Palantir has become synonymous with mass surveillance. The software company is literally named after an ominous all-seeing orb in the “Lord of the Rings” books that lets its wielder spy on anything in the land.
You can forgive our consternation, then, that its CEO Alex Karp is now warning about the dangers of the very high-tech panopticon he’s helping to build — a concern that seemingly stems from how it could get affect fat cats like himself.
In an interview on The Builders with Walter Isaacson podcast, Karp deployed an astounding new argument. Basically, he reasoned that enforcing a wealth tax that accounts for everything that the richest people own would be bad because the resulting dragnet could end up requiring even more surveillance than we already have, thereby backfiring on us poors begging for even a crumb of billionaire dough to be put toward keeping whatever’s left of our DOGE-decimated government intact.
“To enforce a wealth tax, you’re going to need surveillance. Because I’m going to need to know what is the bench in your house in New Orleans worth,” Karp began, a problem that working class Americans can surely all relate to.
His point being: you need to meticulously comb through everything that someone owns to properly tax their riches. And AI surveillance, he says, makes this not only possible but practical.
“AI could impute every single thing you own,” he said. “Especially with all the data…”
“The logical consequence of it,” he finished, “is surveillance into your personal life.”
Ignoring the fact that invasive surveillance of our personal lives is yesterday’s news, this kind of cognitive dissonance isn’t surprising if you follow Palantir, a company that has long denied the characterization that it’s a surveillance firm. Last year, it posted an official blog titled “Palantir Is Still Not a Data Company,” asserting that it simply “makes software which organizations use to better manage their data.”
That came as Palantir faced heightened scrutiny into how it worked with the Trump administration to provide ICE agents with sweeping surveillance tools to help target people for deportation. It also manufactures AI-powered military targeting software which was reportedly involved in the decision to bomb a girl’s elementary school in Iran.
Hypocritical as his rant may be, Karp insists that he’s not against wealthy people like him “paying a greater share” — a statement he proceeded to immediately qualify.
“I’m in favor of people like me paying a greater share under the condition that it doesn’t destroy American tech, which a wealth tax would do,” he said, and that it “doesn’t expand the surveillance state, which it absolutely would do.”
More on surveillance: Entire Police Force Quits After Mayor Starts Surveilling Them and Tracking Their Movement