Palantir CEO Alex Karp Urges Internal Focus: 'The Primary Threat To Us In The West Is ...'

Palantir Technologies Inc PLTR CEO Alex Karp drew a martial arts analogy to describe how the West should approach its global standing in technology, particularly in AI, at the 2023 Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday.

"I think I'm the highest-ranked Tai Chi practitioner in the business world, so I appreciate Chinese culture. Tai Chi is an internal martial art, which means you focus on your internal instead of external threats," Karp said, suggesting the West should adopt a similar introspective approach. He added, "Yes, we're in the lead. And if we want to stay in the lead, we'll focus on all of our own problems and fix them."

He argued the key threat to the West isn't technological, but organizational, and the focus should remain on unique resources rather than external competition.

"The primary threat to us in the West is us not focusing on the resources we have that are unique," Karp emphasized, adding that "our problem in the West is not technological, it's organizational."

Also Read: Palantir CEO Alex Karp On AI's Future Commercial Use: It Will Make 'People Who Are Winning Much Stronger'

While acknowledging the pacifist stance of some sections of Western society, Karp cautioned against naïvete, saying, "some part of our society believes that pacifism works in the absence of arms and just treated as the religion it is."

Highlighting the dominance of American technology in recent years, Karp said, "In the last five years, all the relevant technology for the battlefield has been produced in America." However, he also noted the resultant complexities such as data sovereignty and standardization issues.

"There's no one in Europe that's going to sign up for data flows going back to America," he said, highlighting the need for local technological sovereignty and addressing the real issues beyond the China and Russia discourse.

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Photo: World Economic Forum on Flickr and Shutterstock