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Weekend Reads
Dr. Alex Karp, cofounder and CEO of Palantir, received the Herman Kahn Award at Hudson’s annual gala last Tuesday.
“Herman thought about the unthinkable, and Alex built a company to make sense of it all,” said Hudson Trustee and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar in his introductory remarks.
In his acceptance speech, Dr. Karp discussed why the America is essential for human progress, the importance of meritocracy, and why the United States needs to win the artificial intelligence race with China. His key takeaways are below.
Watch the event, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript here.
Key Insights
1. The US is uniquely suited to incubate revolutionary technological progress.
“You have a constitutional and moral tethering of exactly what you would need in one specific culture. And that’s this culture. . . . We at Palantir have maximal empathy for Americans—for the right of Americans to be free and for men and women that actually do work.”
2. Meritocracy is America’s strongest tool.
“Meritocracy is the most underestimated, powerful, revolutionary tool that exists in any enterprise ever. . . . The capacity to identify and advance people on a meritocratic base that have capacity to care is the single most revolutionary tool.”
3. The US-China AI competition is winner-take-all.
“You can only explain the promise of AI if you understand and embrace the superiority of America and its culture. Because there are dangers in AI. But the reality is [there are] only two cultures that are going to win in the next year. It’s going to be us or China. . . . We must, must embrace our ability to build it, our ability to own the chips, to own the software, build the large language models, and run very, very quickly.”
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
In First Breakfast, Shyam Sankar laid out key takeaways from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “Arsenal of Freedom” speech at National Defense University and explained what “reformers” in the Pentagon need to do to return the US to a war footing:
- Accelerate innovation and delivery by shaking up program offices and enforcing commercial buying.
- Be a better customer and empower companies that deliver results.
- Embrace “the primacy of people” by ensuring that authority and accountability for program success flow to a single person with a face and a nameplate on the door.
(For more on Hegseth’s speech, read Bryan Clark’s latest op-ed in Defense One.)
“The maniacal focus of my work over the last 20 years and hopefully the next 40 years is, How do we prevent World War III or win it?” Hudson Trustee Shyam Sankar told The Wall Street Journal.
To win the AI competition, Washington needs to reform the American educational system to prioritize strategically important fields and reduce its growing reliance on Chinese talent, argued Mike Gallagher on Fox News.
