Palantir CEO Insists He Doesn’t Support Regime Change Wars (But Supports Iran War)

Palantir CEO Alex Karp appeared on CNBC on Thursday, where he was asked about the Iran War, the Pentagon’s battle against Anthropic, and American technological supremacy against adversaries like China.

Karp seemed frustrated that he couldn’t take more credit for the continued war being waged in Iran and made it clear that he supports President Donald Trump’s efforts. At least 1,300 people have died, and 9,000 have been injured in Iran so far, according to the United Nations.

Karp also insisted that he doesn’t believe in regime change wars, a seeming contradiction when you remember that Iran’s Supreme Leader and most of its leadership were assassinated in the early days of the war.

“You know, I’ve read in the papers that we are able to engage and fight war in the way we haven’t been able to in the past, that we’ve regained our deterrent capabilities,” Karp said.

Karp referred to reading about things “in the papers,” presumably because he can’t discuss non-public information that he’s privy to as a defense contractor with a high-level security clearance.

Karp continued by praising “the men and women on the front line that deserve most of the credit” before segueing into his clear desire to take credit for America’s “resources” that have “shifted the way in which war is fought.” Those resources include Palantir’s Project Maven, an AI-powered targeting system used by the U.S. military.

“I’ve also read that all the allies, Arab and non-Arab in the Middle East, may or may not be users of our platform as well, and that’s expanding rapidly,” Karp said, presumably trying to brag about Israel’s use of his company’s technology. Israel has been bombing not just Iran but also Lebanon since the start of the current war on Feb. 28.

“I think the most important thing, leaving aside the heroism of our troops, which is the most important thing, is our adversaries and enemies are witnessing an ability to fight that they don’t have,” said Karp.

The Palantir CEO seemed desperate to say more and take credit for how his company was helping fight the war in Iran. But he also tried to claim that he was against regime-change wars.

Karp claimed that the U.S. is the center of the AI revolution and said, “I’ve read we’re at the core of everything,” again trying to brag about Palantir through a means that provides some distance. It all recalls how Trump might brag, “some people are saying” before giving himself compliments as the greatest president to ever live, for various reasons.

The CNBC reporter tried to specifically talk about what Project Maven did, explaining to viewers that it was used to target Iran’s Supreme Leader. But again, Karp seemed frustrated by his inability to confirm that detail, likely because it’s all classified intel, saying that he “can’t go into specifics.”

Every time there was a moment where Karp was asked something specific, he did his best to take credit without taking credit. But it all came off as tremendously awkward.

CNBC: So Palantir is working with our allies in the Middle East that are currently being attacked by Iran?

Karp: Well, if you were attacked and you needed to coordinate, you would have to have a coordinating function. There’s only one product that can actually do that for security. And that has to do with how we pipeline and do things in Foundry. So the short answer is, without answering your question, were this to work, there’s only one way you can do it.

Karp was also asked about Anthropic and the Pentagon’s attempted corporate murder of the AI company.  “Given that the Department of Defense has blacklisted Anthropic, is Palantir still using Claude?” the CNBC journalist asked. Karp said he “can’t go into specifics” but that Palantir’s tech will likely be “integrated with other large language models because of this dispute.”

Maven is currently integrated with Claude, but President Trump has said the Department of Defense needs to stop using Anthropic within the next six months. Anthropic said it couldn’t agree to the Pentagon’s terms because it didn’t want to drop guardrails that prohibit using Claude for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. With that context, Karp told CNBC that Palantir actually believes in the Fourth Amendment, which is about privacy.

“No one believes it, but Palantir is the most important protector of the Fourth Amendment… or Fourth Amendment, meaning the right of privacy, in this country because of the way our product works. And I’m deeply committed to that, as are most Americans,” Karp said. “The Fourth Amendment does not apply to adversaries on the battlefield.”

Karp also praised the AI revolution and Silicon Valley’s participation in war while attempting to position it as a political battle between women on one side and men on the other. The CEO insisted that there’s been a shift in Silicon Valley where tech leaders were previously hesitant to support the military but are now doing so, implying that it was because they’ve moved away from a women-centric Democratic Party.

“If you are going to disrupt the economic and, therefore, political power significantly of one party’s base, highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat, and military and working-class people who do not feel supported, and you feel like that’s…you believe that that’s going to work out politically, you’re in an insane asylum,” said Karp.

“This technology disrupts humanities-trained, largely Democratic voters, and makes their economic power less, and increases the power, economic power, of vocationally trained, working-class, often male voters. And so these disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society.”

Karp went on to say that there was a need to explain to people who are going to have “less good jobs, from their perspective,” how AI would actually be good. Karp then essentially said the explanation was that AI helped the military, which “helped our ability to be American in the near term.”

He did not elaborate on how simply being American would help these Democratic and female voters if they were going to be thrown out of their white-collar jobs in the long term.