Top Tech CEO Alex Karp: Wokeness Is ‘The Central Risk’ To U.S., ‘A Real Danger,’ ‘A Thin Pagan Religion’

 The CEO of Palantir — a multi-billion dollar company that specializes in building software platforms for big data analytics — warned this week that wokeness is a serious threat to the U.S. and to civilization as a whole.

CEO Alex Karp made the remarks during an earnings call for the period ending March 31, 2024, in which he revealed that the company has seen strong growth.

Karp, who is a major supporter of the U.S. military and takes strong positions on geopolitical issues, said that one of the reasons that the company has been so successful is that it builds solutions not only for commercial clients but government clients.

“There are lots of questions about why we are so active in defending the values of the West, that our belief that the West is a superior way to live, and our ways of organizing around that are the reason why our products are transformative; the reason why we have the best people in the world; the reason why a Palantir degree, as it were, is much more valuable than an Ivy League degree because the Ivy Leagues even, you know, embraced the thin and new woke religion, otherwise, viewed as an intellectual cause, but in fact is a way of organizing things so that the greatest institutions of our time disappear and turn into discriminatory dysfunction,” he said.

“Palantir is a counter-example, and I’m super proud of the results. We are going to continue to execute, especially in the U.S.,” he added.

Karp then addressed criticism that the company has faced from some insiders who did not agree with their decision to be so outspoke about being pro-West.

He said those that had a problem were shown the door and the company has continued its work with the U.S. military, Department of Homeland Security, Special Forces, and U.S. Intelligence agencies. He also said that the company faced more backlash for selling its software to Israel than it did for selling to Ukraine.

“I think the central risk to Palantir and America and the world is a regressive way of thinking that is corrupting and corroding our institutions that calls itself ‘progressive,’ but actually — and is called ‘woke,’ but is actually a form of a thin pagan religion,” he said. “That is a real danger to our society. And it is a real danger to Palantir if we don’t discuss these things.”

 

“The reason we have by far the best product offering in the world is because we have by far the best alignment around how to build software, what it means to build software, full alignment with our customers, a view that some — the Western way of living is superior and, therefore, it should be supported by the best products,” he continued. “People at this table have been in the trenches for over a decade each.”