Meet Alex Karp: The ‘batshit-crazy’ philosopher behind surveillance firm Palantir

Oh, and he hates Silicon Valley and its culture so much that he played a key role in relocating Palantir to Denver.

A square peg in a round hole

Michael Steinberger’s The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. (Source: amzon.in)

Karp is in the front and centre of Michael Steinberger’s The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. It is a tale as compelling as its main character.

On the surface, the frizzy-haired Karp seems ill-suited for his role as Super Tech Bro. He is dyslexic, has mixed parentage (partly black) and comes from a household that is known for being left wing. What’s more, he hardly had any interest in technology, and actually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and then studied law at Stanford Law School.

It was at Stanford that he met Peter Thiel. Both become firm friends, often debating political issues. The two joined forces to form Palantir, “a start-up that was building software to fight terrorism,” in 2004. Named after the seeing stones in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Palantir specialised in software that could go through vast amounts of data and spot relationships, connections and trends.

From fighting COVID to (perhaps) killing Bin Laden

Financed in part by the CIA’s capital venture arm In-Q-Tel, Palantir played a vital role in the US’ response to 9/11, and its software was so effective that the Mossad also started using it. It is said, though not confirmed, that Palantir’s solutions had a major role to play in the killing of Osama Bin Laden. It grew by leaps and bounds and played a massive role in analysing vast amounts of disparate data during the COVID crisis and during the US’ hurried departure from Afghanistan.

It is not all roses, though. The company was implicated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where it was alleged that Facebook had tried to influence users to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential elections. In more recent times, Palantir has also been accused of helping the new Trump administration in its controversial immigration crackdown. For all his success, Karp is largely ignored by his own college because of some of Palantir’s associations.

The Philosopher in Silicon Valley covers all this and more, and is brilliantly narrated by Steinberger, who interviewed Karp several times for the book. Interestingly, Karp picked Steinberger to write the book because not only was Steinberger a graduate from the same college – although they had never met – but also because he was fed up with Palantir being known as Peter Thiel’s company.

Insanely committed, and running on fear

While Steinberger does cover the rise of Palantir, this is really a book about Karp. And the picture that emerges is of a person whose dedication is near fanatical, whether it is to a cause or a company. Karp tells Steinberg that his biggest fear is fascism, and his commitment to Palantir stems to a large degree from this.

Steinberg says that in 2019, Karp “unambiguously believed that defending liberal democracy was synonymous with defending the West, and for him, Palantir’s mission was personal: Palantir was making the world safer for Alex Karp.” Incidentally, saving the West was referred to internally at Palantir as “saving the Shire,” another reference to Tolkien’s work, and yes, the employees of the company are often referred to as ‘Hobbits.’

It was this sense of mission, coupled with an incredible level of dedication, that played a huge role in Palantir’s success – “The only time I am not thinking about Palantir is when I am swimming, practicing Qigong or during sexual activity,” Karp claimed in a 2013 interview with Forbes.

Although initially ignored by many venture capitalists, Karp’s persistence ultimately yielded rich dividends for Palantir. “He pitched Palantir as if his life depended on it. In his mind, it did” Steinberg writes.

This near-fanatical dedication has also percolated into Palantir’s culture, which can be said to be driven by fear. “To an uncanny degree, the company was a reflection of him: of his habits and quirks, of the experiences that shaped him, and above all, of his bleak world view and the anxieties that weighed on him.” In shades of Andy Grove’s “Only the paranoid survive,” Karp tells Steinberger that his sense of foreboding actually “propels a lot of decisions for this company.” It fosters a culture that is very driven and yet loaded with stress..

Loves cycling, is ‘geographically monogamous’

The Philosopher in Silicon Valley gives us an insight into one of tech’s sharpest and yet most eccentric minds. There is plenty of detail here about Karp, from his obsession with running, Tai-chi, cycling and skiing, to his love for reading, and to his attachment to New England.

While we are told about his bodyguards, houses and personal staff, there is not much talk of his private life. Mind you, he seems to have it very carefully arranged. He is single, and has no children but is in “long-term, concurrent relationships with two women, an arrangement that worked in part because he was “geographically monogamous.” Both women are incidentally “age-appropriate.”

He lives in a relatively sparsely furnished house and spends most of his time travelling for Palantir. Before COVID 19, he spent almost three hundred days a year on the road!

Steinberg also tries to give us an idea of how Karp thinks, although given the sheer complexity of it, this is no easy task. The Palantir CEO clearly has a tendency of contradicting himself. For all his fear of fascism, he has defended Elon Musk and defended DOGE as a revolution in which some people get their heads cut off! He also switched from opposing to supporting Trump.

His recent public utterances have led to some ex-Palantir employees writing a letter (titled “The Scouring of the Shire” – strong is the LOTR force in this organisation) in which they accused the company of stepping away from its principle of protecting democracy.

At slightly over 300 pages, The Philosopher in the Valley is written in a manner that makes it almost thriller-like in place. There is not much tech jargon to trip one up as Steinberger sticks to the tale rather than the tech in it.

All of which make it one of the absorbing corporate profiles we have read for a while, going up alongside Stephen Witt’s absorbing and award-winning biography of NVIDIA CEO Hensen Huang, The Thinking Machine. Pretty much a must-read for all those interested not just in technology and corporate culture, but also in people. They don’t make them as “batshit-crazy” as the boss of Palantir.

The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State
Michael Steinberger
Simon & Schuster
304 pp
Rs 2,299