From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat. And this is Interesting Times.

Few companies in Silicon Valley these days

inspire quite as much paranoia as Palantir.

Co-founded by Peter Thiel in the aftermath of 9-11,

it now bridges the worlds of digital tech, AI, and the defense industry, promising to make the world much more transparent to its clients,

whether the Pentagon or the Israeli military or immigration and customs enforcement.

In the eyes of its critics, Palantir is building a more efficient surveillance state

for the age of incipient authoritarianism.

In its own eyes, it's doing essential patriotic work.

You'll hear that argument from my guest this week,

the company's chief technology officer,

who was also recently commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the

U.S. Army Reserves.

Shamsankar, welcome to interesting times.

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me, Ross.

So we're going to talk about a lot of things.

We're going to talk about your biography and background, how you came to be an officer in the U.S. military, the future of technology and warfare.

But we have to start with a very, very simple question.

What is it that Palantir does? Great question. Thank you. I spent a long time crafting

it. Most important question, yeah. Let's start just at a foundational level. We're a software

company, and we build software that allows you to manage your data to make better decisions.

...