Michael Steinberger

Thiel interviews a couple of people for the CEO position, but then he and the other people involved in founding Palantir realized Karp is probably the right guy for the job.

No, he's not.

I mean, in some ways, he's a very unlikely choice, and he admitted as much to me.

He's got no background in business, no training in computer science, and of course he's coming from a left-wing household, and now he's going to be working for a company that's at the nexus of technology in the national security state.

He is, on paper, a very unlikely fit, and yet...

He is very passionate.

I mean, the moment he gets involved, he is very passionate about what Palantir is doing.

Well, Palantir is this rare bird, and it's a very ideological company.

It doesn't exist just to help the U.S.

government fight the war on terrorism, but it exists more broadly to help defend the West.

That is their view, and he's passionate about this, defending the West, but also defending what he sees as core Western values, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, what we know as civil liberties.

He believed that Palantir could develop technology that would enable the government to find the bad guys without becoming a massive dragnet pulling in lots of innocent Americans.

And he's drawn to Palantir's mission for very personal reasons, reasons that are tied to his own identity.

Yeah, because... He understands from a young age, he says, that he had, in his view, some strikes against him.

And it's a sense of vulnerability he carries into adulthood and brings with him to Palantir.

And in the aftermath of 9-11, there was obviously a lot of concern that there were going to be many more terrorist attacks.

And Karp's view is that when people feel threatened, whether because of crime or because of terrorism, they inevitably turn to the far right.

And he wants to prevent that because liberal democracy, robust protection of minority rights, these are things that matter greatly to him personally.

And so he sees Palantir as a way of possibly preventing that political outcome.

Exactly.