Хроники астраханского политолога

His company is considered the technological backbone of some of the world's most powerful militaries. Alex Karp, CEO of the American data analytics firm Palantir, supplies software to the United States, Israel and Ukraine, among others. Yet Germany's Bundeswehr, its military, does not want to integrate his products.

Is this German skepticism justified? And can Germany's military buildup succeed without his battle-tested products? Palantir CEO Alex Karp expressed surprise at the Bundeswehr's stance and made the case for Ukrainian defense technologies.

Following a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Minister Mykhailo Fedorov in Kyiv, Karp praised Ukraine, saying : "They deserve a lot of credit for building one of the most important military defense systems in the world."

He does not share the pessimism of many Western observers: "Every person we dealt with believes they're going to win the war. They're very optimistic."

Karp is proud that his company is contributing to Ukraine's defense. He described his products "as an operating system for war," so "the same way you'd have an operating system for a company or anything or even a car, they have it for the modern battlefield."

The cutting edge of warfare, military strategy, and defense tech — delivered weekly.

"Currently there are very few people in the world who could do this," he said in the interview.

Ukraine, he said, manages the battlefield "the way a tech company would manage its clientele." Only the key questions are different: "How many Russian people die per square kilometer? And why and how and what are the payloads and what worked and what didn't?"

Karp said that other European countries should make use of this expertise by purchasing proven Ukrainian technologies. "What products is Europe gonna buy to defend itself? Is it going to buy PowerPoint tested products?" he said. "Or are they gonna buy the products that are single-handedly stopping a great military power?"

The battlefield, he emphasized, is the ultimate testing ground.

"One of the best ways to figure out what works and what doesn't is to see: Does it work on the battlefield? " he said. "You know, if you take a PowerPoint from us and a PowerPoint from an obviously fraudulent company, you may be able to tell a difference if you're highly technical, but by and large you really can't. You have to see, does it work or not? And the most unforgiving place in the world is the battlefield." That is why he hopes "that Europeans are open to Ukrainian-produced products."

Karp said Palantir itself has no access to Ukrainian data, even though the military uses parts of its software.

"When they're doing air defense or targeting, almost all the code is written by them, controlled by them. We have no access." he said. "In that sense, in my view, there's no sovereignty issue. I couldn't tell you what they're doing, how they're going, and I can't stop them from doing it. That's controlled by them."

Karp, who studied in Germany and speaks fluent German, takes a critical view of the German military's rejection.

"Every serious battlefield in the world uses parts of Palantir. There's a reason for that," he said. At the same time, he expressed understanding that Germany and other major countries want "autonomous systems — and they should have autonomous systems.

The head of Germany's Bundeswehr's cyber forces, Vice Admiral Thomas Daum, told the German newspaper Handelsblatt in April on the topic of Palantir: "As much as we are interested in ​the functionality for our own ​database, it is simply inconceivable at the ‌moment ⁠to grant industry staff access to the national database."

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Germany's Ministry of Defense said that the statements made by Daum "speak for themselves."

Still, Karp is puzzled by German skepticism — especially given that his cofounder, Peter Thiel, was born in Germany. "Peter and I are the most prominent Germanic and/or German-speaking business people in the world by far, and every other country would have found a way to adopt us."

"If we were French, the French would wholesale force us to have French passports and only speak French and change our name to Falantir," Karp added. "I don't understand how Germany believes it can afford this, and I would say at a general societal level, a lot of the discussions sound like they're talking about witchcraft.

"By the way," he added. "How would Germany have ever sold any of its products post-World War II, if that was the way it has thought about things?"

Palantir's 22-point summary of Karp's book, "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West," declared that "the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone," and argued "the defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price."

The Palantir CEO is also critical of the way Europe is spending its massive defense budget.

"When I look at spending in Europe, I get really worried that there's too much going to be distributed by people who have no idea how to spend it," Karp said. "And that's going to create entrenched interests of people producing suboptimal, non-workable tech that are politically strong. And then it's really hard to take it out."

In his view, this was precisely one of Ukraine's key advantages: "And one of the big advantages Ukraine has: They had nothing."