In Alex Karp’s World, Palantir Is the Underdog
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recently, WIRED’s editor at large Steven Levy sat down for an interview with Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp. Karp defended his company’s contracts with clients like ICE and the Israeli government, which have increasingly gathered criticism.
In today’s episode, we dive into the most revealing parts of the interview and break down how Karp’s technostate ideology has rippled across Silicon Valley.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
Follow the UnCanny Valley feed for WIRED’s best and brightest as they provide an insider analysis of the overlap between tech and politics, from the influence of Silicon Valley on the Trump administration to how inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots fanned the fire on social protests.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Caroline. How are you doing? |
| 0:02.7 | Doing all right. Thanks. I'm filling in for Lauren today. I know she's on vacation. I do not know where, but hope she's having a nice time. How are you doing? |
| 0:11.0 | I'm doing well, thanks. She's leaving on a plane right now, hopefully, given the circumstances, her plane actually took off on time. |
| 0:19.0 | Yeah, I guess to be determined on how that goes. |
| 0:22.8 | Well, we also have a special guest with us today, Wired's editor-large, Stephen Levy. |
| 0:27.9 | Hello, Stephen. I'm Michael, and hello, Carolyn. I'm delighted to be back on the show. |
| 0:33.3 | Yes, thanks for joining us again. We have you on this week because you recently sat down with |
| 0:38.3 | Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp, and we're excited to hear more about it on today's show. But if you |
| 0:43.9 | had to summarize the vibe of the conversation that you had with him, how would you summarize it? |
| 0:48.9 | It was a little electric. He was very hyped up. You know, we do these interviews in two parts. First, there's a camera on, |
| 0:57.5 | and we show that segment on YouTube. Listeners can check that out, our wired channel on YouTube now. |
| 1:04.8 | And then we continue talking with the cameras off. And when the cameras were on, he was very hyper |
| 1:10.2 | and talked really fast. And it the cameras were on, he was very hyper and talked really fast, |
| 1:12.8 | and it went almost like a stream of consciousness in some ways. You could see for yourself. |
| 1:18.3 | When the cameras went off, we still had the same kind of conversation, but it was a little less |
| 1:25.2 | hyper. And we butted heads a little. |
| 1:31.9 | We did it in, I'd say, not a rancorous way, |
| 1:34.0 | but he told me afterwards, |
| 1:37.5 | he said, I really like the way you did this because you were honest about it. |
| 1:39.7 | I didn't pretend that we were on the same side politically or anything like that. |
| 1:46.1 | And I really wasn't asking questions to, you know, try to win him over or anything, |
| 1:51.1 | just to learn the answers to the questions that concern me. |
... |
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