At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. data analytics company Palantir Technologies was tapped by over a dozen governments around the world including the U.S. government to use its software to manage the data about the spread of COVID-19, analyze trends and anticipate various needs across the supply chain. Alexander Karp is CEO and one of several co-founders of Palantir. On Thursday, Jan. 7 at 10:00 a.m. ET, Karp will join Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to talk about the challenges faced by governments around the world in relying on technology and software to respond to the pandemic.
Palantir CEO Alexander Karp joins The Post’s David Ignatius on Thursday, Jan. 7 (Video: The Washington Post)
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Highlights
Alexander Karp, CEO and co-founder of Palantir, said Wednesday's storming of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters "severely corrodes trust in the government" and "damages the view our allies and very competent non-allies have of the promise of American democracy." (Video: Washington Post Live)
Twitter suspended President Trump's account Wednesday after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Alexander Karp, CEO and co-founder of Palantir, said the president "crossed a really important line." "The problem is Silicon Valley has become so divisive I worry that any action that they take might actually end up bolstering this kind of transgressionary behavior...What we saw yesterday, it's a breaking point." (Video: Washington Post Live)
Palantir CEO and co-founder Alexander Karp says their software helps governments in their fight against covid-19 by helping them understand what is happening on the ground: "Palantir is involved globally…in allowing people who are doing the planning understand exactly what’s happening on the ground distribute PPE. For example, which hospitals are over-utilized...have capacity...need PPE...which have too much or have too little...and then on vaccine distribution most notable in the U.S. and the U.K." Karp added that Operation Warp Speed uses Palantir technology as a dashboard, “unifying the hundreds of data sets that make up the production of vaccines, the distribution of vaccines up to the state level.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
Alexander Karp, CEO and co-founder of Palantir, said its important technology companies work with the government because "you can’t live in a country and not support it." “This country, and a lot of the norms that we cherish, was built on economic prosperity, in part, powered by our ability to develop technology that was useful for individuals, not just useful in making a small number of people on the West Coast rich…Your company is worth hundreds of billions of dollars in part because the U.S. government and the West protect your rights to engage in international economic behavior. We live in a system…You can’t live in a country and not support it.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
Alexander Karp, Co-Founder and CEO, Palantir Technologies
Alexander C. Karp is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Palantir Technologies Inc.
He attended Haverford College (B.A., 1989), Stanford Law School (J.D., 1992), and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany (Ph.D., 2002).
Dr. Karp is an avid cross-country skier.
