"You're killing my family in Palestine!" a protester screamed at Palantir CEO Alex Karp while he was addressing a Silicon Valley conference last April.
"The primary source of death in Palestine," Karp, the Jewish, half-black, progressive, tai chi practitioner shot back, without missing a beat, "is the fact that Hamas has realized there are millions and millions of useful idiots."
"But your AI technology from Palantir kills Palestinians!" the heckler loudly insisted.
"Mostly terrorists, that's true," Karp deadpanned, to applause.
Who is Alex Karp? Indeed, that question adorns the back of The Philosopher in the Valley, the journalist Michael Steinberger's profile of the enigmatic CEO and his wildly successful data analysis company. The biography is actually two separate but intertwined books: a forthright account of Palantir's ascent and an apparent, yet unsuccessful, attempt to take Karp down a peg. For what Steinberger regards as his subject's demerits—such as the candor and moral clarity Karp expressed onstage in April—are actually his greatest strengths.
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