2025-02-13 Alex Karp.Wants Silicon Valley to Fight for America

2025-02-13 Alex Karp.Wants Silicon Valley to Fight for America


The Palantir CEO thinks that tech companies have lost their way, focusing on diversions for consumers rather than on defending the nation that ‘made their rise possible’
帕兰提尔首席执行官认为，科技公司已经迷失方向，专注于为消费者提供娱乐，而不是保卫那个“让它们崛起的国家”

KETCHUM, Idaho—Palantir stock was days away from hitting an all-time high, and the company’s chief executive, Alex Karp, had retreated to his cavernous mountain cabin. Its features neatly captured the interests of a billionaire on a quest to save the West.
凯彻姆，爱达荷州——Palantir 的股票即将创下历史新高，而公司的首席执行官 Alex Karp 则隐居到他宽敞的山间小屋。它的特点恰好体现了一位致力于拯救西方的亿万富翁的兴趣。

The windows were adorned with curtains bearing an American flag motif. Completed and half-completed Rubik’s Cubes were scattered on coffee tables.
窗户上装饰着带有美国国旗图案的窗帘。完成的和未完成的魔方散落在咖啡桌上。

“Do you want to see my guns?” he asked. One of Karp’s hobbies is long-range shooting, whose targets fall outside the normal parameters of a firearm, he explained. He struck a stance to show the blend of practice and instinct that combines for the perfect shot.
“你想看看我的枪吗？”他问道。卡普的爱好之一是远程射击，他解释说，这种射击的目标超出了普通枪械的常规参数。他摆出一个姿势，展示练习与直觉相结合以实现完美射击的方式。

More than two decades of running Palantir, a data analysis firm best known for working with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, has made Karp a billionaire many times over. Though government work represents only a portion of a balance sheet that leans heavily on commercial clients, it gives the whole company a secret-ops vibe. Karp can talk about his own guns far more readily than he can talk about the more secretive activities of Palantir, whose market capitalization is now more than $260 billion.
经营数据分析公司 Palantir 已逾二十年，该公司因与美国军方和情报机构合作而闻名，这使得卡普多次成为亿万富翁。尽管政府业务仅占公司财务报表的一部分，而公司主要依赖商业客户，但这仍然为整个公司增添了一种秘密行动的氛围。卡普更愿意谈论自己的枪支，而非 Palantir 更为机密的活动，该公司目前的市值已超过 2600 亿美元。

In the cast of philosopher-kings who have emerged from Silicon Valley in the past several years, Karp cuts an unusual figure. He is far from one-name status (“Mark,” “Elon”) and indeed is barely known outside small circles in tech and politics or beyond the army of retail investors who have anointed him their antiestablishment billionaire hero.
在过去几年从硅谷涌现的哲人王者中，卡普显得与众不同。他远未达到单名辨识度（如“马克”“埃隆”），事实上，除了科技和政治界的小圈子，以及将他奉为反建制亿万富翁英雄的大批散户投资者之外，他几乎无人知晓。
Warning
抖音的“帝师”。
Since the nation’s top tech CEOs traveled to Washington for Trump’s inauguration three weeks ago, Americans have been guests at the shotgun wedding between Silicon Valley and the new administration. If Elon Musk is the president’s flamboyant best man, Karp is a more retiring figure in the marriage party (he didn’t show up for the inauguration). Delphic and overcaffeinated, he has presided over a surge in business for Palantir while also calling on his industry to help the West win a clash of civilizations.  
自从全国顶级科技公司首席执行官三周前前往华盛顿参加特朗普的就职典礼以来，美国人见证了硅谷与新政府之间的仓促联姻。如果说埃隆·马斯克是总统张扬的伴郎，那么卡普则是婚礼派对中更为低调的人物（他没有出席就职典礼）。他神秘莫测且咖啡因摄入过量，在掌管 Palantir 业务激增的同时，也呼吁他的行业帮助西方赢得文明冲突。

Karp will step further into the fray with the publication next week of his new book, “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West,” a cri de coeur that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies.
卡普将更进一步介入这场争论，他的新书《技术共和国：硬实力、软信仰与西方的未来》将于下周出版。这本书是一声呐喊，批评科技行业放弃了帮助美国及其盟友的历史。

The last two decades in the sector amount to a gigantic waste, in Karp’s view. While he and his colleagues at Palantir were helping to identify roadside bombs in Kandahar to save the lives of American soldiers, the book asserts, their contemporaries back in northern California, lulled by decades of peace, were making sure that college-educated smartphone users could buy coupons for paragliding lessons and play FarmVille.
在卡普看来，该行业在过去二十年里完全是一场巨大的浪费。书中称，当他和帕兰提尔的同事们在坎大哈帮助识别路边炸弹，以挽救美国士兵的生命时，他们在加州北部的同行却因数十年的和平而麻痹，专注于确保受过大学教育的智能手机用户能够购买滑翔伞课程的优惠券并玩《FarmVille》。

If Karp’s new book can be encapsulated by one of its sentences, it may be this one: “The wunderkinder of Silicon Valley—their fortunes, business empires, and, more fundamentally, entire sense of self—exist because of the nation that in many cases made their rise possible.” It is time, Karp believes, for the industry to repay that debt.
如果要用一句话概括卡普的新书，那可能是这句：“硅谷的神童们——他们的财富、商业帝国，更根本地说，他们整个自我认同——之所以存在，是因为这个国家在许多情况下促成了他们的崛起。” 卡普认为，现在是这个行业偿还这笔债务的时候了。

The book, co-written with Nicholas W. Zamiska, was finished late last year, and elements of its central argument seem to have come true in just the past few weeks. A section on eliminating wasteful government spending sounds a bit like Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Another on encouraging more partnerships between the government and the private sector on artificial intelligence work evokes Trump’s Stargate plan to build energy capabilities with OpenAI and other firms.
这本书由尼古拉斯·W·扎米斯卡合著，去年年底完成，其核心论点的某些方面似乎在过去几周内已经成为现实。书中关于消除政府浪费开支的部分听起来有点像马斯克的政府效率部。另一部分关于鼓励政府与私营部门在人工智能工作上建立更多合作关系，让人联想到特朗普的星门计划，即与 OpenAI 和其他公司合作建设能源能力。

Asked about the similarities in what his book calls for and what others are implementing, Karp said, “We’ve been very good at forecasting the current present state a couple years before it happened.”
当被问及他的书中所呼吁的内容与他人正在实施的内容之间的相似之处时，卡普表示：“我们非常擅长在事情发生前几年预测当前的现实状况。”

It is a pitch that has helped give Palantir and Karp some of the best weeks in the company’s history. Nearly three years after analysts questioned whether Karp’s promise for growth in government contracts was an illusion, the company’s share price has surged more than 180% since the day before Trump was elected. The reason: growth in Palantir’s AI business and the expectation that the new administration will favor scrappier firms like Palantir over old warhorses like Lockheed Martin.
这是一个宣传，使 Palantir 和 Karp 迎来了公司历史上一些最好的时刻。分析师曾在近三年前质疑 Karp 对政府合同增长的承诺是否是幻觉，而如今，该公司股价自特朗普当选前一天以来已飙升超过 180%。原因在于 Palantir 的人工智能业务增长，以及市场预期新政府将更倾向于支持像 Palantir 这样更具竞争力的公司，而非洛克希德·马丁这样的老牌军工企业。

Palantir is “very long America,” said Karp. He is quick to remind potential clients that he is happy to assist in the dirty work of empire. On an earnings call with investors earlier this month, he said Palantir is “making America more lethal” by analyzing troves of data for the U.S. armed forces and allies to help them anticipate enemies’ moves, locate their coordinates “and, on occasion, kill them.”
Palantir“坚定支持美国”，卡普说道。他迅速提醒潜在客户，他乐于协助帝国的肮脏工作。在本月早些时候与投资者的财报电话会议上，他表示 Palantir 正在“让美国更具杀伤力”，通过为美国军队及其盟友分析海量数据，帮助他们预测敌人的行动，定位其坐标，“并在某些情况下消灭他们。”

Karp backed President Joe Biden’s re-election and supported Kamala Harris when she became the nominee. But he has been surrounded by those in Trump’s orbit for years, starting with Peter Thiel, who spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in support of Trump.
卡普支持总统乔·拜登的连任，并在卡马拉·哈里斯成为候选人时表示支持。但多年来，他一直被特朗普阵营中的人士所包围，最早可以追溯到彼得·蒂尔，后者在 2016 年共和党全国代表大会上发表演讲支持特朗普。
Warning
缺少勇气的表现。
Several Palantir alumni have recently taken jobs in the Trump administration, further deepening the company’s ties. The company in turn has hired onetime lawmakers, such as former Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who from 2023 to 2024 chaired the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and called for more hard-line responses to Chinese influence in America. He now heads Palantir’s defense business.
几位 Palantir 的前员工最近在特朗普政府中任职，进一步加深了该公司与政府的联系。与此同时，该公司也聘请了前国会议员，例如前威斯康星州国会众议员迈克·加拉格尔（Mike Gallagher）。他在 2023 年至 2024 年期间担任众议院中国共产党问题特别委员会主席，并呼吁对中国在美国的影响采取更强硬的应对措施。如今，他负责 Palantir 的国防业务。

Karp has been wealthy for many years, with the trappings of a billionaire and the ready soliloquies of an executive accustomed to being received as an oracle. At least a half-dozen staffers were in his home during my weekend visit, including two stationed just inside the driveway, another who directed me where to park, two communications professionals and several strapping assistants, one of whom ordered a book at Karp’s request, another who tossed logs to build him a fire in the living room and another whom Karp addressed in German.
卡普多年来一直很富有，拥有亿万富翁的排场，并且习惯于被视为先知般人物，随时发表独白。周末我拜访他时，至少有六名工作人员在他家中，其中两人守在车道入口，另一人指引我停车，还有两名公关人员和几名身材魁梧的助手，其中一人应卡普的要求订购了一本书，另一人往壁炉里投木柴为他生火，还有一人则用德语与卡普交流。
Warning
10级脑残。
“Günther!” he cried out. “Kaffee mit zwei Zucker.” Coffee with two sugars.“Günther!”
他喊道。“咖啡，加两块糖。”

Karp has no background in engineering. Raised in Philadelphia, he went to Haverford College and then Stanford Law School before heading to Germany for graduate school. His doctorate from Goethe University Frankfurt was on neoclassical social philosophy, work that prepared him to pose questions like “What does it mean to make a bad decision? At what level of abstraction? How deep do you go, to know if it’s a good or a bad decision?”
卡普没有工程背景。他在费城长大，就读于哈弗福德学院，随后进入斯坦福法学院，然后前往德国攻读研究生。他在法兰克福歌德大学获得的博士学位研究的是新古典社会哲学，这项研究使他能够提出诸如“做出错误决定意味着什么？在哪个抽象层次？要深入到什么程度才能判断这是一个好还是坏的决定？”这样的问题。

In 2003, he joined with his Stanford Law classmate Thiel to launch Palantir, using as its foundation a program that one of Thiel’s other companies, PayPal, had deployed to identify Russian money laundering through the identification of seemingly unrelated cash payments. From its start, Palantir, named for a powerful “seeing stone“ in “Lord of the Rings,” was designed to give the government and private companies a bit of Tolkienian magic, to sift data and reveal unknown patterns.
2003 年，他与斯坦福法学院的同学蒂尔合作创办了 Palantir，其基础是蒂尔的另一家公司 PayPal 开发的一款程序，该程序用于通过识别看似无关的现金支付来发现俄罗斯的洗钱活动。自成立以来，Palantir 以《指环王》中强大的“远见之石”命名，旨在为政府和私营公司提供托尔金式的魔法，以筛选数据并揭示未知模式。

The company’s early work traced a series of terrorist attacks to the same Iraqi village and identified a cyber network infiltration campaign against the Dalai Lama. Thanks to Palantir software, the U.S. military was able to find and eliminate roadside bombs in Afghanistan by discovering patterns in how they were deployed.
该公司早期的工作将一系列恐怖袭击追踪到同一个伊拉克村庄，并识别出针对达赖喇嘛的网络渗透行动。借助 Palantir 软件，美国军方通过发现路边炸弹的部署模式，成功在阿富汗找到并清除这些炸弹。

Palantir’s approach was like a John la Carré novel for a new era in spycraft, one in which American forces were overwhelmed by an enemy that operated thousands of miles away, through networks human and digital that the intelligence agencies were only beginning to understand.
Palantir 的方法就像是新时代间谍活动中的约翰·勒卡雷小说，美国军队被一个远在数千英里之外的敌人压倒，而这个敌人通过人际和数字网络运作，而情报机构才刚刚开始理解这些网络。

Palantir launched with about $30 million in startup costs largely covered by Thiel and his venture-capital fund. As the company saw its valuation grow, a central question emerged: What exactly did Palantir…do? Descriptions of the company’s offerings came crammed with jargon.
Palantir 以大约 3000 万美元的启动成本成立，其中大部分由 Thiel 及其风险投资基金提供。随着公司估值的增长，一个核心问题浮现：Palantir 到底……是做什么的？对公司产品的描述充满了行话。

Competitors who had been around for years dismissed the rookie as a gussied-up data analysis firm. Few interviews passed where Karp didn’t answer a question by saying he couldn’t answer the question—it was classified. Certainly that was true, but it gave the whole operation a bit of a mystique.
那些多年来一直存在的竞争对手将这家新秀公司贬为一家华而不实的数据分析公司。几乎每次采访，卡普都会用“这个问题我无法回答——这是机密”来回应某个问题。当然，这确实属实，但也为整个业务增添了一丝神秘感。

“We were very unsexy to most people and uncontrollably sexy to a small number of people,” he said.“
对大多数人来说，我们非常没有吸引力，而对少数人来说，我们又极具吸引力，”他说。

By 2013, less than a decade after its founding, Palantir had 1,200 employees and a valuation of $9 billion. With each successive fundraising round, Karp put off the initial public offering that many assumed was coming. The opacity of Palantir’s financials only added to its reputation as a black box.
到 2013 年，成立不到十年的 Palantir 已有 1200 名员工，估值达 90 亿美元。随着每轮融资的进行，卡普推迟了许多人认为即将到来的首次公开募股。Palantir 财务状况的不透明性只增加了其“黑箱”声誉。

When Palantir finally filed to go public in 2020, Karp published a letter ahead of the IPO that today reads like a short proposal for the book he would co-author. Buying stock in Palantir, he told prospective investors, meant supporting a company that would make it a mission “to support Western liberal democracy and its strategic allies.”
当 Palantir 最终在 2020 年申请上市时，卡普在 IPO 前发表了一封信，如今读来就像是他将共同撰写的书籍的简要提案。他告诉潜在投资者，购买 Palantir 的股票意味着支持一家以“支持西方自由民主及其战略盟友”为使命的公司。

The previous four years had turned Silicon Valley into a tinderbox of politics—Cambridge Analytica, fact-checking committees—and firms either hid their work on defense programs or scrapped them altogether. Karp trumpeted them.
过去四年使硅谷变成了一个政治火药桶——剑桥分析公司、事实核查委员会——公司要么隐瞒其国防项目的工作，要么彻底放弃。而卡普则大力宣扬这些项目。

In 2020, he moved Palantir’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Denver because “we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.” Protests against Palantir’s work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement followed the company to Colorado.
2020 年，他将 Palantir 的总部从帕洛阿尔托迁至丹佛，因为“我们似乎与科技行业的价值观和承诺越来越不一致。” 反对 Palantir 与美国移民和海关执法局合作的抗议活动也随之蔓延到科罗拉多州。

Karp started to gain a following, becoming a chief executive uniquely suited to a time when Reddit threads and viral clips can shape a company’s identity as much as earnings calls and analyst reports. Karp’s meme-able look (the untamed curly hair, the rimless glasses and white T-shirt) and unvarnished remarks have turned him into a celebrity among the retail investors who count themselves as “Palantirians.” YouTube channels paste together moments from his analyst calls and public interviews into clip packages like “Alex Karp Funniest Moments Compilation!”
卡普开始获得追随者，成为一位独特适应这个时代的首席执行官，在这个时代，Reddit 讨论串和病毒式视频片段对公司形象的影响不亚于财报电话会议和分析师报告。卡普那极具表情包特质的外形（蓬乱的卷发、无框眼镜和白色 T 恤）以及直言不讳的言论，使他在那些自称“Palantirians”的散户投资者中成为明星。YouTube 频道将他在分析师电话会议和公开采访中的片段剪辑成合集，比如“Alex Karp 最搞笑时刻合集！”
Warning
路边要饭的骗子。
In a way, Karp’s own popularity is evidence of one of his book’s central complaints: that Americans have little reason to trust most of today’s institutions or their leaders, forcing them to find heroes in realms beyond politics, civic organizations or religious life, where they once looked for inspiration.
在某种程度上，卡普自身的受欢迎程度证明了他书中一个核心抱怨：美国人几乎没有理由信任当今的大多数机构或其领导者，这迫使他们在政治、公民组织或宗教生活之外寻找英雄，而这些领域曾是他们寻求灵感的地方。

“I really, really revere the people who revere me. This is not always the case, if you talk to people who are famous,” he said, holding court on the small staircase that leads to his sunken living room, dressed in house clogs and head-to-toe athleisure, including joggers, a zip-up, a vest and a knit cap. Over his right shoulder: a chandelier ringed with seven lamps and cast-iron moose heads.
“我非常、非常尊敬那些尊敬我的人。这并不总是如此，如果你去问那些有名的人，”他说道，站在通往他下沉式客厅的小楼梯上，身穿家居拖鞋和从头到脚的运动休闲装，包括慢跑裤、拉链外套、马甲和针织帽。在他右肩上方：一盏环绕着七盏灯和铸铁驼鹿头的吊灯。

In 2020, Karp was paid $1.1 billion in total compensation, the highest of any chief executive at a publicly traded company. In 2022, with Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine, he warned against nuclear escalation in the war but acknowledged that bad times are good for Palantir.
2020 年，卡普的总薪酬为 11 亿美元，是所有上市公司首席执行官中最高的。2022 年，随着俄罗斯坦克开进乌克兰，他警告战争可能升级为核冲突，但也承认动荡时期对 Palantir 有利。

Around the same time, however, Palantir reported a decline in revenue growth from its government contracts. Shares sank to less than $7 before starting their steady climb in mid-2024. The surge in recent months has led some analysts to set new price targets for the company, but its fast-rising stock has led others to question whether Palantir can ever grow into its massive current valuation, which gives it a market capitalization more than twice that of Lockheed Martin.
大约在同一时间，然而，Palantir 报告其政府合同的收入增长下降。股价跌至不到 7 美元，然后在 2024 年年中开始稳步攀升。最近几个月的飙升使一些分析师为公司设定了新的目标价，但其快速上涨的股价也让其他人质疑 Palantir 是否能真正成长到其庞大的当前估值，该估值使其市值超过洛克希德·马丁的两倍。

Today, Palantir is leaning into its reputation as a dominant player. A commercial for the company, aired during the Army-Navy football game last year, played like a Tom Clancy thriller, with drone swarms, infrared missiles and even a tagline fit for a 1990s movie poster: “Battles are won before they begin.” At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, the company’s venue in the mountainside town resembled a set from the Apple TV show “Severance,” all clean lines and white surfaces, a memorable stage for the cocktail party it hosted for its legion of admirers.
如今，Palantir 正在强化其作为主导企业的声誉。该公司去年在陆军与海军橄榄球比赛期间播放的一则广告，宛如一部汤姆·克兰西式的惊悚片，画面中出现了无人机群、红外导弹，甚至还有一句适合 20 世纪 90 年代电影海报的标语：“战斗在开始前就已获胜。” 上个月在达沃斯世界经济论坛上，该公司在山城的场馆宛如 Apple TV 剧集《人生切割术》的布景，线条简洁、表面洁白，成为其为众多崇拜者举办鸡尾酒会的难忘舞台。

Those fans, Karp said, tend to have been through an experience in their own lives that mirrors the skepticism that greeted Palantir. “I said X, everyone in the establishment said Y, and Y meant X was stupid,” he said. He added: “The Y people essentially are complete bigots, by the way. Please write that down.”
那些粉丝，卡普说，往往在自己的生活中经历过类似帕兰提尔所遭遇的怀疑。“我说 X，建制派的所有人都说 Y，而 Y 的意思是 X 很愚蠢，”他说。他补充道：“顺便说一句，那些 Y 派的人本质上完全是偏执狂。请把这写下来。”

“The Technological Republic” is likely the only book by a business executive to feature three epigrams (one in German), citations from the Bible, Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunset” and an outright attack on a market leader (Google’s “shallow and thinly veiled nihilism”). Karp admits it wasn’t the most commercial of choices.
《技术共和国》可能是唯一一本由企业高管撰写的书，其中包含三条警句（其中一条是德语）、《圣经》引用、理查德·林克莱特的《日落之前》，以及对市场领导者的直接抨击（谷歌“肤浅且几乎不加掩饰的虚无主义”）。卡普承认，这并不是最具商业价值的选择。

“The book I should write to sell,” he said, “would be, ‘AI Karp Karp AI Karp AI AI Karp.’”
“我应该写来卖的书，”他说，“应该是《AI Karp Karp AI Karp AI AI Karp》。”

Karp has advocated many of the book’s central themes for years, but several developments pushed him to put it all in one place. Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023 galvanized him to get louder, he said. In the hours after word of the attack spread, Karp had Palantir employees on the ground in Israel to help coordinate the country’s response. Two workers—a Pole and a Brit, both non-Jews—flew themselves there before Karp could ask them to go, he said.
多年来，卡普一直倡导该书的核心主题，但几项发展促使他将其集中在一起。他表示，2023 年 10 月 7 日哈马斯对以色列人的大屠杀促使他更加直言不讳。袭击消息传开后的数小时内，卡普已派遣 Palantir 员工前往以色列，协助该国协调应对。他说，其中两名员工——一名波兰人和一名英国人，均为非犹太人——在他要求之前便自行飞往以色列。

Karp watched the world’s response to the attack while coordinating the effort to help. “People started protesting against Israel on Oct. 8,” he said. He is unapologetic in his support for Israel and for doing business with its government. “It was very risky. We’re a publicly traded company,” he said.
卡普一边协调援助工作，一边关注着世界对袭击的反应。“10 月 8 日，人们开始抗议以色列，”他说。他对支持以色列以及与其政府开展业务毫不避讳。“这非常有风险。我们是一家上市公司，”他说。

We are entering a new world, he said, where everyone and every business will need to find their distinctive “blue note,” borrowing a jazz metaphor. The artificial intelligence systems fueling investor fervor for Palantir are going to raise the floor of capabilities to such a degree, he said, that they will force everyone to “do something unique, creative.”
他说，我们正进入一个新世界，在这个世界里，每个人和每家企业都需要找到自己独特的“蓝音”，借用爵士乐的比喻。他表示，推动投资者对 Palantir 热情的人工智能系统将把能力的下限提升到如此程度，以至于它们将迫使每个人“做一些独特的、富有创造力的事情。”

The analogy could also be drawn from his own hobby of long-range shooting. Businesses and individuals are going to have to use AI to operate “outside the range of what a human can do,” he said.
这种类比也可以来自他自己的远程射击爱好。他表示，企业和个人将不得不利用人工智能来运作，“超出人类能力范围”。

That is “where all the value is,” he added. “Because you have to hit the target.”
“那就是‘所有价值所在，’”他补充道。“因为你必须击中目标。”

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