Alex Karp Goes to War

Summary

WIRED’s Steven Levy sits down with Palantir CEO Alex Karp to probe the company’s work for governments, its ethical boundaries, and Karp’s own worldview. Karp defends Palantir’s contracts with US agencies (including intelligence and ICE), its role in Ukraine and Israel, and insists the company’s software is designed to be hard to misuse. He positions Palantir as explicitly pro-Western and critical of mainstream Silicon Valley, and describes modern warfare as an orchestration of software, satellites and AI that changes how conflict is fought. The interview mixes policy, personality and philosophy: Karp’s background, his views on immigration, his relationship to Trump, and his insistence that he intervenes when product use crosses ethical lines.

Key Points

Palantir builds operational-intelligence software used by defence and intelligence agencies, and also sells to commercial customers.
Karp publicly defends Palantir’s work with ICE and foreign militaries while insisting the company has a Code of Conduct and intervenes when norms are breached.
He argues many tech firms lack patriotism; his book, The Technological Republic, urges a pro-Western, government-capable approach to technology.
On Ukraine, Karp describes future battlefields as jammed, software-driven environments where device orchestration, satellites and LLMs matter most.
Karp says Palantir’s tools are difficult to abuse, and claims he has pulled work when it risked civil-rights violations—though he provides limited public detail.
He expresses immigration scepticism and distinguishes support for Israel as a nation from agreement with every Israeli policy decision.
Karp has a pragmatic posture towards Trump, praising some policies, and frames Palantir’s culture as outsider, meritocratic and rigorous.

Context and relevance

This interview matters because it shows how a major private tech firm frames its role at the intersection of AI, defence and state power. Palantir is shaping real-world outcomes: surveillance and deportation operations, battlefield decision-making in Ukraine, and technology sold to allied militaries. Karp’s comments reveal tensions we’re already wrestling with—how to govern powerful AI-enabled tools, where companies draw ethical lines, and how private platforms become instruments of national strategy. The piece ties into broader trends: militarisation of AI, the rise of private defence contractors, and debates over corporate responsibility in geopolitics.

Why should I read this?

Because Alex Karp is one of the people actually deciding how private AI tools end up on battlefields and at border-control desks. If you care about surveillance, defence tech, Israel/Palestine, Trump-era policy or tech ethics, this interview cuts straight to the awkward, messy bits. I skimmed the long bits so you don’t have to — read the parts that matter or the whole thing if you want the quotes.

Author style

Punchy. Karp speaks bluntly and the interview pulls few punches back. If you follow how private tech becomes public power, this is high-value reading — it exposes where Palantir claims to draw ethical lines and where it won’t, and that has direct consequences for democracy and conflict.

Source

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/alex-karp-goes-to-war-palantir-big-interview/