The fascism expert at the heart of Palantir | If You're Listening | ABC NEWS In-depth

Alex Karp is the CEO of the data analytics company Palantir.

In 2016, Alex Karp interviewed Louie Mosley for a position at Palantir.

Oswald Mosley was a famous British fascist who encouraged the British government to stay out of World War II.

Louie Mosley is the grandson of Oswald Mosley.

Alex Karp decapitates cupcakes and only eats the icing, speaks German for at least half of every day, and is obsessed with Nordic skiing.

Palantir has created software genuinely useful for organizations dealing with many different data sources, breaking down silos and bringing efficiencies to intelligence gathering, supply chain logistics, and military operations.

Alex Karp was raised in a left-wing Jewish household.

In the mid-1990s, Alex Karp moved to Frankfurt, Germany, to get his PhD in philosophy.

Frankfurt School thinkers spent their careers trying to understand how Germany, a technologically advanced country, elected Adolf Hitler and devolved into barbarism.

The Frankfurt School's basic conclusion was that fascism was a byproduct of technological and scientific advances, leading to bureaucracy, dehumanization, and totalitarianism.

Post-World War II Western Europe entered an unprecedented period of peace and economic cooperation with a strong focus on promoting human rights.

Alex Karp has dedicated two decades of his life to building Palantir, a company explicitly aiming to increase American military, intelligence, and corporate dominance through data processing.

In the last three years, Palantir has added AI to its mix and gone into hyperdrive, providing services to corporate, law enforcement, and military clients in America and US allied countries.

A week after the October 7, 2023 attack, Alex Karp took out a full-page ad in the New York Times stating "Palantir stands with Israel."

Palantir's Elite product allows ICE officials to draw a circle on a map, revealing specific people ("targets") with their names, dates of birth, photos, addresses, and address confidence scores.

With Elite, ICE can gather information from sources like Department of Motor Vehicles files, police reports, and subpoenaed social media data (location history, private messages) to build intelligence.

The number of people arrested on the streets of American cities and towns by ICE has increased by a factor of 11.

Anthropic drew a red line, refusing to help spy on American citizens or hand over control of deadly weapons to AI.

Alex Karp stated in November 2025 that he would intervene if Palantir's product allowed for civil rights abuses.