Alex Karp, Cold War Liberal

In the wake of the midterm elections, memes and jokes abounded about Silicon Valley grandees dying their hair blue and adding pronouns back to their email signature lines to signal a strategic rapprochement with the victorious Democratic Party. This week, Palantir CEO Alex Karp seemed to ratify these expectations with an interview in which he declared himself and his company “essentially progressive.” It seemed to many like an abrupt, cynical volte-face for an executive who, perhaps more than anyone other than Elon Musk, personified tech’s rightward turn under the second Trump administration—and benefited considerably from that reorientation. But such analyses risk mistaking style for substance. Tech leaders’ embrace of right-wing aesthetics, exemplified by Mark Zuckerberg donning a “bro” uniform for his 2025 appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, has too often obscured the deeper transformations underway in the industry in recent years.

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