there's a terror attack— in the morning, in the evening, the Greens are out protesting against the far right. It literally happens— completely crazy. And there are a lot of terror attacks, and then there’s like, you know, and not all, but most of those terror attacks are from people, uh, from Syria and Afghanistan. And there’s a whole swath of crime— like sexual crime— that didn’t exist basically when

I lived in Germany and does exist now. Um, and obviously, that doesn’t mean that everybody from any group is ipso facto guilty, but the fact is you obviously should have a different migration policy. And what has happened over and over and over in Western countries is you get— I cannot touch this idea; if this person touched it, it literally becomes taboo. And then the people who convince you of that control society in a way that is destructive and corrosive for the society. Um, how's that functioning here with Trump? Well, I mean, I think on the

Democratic side, which I’m more of an expert in historically, it’s there—the idea of stopping mass migration, illegal migration, is a completely progressive idea. I grew up in a 100% progressive family. We didn’t— I didn’t— I don't think I really met anyone conservative, classically defined, until Jo Lale or Peter Thiel. Well, until I— yeah, much later in my life. And I— Peter and I spent a lot of time fighting about issues, and it’s been a very productive relationship over a very long time. And, um, also, you know, one of the, you know, crazy important thinkers, uh,

and builders, uh, in the world. And, um, it— uh, the— but, um, the core problem in the Democratic Party is that if President Trump says he’s against migration, uh, like you— I’m sure you realize the economic effects of illegal migration are disastrous for poor people in this country— disastrous. Bernie Sanders used to talk about this; this was the classically progressive position. And by the way, it’s particularly bad for anybody who is less likely to be hired for whatever reason. And so, classic progressives, uh, when I grew up, were the most against illegal migration of any

group. And I remember at my dinner table, like, you know, the evil Chamber of Commerce— one of the ways they were evil is they were in favor of this; they were in favor of tacit illegal migration to America, and that was going to be bad for workers. That was a card-carrying talking point at every progressive table when I grew up. And the idea that you would now— again, the Democratic Party has constituents that will disproportionately suffer under unlimited migration. This country is not in favor of illegal migration; it is actually in favor of legal migration.

And so, you literally are committing suicide because you can’t acknowledge that someone has done a better job of adapting an actually progressive issue. And this happens— like, you know, there are many reasons why the Democratic Party and progressive movements are going to really struggle in the West over the next, I would guess, ten years. And one of the reasons, actually, in my view, is— like it’s not in the book— is whatever you want to call AI." It simplifies it—something works, okay? So, like, I have my version; it would be large language models and my product,

okay? But something it's like, people assume that the pendulum is going to swing back. If you—I know smart German thinkers and smart Democrats—and when I talk to them in private, they all say the same thing: it's really true that the pendulum is going to swing back. I don't think the pendulum is going to swing back, and partly because they think the pendulum's going to swing back, they're making no radical change. Just like, you know, one of the blessings of building Palantir is I've interacted with thousands of companies—thousands—and every clandestine military service in the West, basically,

in some form and mostly directly. And you know, people always think you'll meet an institution that is massively underperforming, and the person in charge will be like, “Tomorrow will be better.” That's how you know it's going out of business. And it's like, I don't believe the pendulum's going to swing back. I think that part of the reason it is unlikely to swing back is because the progressive left has ceded all rational issues to other parties, right and far right, and these issues are legitimate. At the very least, they cannot be banned from the public square—like,

you know, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, immigration, when do we go to war, does a government work, do the inputs into the government, are they stronger? You know, is it a functioning institution? Does anyone believe it's a functioning institution? Which is also sometimes different. And then the position of the progressive person should be—and historically was—these institutions really have to function if you want more money for the government or anything. Let's just say you have a business. I Business Leaders here, somebody wants money for the business, and they want a lot of money. What is

the first thing you're going to make sure is true? The business works—they have a product, they have good people, the people are motivated, they're honest, they are dedicated. If you want a society where the institutions get better, and maybe they need more resources, the first thing you have to do is make sure the institutions actually work. And there's no difference here between a government or a non-government or a military institution, except for the military, in my view, is the most valuable thing we can have, and it really has to work. And so, now, what—why are

the old school people running these parties unlikely to change? Because they've somehow either been productized in their thinking. Like, that's true, but I could never admit it's true, which is a big deal. Like, yes, it's true—we have a problem with immigration and terrorism. Yes, it's true we have a problem with illegal migration. Yes, it's true we have a problem where one party seems to be comfortable with discrimination, but you're not allowed to admit it. So that's half the problem. The other half of the problem is a lot of these parties do—the core people who actually

wake up in the morning and actually are passionate have ideas that the rest of us think are bonkers crazy. And I don't mean like crazy, like I'm viewed; I mean just crazy. Like, Germany should open its border again. Germany should invite everyone to bring their relatives. America should not do anything about migration. We shouldn't talk about, like, what does it mean to have meritocracy? We shouldn't talk about what does it mean to have institutions—intellectual life that are no longer intellectual, that are actually run by people who should be intellects but are just basically high priests

and priestesses of a pagan religion that nobody wants and no one voted for. And then the very simple question would be: well, if you are engaged in a religious endeavor—which I support that you have a right to do—why should I pay for it? Why is society paying for these elite institutions? And how much should we pay, right? Like, what? Okay, Doge: yay or nay? Oh yeah, I'm very—I mean, I'm positive! Very positive! Why hasn't—I mean, I guess they've only been working for like 30-some days. But do you think that they'll go after the kind? Like,

I think if people saw normal Americans that their tax dollars were going to fund, like queer dance therapy at Columbia—which is probably a real class at my alma mater—they would be horrified by that. Well, you know, the primary reason I'm supportive of—by the way, there's one of the great things about Doge is now companies are saying, “Well, you know, how do I get the waste, fraud, and abuse?” Already become a verb! Like, literally, I got an email saying, “We need to Doge this.” So, there's the obvious fraud, waste, and abuse, and then there's the “Okay,

does it work? How well does it work? What value am I getting from it?” The central issue again, and that unifies all these things, is you cannot have—you cannot expect society to support something that is not supportable. It's not supportable to have government institutions wasting huge sums of money. And then you have—so the waste, then you have things that you might not want to call waste, but are clearly things that none of us want to pay for with our own money. And it is our money! And then you have a question of how—what are the

unit economics of what you're doing? Let me give a slightly different riff. On this, uh, one of the most important insights I had when I was in Germany is that I, you know, I don't really talked about one, but I haven't really—I went around and talked to older Germans. Okay, well, what were you thinking, you know? What happened? Of course, in Frankfurt, um, all the old Germans were like, "Oh, none of us actually were involved in that. That was a complete lie." So it was like an enlighten. So, of course, nobody was pro-Nazi, right? So,

but then I know a family in a small village that were super nice to me and, like, took care of me and gave me a coat—like, really decent, wonderful, old-school family. And I talked to the father, and I was like, I asked him, and he was like, "Look, we were all Nazis, and the only person who wasn't was my dad." And I could not figure out why he wasn't until years later. And then I talked to him about, like, why did you become—and these people were like, became Democrats and built the German society. In my

estimation, they were in no way, you know, National Socialists anymore. And what became very, very clear in the conversations was they moved to become Democrats or, you know, Republicans, pro-Democrat democracy, because what they saw was, you know, judge democracy by the fruits it bears. And we make the mistake, at our peril in the West, to forget if we do not deliver fruits to our people in the form of a better, fairer, healthier society, we will lose people. The thing about American democracy that is incredibly unique is most of us, unlike any other society, were born

into this and have one essential frame. So, for us, the danger is not becoming too believing in it or having a thin belief in it, which I think is what you are going to see if the West doesn't get its act together in, like, Europe. For us, the central danger is, um, you know, how do we stop the threat from universities that really are not believers in our principles as a nation from corroding those principles to the point where we are then not an exceedingly rare country? Where, in fact, we do not have—we are not

judging the value of democracy purely based on the fruits it bears. And then, as a kind of a dialectic, we bear, we profit more from those fruits by having a stronger, better, more resilient, decent society that can do many things at once. And it's like—and I like, in building the business and in writing this book and in my personal views, those interactions, where I saw that the institution must bear fruits, completely changed how I thought. Because what I had learned at elite universities in an elite family was that people were purely, uh, living as an

extension of values; those values would never be called into question. And I think, again, we have to be, you know—one of the reasons I want to speak here is I believe you are builders of this and do not underestimate the impact you can actually have if you, you know, in the battle of ideas. We were talking about this earlier—the reason it's crucial in this country is because, to the extent we lose, like what I would say, a deep belief in the First Amendment, an understanding of the necessity of the Second Amendment, an understanding of a

right of privacy— a logical addendum of the idea of fairness. One of the crazy things about America is it's the only country right now with a vibrant—the delta between America's tech system and every other is huge. And why is that? Well, we organize around ideas we believe in: fairness and meritocracy. Um, we're willing to supplement, to suppress our ego in the service of a larger concept. We're not overly political, actually, in building things, and we get to keep the fruits of our labor in a way that in many other countries you couldn't. And this is

totally unique. And, uh, but because it's unique, uh, you know, we may not defend it as much as we should because we just assume it's normal. It is not in any way normal. And I spent a lot of my life in a culture that has produced incredible good and bad things in Germany. And like what? But even compared to Germany, this is something that is not replicable, and we should be willing to fight for it. I would say, last—and maybe want to ask a couple questions before I run out of energy—but last but not least,

what is really important is whatever people are very different in how they fight. Um, some people in this room I admire greatly because they've fought quietly. I won't out any of them, but they've gone into places I couldn't have gone, you know, after October 7th. Uh, and some people, like me, are willing to just, you know, throw a couple punches. And I think you have to be honest about where you are in the fighting chain, but I do think a willingness to fight is very important. And, um, you know, there's unjustified and non-justified violence; there's

justified and unjustified action in public. And people have different proclivities, but, you know, being willing to especially fight on the side of, like, thoughtful liberty is much more valuable—especially since most people don't want to do it—than one would imagine. And it really does reshape how... People see things if you win. Okay, let's take some questions from you guys. I hope there's a—okay, perfect. I know you. Yeah, we met at UATX Live. Please go ahead, and guys, try and keep the questions short so that we can get to as many of you as possible. I want

to go back to your terrorist killing comment. You talked about how you should have pride in an occasional use of violence. At the University of Austin, we're having a very heated but lively debate about whether we should be an open or closed society. There are illiberal influences that always want to come into these sorts of places that don't really have a stasis yet. So I'm wondering, what violence, if any, should we use to keep a liberal university liberal? Well, you know, H had this famous thing where he said it was like the pins and needles

that you’re trying to, they were confiscating intellectual works and the Prussian army, and he was like, “You can't confiscate the pins and needles of my sharp mind.” So I would encourage you, university, to use the pins and needles of your sharp mind to win intellectual battles on an intellectual playing field. I don’t think any other form of violence besides your intellect is warranted, and I completely celebrate and welcome people with views that I find somewhat apparent. But the right response, the intellectual response, is: “These are the reasons I think you are wrong.” And by the

way, in the battle to win that, you know, really using your sharp mind to humiliate their intellect, their purpose, their position, I think that's totally kosher and welcomed. But nothing beyond that. Now, I would say that people who want to move to other terrains of debate—meaning other forms of coercion—that's just not what a university is about. When I say using violence, I mean, you know, America and our allies taking out people that are planning not to meet us on the battle intellectual playing field but on the plane of violence. There, I'm quite merciless; I think

we should rise early and kill. But in universities and in broader life, we want to think about the magic and important nature of our First Amendment, which you can celebrate by being in dialogue with people you find offensive. Thank you. All right, so, Mr. Karp, in your opinion, how should we actually help the working class of the United States? Well, that was a Trump impression, huh? I’m a senator from Vermont. Oh, um, well, you know, I do think having regulated—the first thing is you have to force the problem to be a problem by closing and

stopping illegal migration to this country. The second, you know, like, that we make these things into secrets, but it’s like your income potential will be directly correlated within a couple generations, so it's not immediate to your educational level, basically. So, like, making sure that we get early and effective education to people—well, that’s kind of obvious. And I think the other obvious thing is, you really have to stop violence in these neighborhoods; like, no one is going to teach somebody in a violent neighborhood. And I do think, you know, unfortunately, like the version of wokeness where

people in charge of these violent neighborhoods espouse ideologies that do not stop violence will never stop violence, are basically keeping a permanent underclass. And I would say the other thing I think that we could adopt from Germany: Germany has three different kinds of high schools. So you have an academic high school, and you have two kinds of vocational high schools. Those vocational high schools produce really highly technical workers, and those workers, by the way, like at Airbus where we are—they're a very big user here. A lot of the people go to vocational schools. I think

we could learn a lot from Germany, Switzerland, and other countries where you train people, and you could do training, especially with AI and other things. You could lift people pretty high. Last, not least, while many of you may opt to imbibe and occasionally do drugs—it’s, you know, I had a lot of fun. I was not that into heavy drugs, but in Germany, I had a lot of fun; I won't go into it, but that’s important. You know, like intergenerational drug use has a huge impact on performance. Intergenerational prison attendance has a huge impact on performance.

I think the true and deeply politically incorrect thing about this is, the best thing you could do in this country to help people in the deep underclass—meaning the chances that they’ll get out of it are low—is expose them to religion. I suspect creating a low-violence, high-religion environment where you begin to meet people at the educational level they’re actually at and raise slowly could have a real impact over time combined with reducing immigration so that people just can't hire people you know, from other sources. I think you might see real impact there. Thank you for your

support; I was really—this is really for... Mr. Carr, I was really glad to hear you talk about Pleaser. Earlier, you mentioned him a lot in your dissertation, especially on Lutheranism and how it created a culture of interiority in Germany. I was wondering—when you mentioned Calvinism, you mentioned wokeness here as being like other unstated, unpraised assumptions that define American society. Are there any other creeds or specific beliefs that you think fulfill a similar function, either to Lutheranism or to the focus on interiority in American society? Well, there's a lot to your question. Plnar was what's called

a phenomenological anthropologist, which is a fancy way of saying he believed that the structures inherent between human beings would affect human relations. That may not seem very important—kind of in the jargony way I just expressed it—but it’s probably the biggest influence on political theory, and that and other Haiger Plnar... um, hurl… um, so I won’t… I’ll leave that for now. But Plnar wrote this incredible book that may not be translated, called *The Late Nation*, which explains a lot of how America is organized and what makes America successful from his perspective. It’s a phenomenal book. The

Calvinism comment is from, you know, obviously Weber, which I hope people are reading—*The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism*, which is... you know, his idea was that the anti-Marxist idea of capital accumulation was that Calvinists believe that success was an indication that God favored you, and therefore focused on building enterprise and industry. I actually think Silicon Valley is one—I think Silicon Valley was deeply Calvinist. America is a deeply Calvinist society, meaning doing something important is good, as opposed to what you will find in the Lutheran critique, which is kind of the opposite. I think

the thing I don’t talk enough about in the book is just the American concept of fairness as a kind of civil religious concept. I think one of the reasons why we can push more responsibility to the edge and do less reg-goj stuff is that, you know, most Americans are deeply fair. A lot of what we discuss about discrimination and other things really would fall under the rubric of "That’s not fair." We think of that as not an important concept, but I think it adjudicates a ton of things in our society that otherwise are hard to

adjudicate. If I were writing an addendum to this book, I would probably try to work more on those kinds of things and then the role of inequity with AI. Thank you, Dr. In your book, you argue that late capitalism, detached from existential threat, divides the mandate for corporations between profit and the national interest. Given that, does that suggest that state capitalism is a feasible next phase of our economy? If so, how would the ends of that economy be determined? In the book, you do mention geopolitical dominance as an end. If that is the final end,

then why do you discount culture and cultural hegemony as valid goals for the state? You guys have multi-pronged questions; I don’t know how I’m going to get through all of them. But, um, we’re going to do a few more. Yeah, I’m not in favor of state-controlled capitalism, mainly because I don’t think it will work. So, like, I think it’s a matter of theory, but as a matter of practice… I mean, the book has a lot of contradictions in it, and they’re purposely supposed to be there. The way we run Palantir is like—we have tech implementation

devs and people who actually interact with normal humans completely separate. In most companies, you wouldn’t do that, but at Palantir, that’s how we roll, and it’s worked for us. I tend to think having people focused on national interest or higher things leads to better companies, which leads to companies that are more valuable, even if they’re structurally undervalued. Like Palantir—we were viewed as worthless for, you know, 18 years. How much are you worth today? I don’t know either, actually, but we’re worth a lot, and it’s the beginning of our journey. I believe that for lots of

reasons. But it’s always like I tell people this—it sounds like propaganda, but we are very well-positioned for what we’re doing. People... it’s like no one believes us, and then three years later, they’re like, "Oh man, that was right!" But in any case, state capitalism—I don’t know. I push back on that. I don’t believe that all cultures are equal. I think the book actually, if you were to give this book to the philosophy department, political theory, or literature department of any elite school in this country, they would burn it. They’ll burn it for a lot of

reasons, but the primary reason they will burn it is I am not saying all cultures are equal. In fact, I’m saying this nation is incredibly special, and we should not view it as equal; we should view it as superior. Um, there was a third question—yes, it was about discounting culture and tools for culture, such as the social media apps that you criticize. Yeah, or omit mentioning, like TikTok in the book. Well, I mean, I’m not super pro dedicating our best talent in the world to those things. I think... It was a huge mistake, and I

wish we lived in a world where fewer smart people did that. But do you think that they have a role to play in the narrative battle, in the battle for ideas? Well, I mean, they do. Yes. And the thing about those companies that's super interesting—again, not in the book—but you know, when you... I survived in academia; I don't know how I'm going to get through all these questions. I may not be able to get through all of them. So, um, but I survived in academia at the Sigman Foy Institute in Frankfurt. Probably one of the

crazy things about my life is who pretends now they never knew me or didn't work with me. It's like... so, it's like you would think German academia would be like, “Yeah, we finally got someone with a salary.” But it's like I've been disappeared. It's like the artist that formerly worked at this building; they blow up the building. So, I survived in Germany by getting a job at the Sigman Foy Institute, where I learned a lot from talking to analysts. But in any case, the basis of analytics... of spying. But in any case, do you have

a primary and secondary processing system? Basically, the primary processing system is subconscious, and the secondary one is conscious. You can argue back and forth; I was like the local immigrant. I had to write every week. I wrote up Freud, and that's how I survived. Every week was Freud and this, Freud and the vacuum cleaner, Freud and this. So, I read a lot of Freud, and Freud is a phenomenal writer. Like, one of the things is whether you have been trained never to read him or trained to not like him, the guy was one of the

true artists in writing the German language. So, Freud and Eichmann were incredible masters of German. So, in any case, the social media thing—the reason it's so impactful in my view—is they connect right to your primary subconscious and alter how you see things. They're very, very effective at this, and this is why, yeah, I've historically been, you know, very publicly skeptical of allowing TikTok to control the algorithm. Because, you know, the classic way of looking at this is you're having a dialogue with them that's rational, but what's actually happening is they're controlling your subconscious. And so,

you know... and that's what they're built to do. And then, of course, they have a huge incentive to do this because you're just like click, click, click, click, click. We’ve got to get through a couple more. Okay, let's do three more. I’ll tell you what: I will come back, and we can do a more seminar-like academic thing, and then whoever wants, we can start with just questions because that's probably more valuable than me just going off on my own. I had a ton of questions on Israel, Ukraine, China... If you have questions on any of

those things, please feel free. But whatever you're thinking in our Roman history class—which Professor Reinhardt, a little different, little off-topic—but we went over Pius's concept of cyclical history, in that regimes rise and fall in a cyclical manner. He details how democracies tend to fall when its constituents become entitled to their liberties, succumb to demagogues and factions, and make the democratic process unable to proceed. I tend to find anecdotally this to be the case in that first-generation immigrants tend to have a higher proclivity to civic participation because they recognize American liberties. Do you think that natural-born

citizenship is ultimately detrimental to maintaining the American Republic? A very provocative question, and let me give you a provocative answer: No. Now, the classic way you're supposed to answer this question is, like, "Because immigrants are so important," and like half of immigrants, like me, coming back, and lots of immigrants... You know, people forget the obvious: people who come here are often truly unusual in their society and therefore create unusual results. And I mean, I don't have to list the results, but obviously the Manhattan Project, Einstein, many of the tech leaders of this nation. And actually,

when you go below the hood, many of the people that build tech companies are, particularly people who are children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants. I must say, my least politically incorrect idea is that I believe internalizing the ideals of America is often a many-generation project. I think the people, you know, building the company and having the grammatical structure upon which you can build it are two different things. Just look at the First and Second Amendments. If you like understanding those really in your gut, that is a many, many, many generation thing for most populations.

I have a great reverence for people in this culture who have been here for hundreds of years. I live in the backwoods of New Hampshire, and I think these concepts take a long time to internalize and believe. So, I think that's the contradiction: yeah, sure, a lot of the builders in... This country comes from other countries, and I support that. I like that, and I have a history of essentially coming back. My dad's family, you know, were in, um, you know, it's essentially Alon am Manzo, Southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lanstein for a thousand years. Um,

but yeah, no, I take the other side of that, but it's a great question. Thank you! I have a question for both of you. In short, there was a trend in England where the printing press gave everyone the ability to speak freely. The crown abused that to censor its citizens and to control the narratives. Then, after King Charles was beheaded, we had free speech again, and then Parliament censored again. So, free speech censorship by the crown, free speech censorship by Parliament, and now we have had a censorship issue in the last 20-ish years. We have

ex and other dissidents who are helping to stop this issue. What does the next wave of censorship look like, and how do we stop it? Well, do you want to answer this? No? I mean, look, I really believe in the First Amendment because these things are, like, again, one of the things that, you know, Freud famously said was, you know, if humans weren't inherently violent, we wouldn't have all these laws to prevent violence. So, inherently, societies will try to restrict information because there's power, money, and proclivities and views. I think the most important thing we

can do in this culture, maybe bar none, is to affirm unpleasant, somewhat idiotic, stupid, and often heinous speech. And again, I would just say, well, why is this institution important? The institution you're at, with people giving me great questions, it's because you embody free speech and the First Amendment. There is a reason why it is the First Amendment. It's like people forget the banality of it. It's not the Fifth Amendment; it's not the Tenth Amendment; it is the very First Amendment of our Constitution. And why is that? Because humans inherently would like to restrict it.

And we all find something offensive or stupid or heinous or discriminatory. That's the speech we have to protect. I'll just say that it will come because power is corrupting, and it's very hard to throw the ring into the mountain. Um, I think one thing I'm noticing, 30 days into the Trump administration, obviously a lot of exciting things are happening. A lot of, certainly from a journalistic perspective, a lot of things to cover. It's been like a nonstop fire hose. I think that, and I don't think it'll surprise anyone in this room who's on X or

any of these other platforms, that the self-censorship at this moment – like, the moment is rewarding the strongest version of the argument. In other words, the moment and the algorithm rewards the most extreme expression of things. What I'm noticing is a lot of the most thoughtful people that I know—people who are not in the extreme, not politically pin downable—are sort of receding. This is not about state censorship; it’s about self-censorship or pulling back. I'm noticing that trend. Um, it's one of the reasons that we built the Free Press: to sort of capture those voices. Um,

but I see that; I don't see that dissipating anytime soon. Well, I'm very supportive of Free Press and of you, but I would say then fight—then don't dissipate. I agree with that. No, I know, I'm just—yeah, but I strongly agree with that. It's a really, like, politically and culturally, it is a moment where the extreme voices are winning the day. How do you create a version of the argument that is nuanced, complicated, thoughtful, and makes room for other people that is as attractive, sexy, and viral? That's a question that I'm thinking about a tremendous amount.

Um, you go to any podcast company, and they will say to you straight up, center-right does not sell; far-right sells. And you see that with everything happening. So I think that’s sort of where my mind is, is I'm thinking about building new media into this environment. Excellent! I’d like to thank you both for coming out today. My question is, as also a dyslexic—um, I have it rather severely—and I see it more as a strength than a weakness, but, um, as a successful dyslexic, what advice do you wish you would have heard, or what would you

like to—what do you wish you would have known sooner? Um, oh, it’s, uh, H. Well, you do have to... um, I would not have believed it. Um, so I'm not sure if I had gotten the advice, I would have really listened, and I might have thought it’s just someone saying this. And, uh, I would have cut off my or your arms to get rid of the dyslexia, and I might still actually, because I do see it as like a limiting factor for intellectual endeavors. And like, I just you know, I read a lot in grad

school. I don’t read as much as I used to. I find I read probably more than most people running a business, but not anything like what I would probably otherwise. Like, I acquire my information in lots of ways. I actually give the same advice to everyone internally. And I always make sure there's one person who worked at Palantir, probably telling me this, but I tell people internally, and everyone who wants to hear my words of great wisdom: you think at Palantir everyone's dyslexic. I am the only person who knows it, and it's like... and then

people are like, "What do you mean?" I tell people, "If you think that you're equal in—and if you think you're intelligent in all areas, it's only because in most areas you haven't met someone who's really intelligent, and you're just deluding yourself." When you enter essentially a world where in whatever endeavor you're going, you're not going to do well if the person sitting to your left and right is much, much better than you at something. The advantage that dyslexics have—I mean, it's a broad term, but a very baseline advantage is: there are certain things you should

not be doing for a living. Most people don't realize this, like the number of times I've had to explain to a software engineer, a dev, or a delta that there are two kinds. We have, you know, maybe you should not be involved in... like, you know, they'll leave and be like, "I want to be a business executive starting a business." I'm like, "You—you don’t talk to humans!" They’re like, "Well, I can learn that!" It's literally... it's like, "Yes, you can learn to be half stupid at that," but you're living in a country where there are

savants at this. Or, you know, like your lawyers—like, "Oh no, no, I can do the math for you." It's like, "No, you can't." It's like, "Well, I did some math." I'm like, "Yeah, I know that." Or, you know, writing—a founder, like, you know... I mean, we don’t really hire. We have a team of people—it’s very small—that actually write. Writing really well is important to us. So we have Z. Misus here, who wrote the book. We have Jordan and Sam, and these are like very, very strong writers. Let me give you a different version, and this

is just purely... I don’t think it’s business, but I think this is business things I know something about—so call it business, academia, shooting. There’s something called a blue note. I don’t know if you know, but jazz has a blue note. It’s a note that very few people can hear and almost no one can play. Every world-class jazz musician can hear and play it. The people who produce jazz can hear it but can’t play it. Basically, to succeed in a profession at a very high level, you will have to either be able to hear or play

the blue note. And so the primary thing—and that’s just a blessed position. Very few people can hear it or play it. But then there are people who can hear it and play it, and they’re like, "Oh, I think I’ll play the green note." This happens all the time. I’ve been involved in... I’ve co-built Palantir and I’ve been involved in 20 years of innumerable businesses. So prima facie, a dyslexic has an advantage over a lot of people because you know where the blue note could be; you certainly know where it isn’t, right? And you would think,

"Oh yeah, it’s a basic thing," but it’s not something the others do. Now a slight other thing comes in where I think I have an unusual advantage. I process sparse and non-existent data; my family can retain the data longer and with a larger amount, but I can process and analyze data that exists—or facts that exist, or facts that don't exist—much faster than they can, and they’re crazy talented. If you talk to people at Palantir, you can talk to them, and they’ll be like, "That’s some crazy, but he’s usually right." Isn’t that what you would say?

Yeah, basically. Thank you, yeah. And so, Alex Karp, thank you all so much for being here. I’ve interviewed a lot of people on this show; you are totally singular. And the technological republic—I assume based on those questions that a lot of you have already read the book in great detail, but for those who haven’t, let’s keep it on the New York Times bestseller list for a second week in a row. Alex, thank you so much. [Music] [Applause]