Poor people keep paying the price for being wrong while powerful leaders collect huge rewards. Executives avoid consequences for failures that would bring severe penalties for ordinary Americans.
"No one believes the institutions are credible … and I struggle to believe they're credible too," Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE:PLTR) CEO Alex Karp recently said at The New York Times DealBook Summit. He added, "We at Palantir absorb the full risk of our failure," describing what he sees as a widening gap between public accountability and executive outcomes.
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Karp said "poor people" are "the only people who pay the price for being wrong in this culture," referencing soldiers and people living in low-income neighborhoods. He said mistakes in those environments can lead to prison or death.
Karp Says Institutional Trust Is Weakening
Karp said institutional trust declines when executives make "stupid decisions," seek federal help and later receive large bonuses. He said these actions have raised doubts about how major institutions operate. At the summit, he also discussed Palantir's long-term strategy, saying decisions that were once widely viewed as "stupid" in the tech sector are now being adopted by competing firms.
According to Karp, companies that dismissed Palantir's approach "went broke, are going out of business or now have to copy us." He described how views of the company's direction have shifted as earlier decisions align more closely with current industry trends.
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Government Support And Executive Compensation
"Somehow your salary should be capped to the point where you make a lot of money for the American people," Karp told DealBook Summit host Andrew Ross Sorkin. He added that executives who request government assistance should not later receive substantial compensation packages. Karp said companies that approach the White House for help after missteps should accept the full consequences of their decisions.
He repeated that Palantir "absorbs the full risk of our failure," describing it as central to how the company manages internal decisions. He continued to highlight the disparity he sees in the consequences faced by poor people compared with company leaders.
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Karp Addresses Palantir's Government Work
Karp addressed questions at the summit about Palantir's work with U.S. agencies and international partners. He discussed the company's work with the Trump administration and with the Israeli government during national-security operations. Additionally, he denied that Palantir builds surveillance tools for the U.S. government.
Karp said on the company's Q3 earnings call last month that Palantir was "completely anti-woke," arguing that Palantir had "stood up for the American warfighter." He also criticized what he described as uneven policy responses to national-security threats, including fentanyl deaths, saying policymakers would act more aggressively if victims came from elite institutions.
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