The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State

by Michael Steinberger

An acclaimed New York Times Magazine writer brings us into the world of the controversial technology firm Palantir and its very colorful and outspoken CEO, Alex Karp, tracing the ascent of Big Data, the rise of surveillance technology, and the shifting global balance of power in the 21st century.

Palantir builds data integration its technology ingests vast quantities of information and quickly identifies patterns, trends, and connections that might elude the human eye. Founded in 2003 to help the US government in the war on terrorism—an early investor was the CIA—Palantir is now a $400 billion global colossus whose software is used by major intelligence services (including the Mossad), the US military, dozens of federal agencies, and corporate giants like Airbus and BP. From AI to counterterrorism to climate change to immigration to financial fraud to the future of warfare, the company is at the nexus of the most critical issues of the twenty-first century.

Its CEO, Alex Karp, is a distinctive figure on the global business scene. A biracial Jew who is also severely dyslexic, Karp has built Palantir into a tech giant despite having no background in either business or computer science. Instead, he’s a trained philosopher who has become known for his strongly held views on a range of issues and for his willingness to grapple with the moral and ethical implications of Palantir’s work. Those questions have taken on added urgency during the Trump era, which has also brought attention to the political activism of Karp’s close friend and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel.

In The Philosopher in the Valley, journalist Michael Steinberger explores the world of Alex Karp, Palantir, and the future that they are leading us toward. It is an urgent and illuminating work about one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive and powerful companies, whose technology is at the leading edge of the surveillance state.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Business, Technology, Politics, Science, Audiobook

Audible Audio

Published November 4, 2025

Reviews

[George Finkbohner · Rating 2 out of 5]

wasted opportunity

The book is supposed to be a biography of Karp, but the author’s politics gets in the way and is distracting and annoying. Look, I voted democrat for 30 years, so what!! The author presents Karp and Palanter through a philosophical and judgmental left wing progressive moral prism. What does the reader learn from this book? Answer: The author hates trump, loathes and detests him. Truly good biographers may reveal their personal political opinions from time to time in a biography ; great biographers almost never do. The author here is neither. So, this was a disappointing read.

[James D Hayden · Rating 1 out of 5]

the author tainted a great biography

Alex Karp is Fascinating, but the author and all of his wokeness, destroyed the great insights about Alex. I wanted to read a book about the life of Alex Karp, not to hear the opinions of an author riddled with TDS.

[taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book. Read paragraphs any empty moment I had. Thus the rating. Perhaps I read a different book than some of the reviewers. I did not find the book biased by author's politcal point of view. But of course that could be me. I read Karp's book but found this much more informative on the man himself.

One cannot escape the irony of his background, 1/2 black, Jewish, no formal education in management or technology, a self-proclaimed progressive who for most of his adult life had no respect for Trump. Yet here he is, a successful CEO of perhaps the world leading intelligence gathering companies, where his biggest customers are military and police, and various other government organizations.

His ideology seems to the opposite of Thiel's even as Karp began to be a Trump supporter, Thiel no longer supported the President, and had some fairly harsh words for Trump.
His job as CEO of a public company is to raise profits and stock price. You can check both of those boxes. IPO of around $10, and is currently $167.

Certainly the company has made many ethical/moral mistakes, and perhaps Karp's admiration of Trump is nothing more than a ploy to gain more government contracts, but equally true is that the software they distribute have saved 1000s of American lives.

They are at the forefront of the conflict between personal privacy vs global security. An easy target for many groups.

The trend continues. I have not yet met a CEO of a public company I would like to have dinner with. Great read, expertly written. A few points off for not interviewing Karp and Thiel at the same time and asking the tough questions with both in the room.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karp is a complex character and mostly controversial where the latter seems to be a bit intentional. Like Hollywood celebrities, he likes putting on a show at Davos or Washington or wherever he gets the mic so that Palantir makes the headlines and then of course its stock gets the spike. I guess, as the maxim goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Despite this facade Karp seems to like his solitude with his twenty some properties mostly close to skiing pistes where he enjoys in a Palantarian's wording of geographically monogamous hermit life. Karp's political/ philosophical evolution from his far-left progressive roots to hardcore libertarian or too far-right follows the Musk line, therefore Steinberger's narrative reads very much like Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk biography. The overlap is not just common cofounders and friends like Peter Thiel but also Musk/Karp's huge egos with almost God-complex to save the humanity (Musk's Mars mission) or in case of Karp saving the Western World (with controlled violence). Karp blames the wokeism which he sees as a threat to meritocracy for his political shift from his socialist progressive upbringing to being staunch supporter of Trump on immigration and "deterrent capacity of the US". Maybe his 2002 dissertation "Aggression in der Lebenswelt" explains his philosophical stance but as a CEO his realpolitik is wielding the political wind like other tech bros.

[anika · Rating 2 out of 5]

it's absolutely hilarious that the negative reviews of this book come from maga losers who are complaining that steinberger is biased for reporting on the criticisms of karp/palantir and well-meaning progressives who criticize karp for his support of a genocide.

news flash. EVERYONE is biased. the only coverage you will find unbiased is coverage you agree with. so yeah, if you're maga, you'll probably find this book biased because steinberger does not worship at the feet of alex karp and peter thiel. if you're progressive, you'll find this book biased as it does not explicitly condemn genocide.

what i will add to this clusterf*ck:
- this book was not very well-written. it read like a long-form wikipedia article rather than a piece of journalism (which is what i would expect from a journalist like steinberger). i wanted more! give me something that wouldn't be there in a wikipedia article.
- also, the audiobook for this book was really weird. i have no idea who this narrator is, but he mispronounced multiple words.

[Jimmy Neville · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a biography about Karp, it is weird to walk away knowing more about the author’s personal political beliefs

[Reid Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

As some great Amazon reviews put it, this book is redeemed by its subject, and was fantastic until the author stepped in. A book mostly about Trump and the "far right", but partially about Alex Karp and Palantir. The portion about Palantir is generally good.

[Nick Grainger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book, especially the account of how Palantir was founded, Alex Karp’s worldview, and Peter Thiel’s involvement.

The author highlights how influential Palantir has been, both on the battlefield, most notably in Ukraine, and also in tackling highly complex supply-chain problems. Those sections were interesting too.

Some reviewers have criticised the book for displaying a political bias. While that bias does surface in parts, it ultimately serves as a useful juxtaposition as it highlights Palantir’s founding ethos of defending democratic values, while also examining the tension created by doing business with governments and public agencies that may undermine those very principles.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating biography of a man who got a company because of a friendship and then spent the rest of his life decrying how other people asking for a level playing field as whiney. Narcissism is a hell of a drug.

[Julia Clavien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great. A bit painful to read with all the authors political views woven in the whole way through. Not as much substance on the company as I’d hoped.

[Dan Watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this book because I wanted to see if it would change my opinion that Alex Karp is a con artist and Palantir is a meme stock.

It didn't, but, there again, the book didn't really try to. Despite the author's friendship with Karp, the book is an even-handed portrayal of Palantir's rise and Alex Karp's leadership style. It's neither overly critical nor flattering, though at many points it is appropriately sardonic about Karp's erratic behavior and bizarre speech patterns.

The best aspect of this book is that the author had considerable one-on-one time with his subject, making it similar to Walter Isaacson's biographies of tech industry figures. I also found the writing style to be quite approachable.

The book's weaknesses are that it makes little effort to explain how Palantir's products work, or to address the 'rise of the surveillance state' issue featured in its subtitle.

[Liz Mc2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this as more an extended journalistic profile than an in-depth biography of Karp or history of Palantir. No one is spilling juicy secrets here, but I found it pretty even-handed. The author had a lot of access to Karp. What was most interesting to me was the idea that Karp’s focus on national security comes from his anxieties about his own security (as a Jewish man more than a biracial man; the former seems clearly a more important part of his identity to him now). Also that what changed his political views was not so much acquiring a lot of money as the fact that once you are a billionaire, you spend most of your time with other billionaires in a weird little world. That made sense to me. The book is very readable if not especially surprising. I will note, because it bothered me, that it deadnames and misgenders Chelsea Manning. I suppose it is using the name/gender Manning was known by at the time she leaked information to Wikileaks but I think there are better ways to handle that.

[alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather a strange angle to take, and a disappointment for most readers looking to better understand Karp.

The narrative is much too personal to the author for no benefit, and barely examines a single thing that is claimed by the book’s subject, naively taking him entirely at his word on everything. It actually becomes funny when it’s apparent how little Karp cares about this guy, and how irked he must be at the constant intrusive mentions of their damn undergrad.

But the information feels very selective and context is given quite superficially among standard awed pronouncements about the tech without much further detail backing it, with mostly ambivalent results for the customers, though the Airbus example is interesting (I imagine not a hard one to document), there’s a missed opportunity to evaluate the geopolitical side more objectively.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Karp and Palantir no doubt will go down in history, but representing what will be harder to know. This biography on Karp allowed probably more access to him than any other material (so far) but it felt pretty lacking to me. I didn't finish the book feeling like I understood what Karp or Palantir stand for (cynically, maybe that is just it: they stand for making $).

Karp is just an odd dude (which, it seems like he'd be happy to admit) and full of contradictions, clearly an intelligent person but seems to have lost the thread. But his story is probably not as unique as he tries to make it: as he's become more wealthy, he's become surrounded by more yes-men and has lost the need to make sense. I feel like he feels important and wanted a biography to be written about him (and, fairly, probably merits it) but this is a person who seems either so guarded (or the author is not great at getting material from him) and/or seems to be in desperate need of therapy.

Karp has increasingly moved "right" and has recently railed against identity politics, but is happy to use his Jewish heritage to justify Palantir's support of Israel, even when the nation is doing things that go against Palantir's "code" (though, much like Google's "don't be evil," it seems that as the company evolved the code went by the wayside). He rails against remote work, while making his employees travel to work from his home. Like most founders of startups, he's totally screwed his employees on their shares and seemed almost proud of it when Palantir went public.

Overall, I wish the author did a better job of either pulling more from Karp or from analyzing what was said to him, because it seemed to be a mish-mosh of a bio.

[Brandon M. Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd give this 4 stars for content - especially if a reader can contrast this with The Technological Republic and it's interesting if you've ever been a persistent Palantir user (as I have been).

That said, the preface starts on a non objective note where the author's politics are clearly transmitting through the content. The book feels like the author wants to pontificate with his own opinions throughout, but is constrained, until Chapter 10. Then the obnoxious projecting, editorializing, and personal inferences appear in earnest.

Good book, botches the landing.

[Grant Weeks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paperback. I am still waiting for a “Power Broker” level novel on Peter Thiel. Since that is nowhere near realistic, I settled for this somewhat shallow reporting of Palantir’s genesis.

That said, I did appreciate the level of detail around Palantir’s origin story and early value prop. The analysis and interpretation of Karps life was weak though. And I never quite got the behind the curtain feel that often defines a great biopic. So the title page came off clickbait-y once finished. Still an entertaining read overall

[Kaitlyn Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this and learned a lot about Alex Karp, the origins and growth of Palantir, and its dealings with the U.S. government. It appears several reviewers didn’t read the title and are upset this book wasn’t solely a biography of Karp.

[Emmet Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. Very rosy treatment for Karp, Palantir, and Thiel (the three main subjects of the book). But I learned a bit about what Palantir actually does, why people are suspicious of it, and how different clients use it. Undoubtedly worthwhile.

[Jay Zwelling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, interesting and unnerving, a real page turner.

[Andrew Bianco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad I know more about Palantir and Karp’s backstory. The book probably could have been 20% the length.

[Danny Milligan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Author was so politically biased he ruined what could have been a good book. Disappointing, don't bother.

[D C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palantir sit not so quietly behind some the most influential decisions made in the world. This book is a starting point to understanding them and those decisions.

The book does two things well. It is a serious account of Palantir. While more prominently, it is a study into the protagonist and the founder of the whole thing, Alex Karp.

One of the big successes of the book is making Palantir legible without turning it into the villain - when it would have been all too easy to. The reporting always feels truthful, observational, and intriguingly close in a reportage way without sanitising anything. From inside rooms of war, borders, policing, health care, and global logistics, Palantir emerge as the macro economic actor they are with their software made more sense of in how it shapes decision making, not some unsettling myth.

But this isn’t a Palantir book. The gravitational centre is the psychologically astute portrait of Karp.

He appears as many things: ideological, intellectual, eccentric, quixotic, odd and yet totally coherent, without any one individual quality becoming his caricature.

The title of the book is the tell. Before Palantir (until his mid 30s) Karp trained for a life in philosophy academia. And it is this lens which still defines him. Part philosopher, part founder, part megalomaniac, he is singularly convinced he’s on the right side of history. He genuinely seems to care about liberal values and believes Palantir builds the right things to preserve them. And another of the book’s achievements is showing the nuance of how this belief system has come to be so central to how Palantir operates.

Where the book falters a little is in its detours.

At times, the book gives way to political commentary which can feel quite personal. They add little, particularly when more interesting questions sit nearby untouched; such as Palantir’s long-term accountability (if any) and who (if anyone) ultimately governs companies operating this close to power. The book circles these without ever pinning them down, leaving the critique political and all too familiar rather than more useful.

That said, it may be unfair to ask the book to resolve these questions. What it does succeed in doing is making their situationally opaque world a little clearer.

There is a line in the book that lingers: “This is a world where you have to pick sides.” And this is a book that gives insight to pick one.

That makes it worth reading.

[Hadi Ariyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly well-researched and timely biography of Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir. Steinberger does a great job of explaining the "Rise of the Surveillance State," but the subject himself is so polarizing that it makes for a complicated reading experience.

● What Worked:
Insightful Reporting: Steinberger provides a deep psychological portrait of Karp. He explains how a PhD in Philosophy ended up running one of the most powerful data-mining companies in the world.

● The "Big Picture": The book is excellent at showing how Palantir’s technology is being used by governments and militaries. It really opens your eyes to how much power these "surveillance" tools have in the 21st century.

● Balanced Writing: Even though I didn't like Karp, I liked the book. The writing is clear, direct, and doesn't shy away from the controversies surrounding the company.

● What Didn't Work (The "Karp" Factor):
The Political Divide: I struggled with Alex Karp as a person. His "raging Zionist" views and his very aggressive, sensitive political leanings made it hard to stay objective. He is a very intense, often combative figure, and that "in-your-face" personality can be exhausting to read about for 300+ pages.
Moral Conflict: It’s hard to give a "perfect" 5-star rating to a book when the person at the center of it holds views you find so difficult to agree with.

● Final Thoughts:
If you want to understand the intersection of Silicon Valley, the military, and global politics, this is a must-read. Michael Steinberger is a great guide, but be prepared to spend a lot of time in the head of a CEO who is as controversial as he is powerful.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5 Besides learning about Alex Karp, and Palantir you also learn about the author's political leaning's as well - not great for a biography about someone else.
Gives some insight to the web of the VC invested military technology sector that have started from investors in relation to Silicon Valley. The book does give an history of Palantir and it's software projects used for mostly data organization and management for different sectors such as healthcare, ICE, PENTAGON and Army/Navy (not much detail besides some contracting information). One thing that stuck out to me was Alex Karp's constant harping on the alma mater of Haverford college not asking him to be a speaker and him being ignored by them seems to bother him quite a bit. Also he claims to wanting to make Palantir to be the defender of western values and liberalism, while providing technology that can easily be exploited by authoritarian/fascist leaning regimes. It does seem to me that new military defense tech firms are going to rapidly bring us to war with China or never ending conflict (e.g War on Terrorism) is maybe an understatement at this point, in order to defend western values (which they don't believe in liberal democracy at this point anyway. These same individuals that feel they need to rally against these liberal elite institutions (that they also attend) and stating these elitists are out of touch when they simultaneous also become out of touch individuals by only interacting with other billionaires.)
 I can tell you after reading this book, he loves Palantir, Tai Chi, cross country skiing and Israel. 

[Daniel Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly nuanced view of Alex Karp, a CEO full of contradictions. Karp himself admits, “I only made two good decisions as an adult: going to Germany and starting Palantir.” Everything else, he says, was either preparation or a mistake. Steinberger unpacks those formative choices well, from Karp’s education in philosophy and law (unusual for a tech CEO) to his eventual conviction that military might, not moral superiority, explains the endurance of Western values.

Yet Karp believes that a world led by those values is preferable to the alternatives presented by China and Russia. Therefore, our tech companies should support the military power that sustains them. Since Silicon Valley at the time was too busy with social networks, data harvesting, and consumer products, Karp felt more than motivated to join Palantir’s cause.

The company has been mired in controversy for years, yet Steinberger does an admirable job of keeping the book centered on Karp’s persona and Palantir’s genuinely useful technology. Ultimately, any data analytics and artificial intelligence company selling to defense customers will always be viewed through a particular lens. Palantir will never fully escape the broader debate between privacy and security. That said, I find it somewhat reassuring that its CEO has a strong academic grounding in philosophy, making him uniquely prepared for the endless ethical debates he is sure to encounter.

[David Schwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palantir is a company that seems to enable surveillance states. Their technology originated in anti-fraud software developed at PayPal. Palantir was funded by Peter Thiel.

Alex Karp is the CEO of Palantir. His formal training is in Philosophy, in particular German philosophy. Karp today feels that the ideology of the West is slowly being subverted. This is not particularly surprising in that European (German) philosophy was used to justify what Germany did during WWII; it seems Karp has fallen victim to these same toxic ideas. The ideology of those in the Middle East and Iran is bad (here we have a confusion of Theological and Philosophical ideas). A golden age happened in the Middle East before Europe's Dark Ages). Arabic thought is a key part of the western world's philosophical and scientific heritage. Karp is part of a group of leaders in Silicon-Valley that see technologists as the only people who can properly run things (Musk is another), and that democracy is bad.

Initially, Palantir provided software to help governments/businesses analyze large amounts of data. Today, Palantir seems to be more involved in large databases that may be used to infringe on civil liberties.

Since Trump's second term has seen Karp double down on support for Israel, and is among the voices that state being anit-Israel is being anti-semitic. Karp sees the current incarnation of ICE as necessary in spite of the flagrently illegal tactics ICE uses.

[Paweł · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent read, a useful outline of Karp's and Palantir's rise, and somewhat great map of their network. Great points and broad context showing how ridiculous many critiques of Palantir are, but also fair accounts of doubts about the use of company's software and evolution of the CEO. Nonetheless, Karp remains a highly inspiring and clearly a mission-driven person. The West would benefit from more of those. A particularly strong account of that is how Palantir was never willing to do business in Russia or China, even when the most of Sillicon Valley and VCs were making the most of business opportunity in the latter. Another one is Karp's contempt for corporate finance and businesses monetising people's weaknesses through algorithmic targeting - career destinations worth that shold be condemned instead of national security directions.

One trait of Karp should remain uncontroversial and promoted in every school and university nowadays. His approach is, as author notes, that "only someone conditioned like an elite athlete could maintain a schedule as grueling as his" - and his passion for cross-country skiing suggests that behind any career or broader life ambition should stand a commitment to a healthy body cultivated in nature.

[Sanjay Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read about Palantir Technologies & it's philosopher founder Alex Karp.


Onne of singular most consequential tech company in counterterrorism, battlefield, technology use in defense, surveillance etc with help of big data analytics which claims to preserve western hagemony at any cost. The use of Palantir tool in Ukraine war, Isreal Hamas war & even in domestic control of citizen. Reading this literally made me fearful about future, how Techno-authoritarianism prism will basically make state even more powerful, with tech elites having all the control. How, in name of predictive & preventive policing, state basically will survile over all it's citizen, & them being liable to be targeted even at the smallest acts of rebellion like we have seen recently in ICE x Palantir tech collab in targeted racial profiling, immigrant crackdown with exact known address.

It also showed how a company which started for greater purpose, with initially not dealing with govts like Saudi Arabia due to absymal human rights record, now wields insurmountable power & helps administration to control & subversion of common citizen, moving away from the initial goals of support towards liberal democracy towrds Techno-authoritarianism.

[Ken Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karp is at once a patriot and a savvy CEO

Alex rising from humble background to lead a top tier tech company without a grounding in information technology or business management. He is a most non-conventional leader of a group of "Hobbits" to become a company that develops "Software that Dominates"

A graduate of Haverford with studies in Europe of philosophy, Karl with co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel and fellow entrepeneur, created Palantier to focus of managing massive amount of data. From contracts in the commercial sector to government (ICE and Department of Defense) Papa tier succeeded without a Sales Force while Karp was chief promoter and a technique of forward deployment of engineers embedded in prospective clients to fully understand ooerations.

A biracial Jew, Karp has a strong commitment to Israel and is a visionary regarding Russia and China as enemy of America. He focused Palantir as a leader in technology as a defense if America.

The reader will find the work interesting and at times dense in details and by persistence well rewarded with intellectually stimulating challenges.

[Matthew Gibb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is yet another opaque technologist,who created Palantir along with Peter Theil. Karp is half Jewish and half black and claims to be liberal in his views. He has flip flopped between supporting Trump and supporting the Democratic candidates. His software is said to have been used to capture Bin Laden and he has supported the Ukraine and Israel using his technology.His company is currently the 22nd. most valuable company in the world. He's said to speak fluent German and after listening to this book I feel as if his software has been used to unfairly round up foreigners and even send them to jail in El Salvador. This guy wants to violate citizens right to privacy,which I suppose was given up once anyone whatsoever goes on line,since the virtual world is said not to be covered by the constitution. He doesnt appear to tolerate dissent from his employees. Be worried about billionaires like Karp and Theil and if this book grabs you try,The Contrarian,which is the history of Peter Theil and his alliance with Elon Musk and his support for Mark Zuckerberg.