This Washington Post article by Maureen Dowd tells the fascinating story of Alex Karp, the founder and leader of Palantir Technologies. It is applying high tech methods of intelligence gathering and analysis to US national security. Karp tells Dowd, ““I’m a Jewish, racially ambiguous dyslexic, so I can say anything.” Dowd continues:
He’s not a household name, and yet Mr. Karp is at the vanguard of what Mark Milley, the retired general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called “the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.” In this new world, unorthodox Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Mr. Karp and Elon Musk are woven into the fabric of America’s national security.
Palantir was founded in 2003 by a gang of five, including Karp and his old Stanford Law School classmate Peter Thiel (now the company’s chairman). It was backed, in part, by nearly $2 million from In-Q-Tel, the C.I.A.’s venture capital arm.
In the wake of 9/11, the C.I.A. bet on Palantir’s maw gobbling up data and auguring where the next terrorist attacks would come from. Palantir uses multiple databases to find the bad guy, even, as Mr. Karp put it, “if the bad guy actually works for you.”
“We have a consistently pro-Western view that the West has a superior way of living and organizing itself, especially if we live up to our aspirations,” Mr. Karp said. “It’s interesting how radical that is, considering it’s not, in my view, that radical.”
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