> On CNBC’s Squawk Box, he shook both fists simultaneously as he railed against short sellers betting against Palantir, whose share price has climbed nearly 600% in the past year: “It’s super triggering,” he complained. “Why do they have to go after us?”
This and a few other sections make me wonder how much introspection the guy has and whether he ever concedes that he is wrong.
Quite a lot of tech CEOs get weirdly over-emotional about short-sellers. Musk does this, too, say. I get the impression that it's appealing to a certain audience, and may be performative.
Like, if you're trying to recapture the demented retail magic of the Gamestop moment, and I think a lot of these meme-aligned stocks are, then railing against short-sellers is probably a good way to endear yourself to that crowd.
Doesn't the success of a short come down to crowd psychology? If there's a company with a given stock price, and somebody convinces a significant portion of investors to short it, on the other side the CEO and other shareholders tries foil the short by using their free cash to buy up the new shares.
The success or failure of the short hinges on which side is manages to convince/intimidate/sway the majority stockholders regardless of fundamentals. If the short sellers manage to recruit more stockholders (by value) - they win (in terms of value), if the company's supporters are move more money - the price doesn't go down and the short sellers are left with the bills.
_Generally_, people short (or buy puts, anyway) on companies because they think they will go down. You're thinking of a kind of _attack_, but that's not at all the norm. Most shorts are just people thinking "the market if overpricing this"; if they're right (and if the market corrects itself in reasonable time), they make money.
(There is a third scenario, where the likes of Hindenburg Research take out a short position and then reveal problems with the target company, which naturally pushes their price down, but again that's rare.)
> Doesn't the success of a short come down to crowd psychology?
Not really. I've shorted 100s of instruments on the financial market and this just doesn't ring true.
Often the best shorts are not the worst companies but the once that have had performed the best over the past 6 months to a year because that generally means they've overshot their valuation and should rationally come back down to a more reasonable level. PLTR certainly fits the bill here.
I think a big misconception the public has about short sellers is that they short to zero. The vast majority of directional shorts look alot more like "short company that has 3x n the last year from $200 down to $120 where its fundamentals or financial ratios make more sense".
And this ignores that from a money manager's standpoint more than half the shorts put on aren't negative bets on a company but rather a downside hedge against another bet that a related stock will go up. IN this case you really don't care about how the shorted stock performs as long as its a good hedge for your upside bet.
Never once have I initiated or participated in a public campaign to promote my short and the vast majority of hedge funds fit that profile.
The fact that there have been a few high profile short cases that most of us know actually helps illustrate just how rare it is.
It's not a new thing. CEOs have always hated short sellers. It's just that nobody ever heard about it since before meme stocks 90% of the general public didn't even know what a short seller is.
> Quite a lot of tech CEOs get weirdly over-emotional about short-sellers.
They just can't picture themselves ever being in the wrong. They are genuinely convinced they are the hero. Logically any opposition comes from villains.
With the ego of people like Musk and other idiosyncratic, autocratic, and sociopathic CEOs, I think there needs to be a rational strategy behind it.
So, that's definitely a possibility, but there's also the possibility that they're just trying to attract the attentions of the Gamestop crowd (who, as a class, have peculiar beliefs about short sellers).
> This and a few other sections make me wonder how much introspection the guy has and whether he ever concedes that he is wrong.
Our culture is currently at a moment where it confuses the faux confidence of narcissism with strength, and promotes those people to positions of leadership. However, it's pretty much the opposite of that, it is escaping into an imaginary persona with faux infinite confidence, because you are too afraid to be a real person that has faults like everyone else.
I don't think it's appropriate to conflate having an antisocial personality disorder with just generally being "weird." Especially in the current context, where authoritarians are especially adverse to non-conformity.
However, while it's absolutely not a new thing that people with these personality traits rise to positions of power, e.g. see "The Prince" by Machiavelli, it ignores the uniqueness of the current moment.
We have a widespread far-right movement right now that has a particular ideal of strength and masculinity, which is exactly the symptoms of narcissism, and has formed a cult of personality around a particular malignant narcissist. This is something new that has formed over the past 10-15 years, starting out of certain internet communities including 4chan, 8chan, and "the manosphere" and is a marked cultural departure from how things were ~20 years ago.
What in the video did you interpret to show introspection or humility?
Karp interpreted the question if he regretted working with ICE as a question if he had suffered because of it. This was self centered.
He implied it had caused conflict between him and his family. He complained employees he liked left. He complained about protests. This was what he called suffering.
He said protesters protested him. Not Palantir. Not his work. This was self centered.
Were you impressed he said he asked himself if he would protest if younger and a student? Knowing your political views changed requires not much introspection and no humility.
The interviewer asked what was protesters' most valid criticism. Karp asked if 1 instance of injustice tarnished all instances of justice. But this was not protesters' criticism.
Won't someone please think of the multi-billion-dollar corporations and ultra-high-net-worth individuals actively working to eliminate the tattered remains of our privacy and to install still-greater systems of surveillance and social control?
A recurring theme in reading about Thiel, Karp and their supporters is a sort of "kill or be killed" mentality - implied if not stated outright. Likewise I've seen people say things like "well the other side was doing X anyway, so we should do it to them". It's disturbing to watch how easily fear and anger can be wielded to justify anything. Future generations, if they are lucky enough to learn from us, may well identify our addiction to anger as the great sin of our time.
The "other side was doing X anyway, so we should do it to them" claim is always paired by first falsely accusing others of doing what they eventually intend to do. It's a deliberate strategy of manipulation that preemptively normalizes something that otherwise would look bad.
I don't know if there is a name for this tactic, but it appears to be fairly novel, and I suspect it was invented by Roy Cohn, who was a mentor to Donald Trump.
It's an incredibly effective manipulation strategy, and I am not sure how to counter it.
It's manipulation that closed communities recognize and call out and will ultimately expel people for doing. But if you happen to be born into extreme wealth you have something people need and normal social consequences no longer have the same potence.
Fear paired with confidence has created the biggest monsters we ever had, Alex Karp seems to embody both, don't see how he can escape the fate of becoming a monster...
I can assure you its tai chi stance on the picture is absolutely wrong.
arms way too open, body weight on both legs, right arm should not be bended, distance between two feet is way to long, left hand should be pointing up, etc.
Definitely single whip. Looks like he stopped to pose in the middle of it. He's also facing the wrong way; that body position should be on the diagonal if anything.
this guy allows other people to invest money into killing others, mostly it'a arabs so far but yet again he looks like a chosen one. I hope his shit crashes
What’s baby afraid of? We don’t need “defense” technologies that don’t soften the brutality of life, or of human nature. There’s no path to security without dealing with humans nature, and people invariably respond better to honey than poison.
The headline seems a bit weird, the article later on goes to acknowledge what Karp is actually fearing, namely fascism, which he sees as an existential threat to him personally.
It also seems to be a bit weird to exclude his intellectual heritage, he got his PhD under Jürgen Habermas who is one of the best known anti fascist and pro liberal democracy scholars in Germany.
yeah man he's so scared of fascism that he's leading the world in racist ai for drone striking civilians and imprisoning normal working people into concentration camps without a trial
Could you at least try to formulate that into an argument? Preferably you could address the justifications alluded to in the article and maybe try to frame that discussion in the context of Karps intellectual history.
Democratic regimes, in the name of anti fascism, have performed extremely gruesome acts and far more thoroughly violated the privacy of individuals.
Karp obviously believes that the actions by palantir are necessary to safeguard liberal democracy as it has existed.
Karp has obviously studied German democracy, which has a specific concept for this "wehrhafte Demokratie", meaning that democracies must defend themselves, with force if necessary.
Every single person has an internal narrative which justifies their own actions. Assuming that Karp doesn't is just totally bizarre and not an argument at all. "He just is evil and wants money", is not a coherent explanation of anybody.
Hilariously this who thing was one of the central debates in Germany, which got significantly influenced by Habermas. If some people are "just evil", then National Socialism will just spontaneously come again and again, it is not a coherent theory of human behavior.
> Every single person has an internal narrative which justifies their own actions. Assuming that Karp doesn't is just totally bizarre and not an argument at all. "He just is evil and wants money", is not a coherent explanation of anybody.
What's bizarre is acting like there is not a huge profit motive here. You're the only one that offered the value judgment of "evil" so I don't think that's a fair response anyway. It's perfectly coherent otherwise.
>Hilariously this who thing was one of the central debates in Germany, which got significantly influenced by Habermas. If some people are "just evil", then National Socialism will just spontaneously come again and again, it is not a coherent theory of human behavior.
Exacz. Remember when I ask the other guy to make his argument explicit and you told me there was no need to. This is completely ridiculous.
If Karp isn't evil for creating "racist AI", what else should I make of it. There is no actual argument to engage with, which is why I asked for it.
>What's bizarre is acting like there is not a huge profit motive here. You're the only one that offered the value judgment of "evil" so I don't think that's a fair response anyway. It's perfectly coherent otherwise.
You are completely disregarding what I said. Nobodies internal narrative is "I murder people to make money".
>Exacz. Remember when I ask the other guy to make his argument explicit and you told me there was no need to. This is completely ridiculous.
I said it was obviously an argument that this guy was a hypocrite. You jumped from that to evil. Let's just pretend you were having a conversation with me and I wrote "sounds like the guy is a hypocrite."
>If Karp isn't evil for creating "racist AI", what else should I make of it. There is no actual argument to engage with, which is why I asked for it.
Only accused him of being a hypocrite; fueling that which he claims to fear, for his own personal gain.
>You are completely disregarding what I said. Nobodies internal narrative is "I murder people to make money".
No, their internal narrative is "I make money". Again, typing your words into my own posts.
The racist lens is coming from the white supremacist groups he is developing tech for. Their entire worldview is guided by terror that they will lose some protected social status that comes from their skin color.
> white supremacist groups he is developing tech for.
So your argument is that an intelligent, erudite black Jew is siding with white supremacists against people of color?
I don’t know, but I think that explanation doesn’t compute. I would wager that the lens through which he looks at the world is different than your racist one and I think some curiosity would pay off.
I've long thought the racism-everywhere lens is too simplistic and useless. But with how the Trump regime's policies are all generally incompetent and harmful to our country, yet there is still so much full-throated support based around things like deputizing fundamentalist militias to round up minorities and send them to concentration camps, it's starting to look pretty on point.
And sure, there are many rationalizations like most of the targets are "illegals" or whatever. But if the people espousing these justifications weren't racist, their instinct would instead be to think "hey these blatant violations of the Constitution could easily happen to my own family" rather than to other the citizens inevitably getting swept up as an outgroup (eg "app says so").
I was naive enough to believe at first that the MAGA movement was actually about the surface issues they claim to be concerned about, but in continually trying to be understanding and steelman their positions, and in also personally knowing and interacting with a lot of these people, those positions just don't hold water, especially as they have gained power and have largely stopped putting any effort into maintaining a non-racist facade. The only coherent explanation for MAGA is that of white nationalist authoritarianism, fueled by fear of losing protected race-based social status[1].
In fact, I don't think really anyone is really confused by that anymore, the only people claiming otherwise are people that personally identify as white supremacists, that see it as in their best interests to try to protect the political momentum of their movement by trying to maintain the facade of not being racist- a strategy they adopted after major losses way back during the civil rights movement in the USA. There may be a small number of people that just don't follow the news and don't know what is happening, but they aren't out defending anything online in their free time.
I with you on being naive. I internalized hard what I thought were conservative values trying to understand why the senseless Iraq war happened. Even personally thought in right "libertarian" terms coming in from ancap via cpunks. (reading Unqualified Reservations brought me back from that. Thank you Yarvin, for helping me to see the truth of the matter!)
I still never got when red tribe people would say things like "Look what's going on in California", and I'd respond in agreement with actual experience, but still never managed to connect. In retrospect I guess those were merely coded invitations to start openly bashing Hispanics, made doubly ridiculous as they're the native race of that area.
I do keep trying to appeal to purported conservative values, as the maggot movement basically fails every coherent single statement of them I've found. So maybe the naivety hasn't gone away, sigh.
his company (eagerly) enables the work ICE is doing to disappear people off the street, the genocide perpetuated by the IDF against the Palestinian populace, among other atrocities and in general is pretty open about keeping “Wesrern supremacy” via state backed violence. white nationalist or not there’s a ton else he and his company needs to answer for
He said Palantir could power the West to its obvious innate superiority.[1]
“The unfortunate thing, either in business or politics, is that many of one's adversaries and antagonists will never respond to anything but strength—that crude form of power that does not ask for but which requires compliance and deference. And so strength we have built.”
“As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’
“He continued: ‘Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.’”[2]
do you think he is wrong when he says that the West's superiority primarily comes from power, rather than ideas or value or religion?
I actually think that the West's superiority is due to a multitude of factors (not just raw power), but I can see how the CEO of a company on their investor call would emphasize the thing that their company brings to the table. Palantir, as far as I know, is not in the business of religion, for example.
I actually agree that racial hatred is likely not the the lens he personally sees the world through, the article and my parent comment make it clear that his motivations come from an authoritarian personality that will excuse almost anything for a strong leader- but racism is absolutely the lens MAGA sees the world through, and his worldview does justify working with and enabling them. There is a long history of minorities supporting racist authoritarian movements when it will make them money or offer some perceived protection: freemen slave catchers in the antebellum south, free black people working for the confederate army. The Association of German National Jews and The German Vanguard were Jewish pro-NAZI groups. In this case, the hate is mostly targeted at hispanic and middle eastern people, so he might feel safe (for now), but it is a dangerous association, because once they feel they've eliminated the "threat" from those groups, they will go after others.
During the civil rights movement in the USA, the white supremacist terrorists rebranded themselves as caring about other non-race based issues for plausible deniability when they started to lose widespread political support, with terms like law and order, immigration, and states rights, but it was only ever the thinnest of pretenses because it was still the same people doing the same things. If you're familiar with MAGA supporters, or have seen the numerous leaked private text scandals from MAGA leaders, you will know they are openly racist and racial hate motivated in private among each other, and only put on the pretense of other issues in public forums. They're not just labeled Nazis and racists by their political opponents, but proudly use those terms to describe themselves in private. You can see with the Trump administration, e.g. firing judges willing to hear legitimate asylum cases from people with brown skin, while actively supporting asylum cases from white people in South Africa- while claiming their actions are about enforcing immigration law. The thin pretense of other concerns falls apart immediately upon inspection, but they are hoping enough people don't inspect too hard, that they can retain political power.
The US's power comes from its ability to project organized violence? What was Vietnam then? And what would have come of the Vietnam era if people could be individually and effortlessly targeted in their daily lives for going against it?
what would have come of the Vietnam era if people could be individually and effortlessly targeted in their daily lives for going against it?
Nothing. The U.S. lost Vietnam, not because it lost battles, but because it offered no governing alternative to Ho Chi Minh that the Vietnamese accepted. Millions of Vietnamese died and still they rejected every colonial gov't the French and then the U.S. tried to prop up.
The U.S.'s power coming from its ability to project organized violence is really a statement about the limits of its power. It can blow up anyone it wants to. It still can't remake other countries as it wishes.
What you're saying makes sense, and I agreem. But I don't think Karp, as he is described in the article, agrees...
-snip-
Karp referenced the political scientist Samuel Huntington’s belief that “the rise of the west was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence’.”
-snip-
Karp seems to be using that idea to pat himself on the back for tapping into the stream of money that flows toward "the guns" so to speak.
Does he think about whether the US' global hegemony will flourish under domestic fascism that he's paving the way for?
> Palantir is firmly cemented into military-industrial infrastructure, and business is booming, but Karp is not letting up. He has said he wants Palantir to be as dominant and indispensable as IBM was in the 1960s, when it was the world’s largest computing company and shaped the way government and private companies did business.
I was thinking even before this line that he gives off the impression of really admiring IBM, especially their German stint from 1933 to 1945.
Palantir is along with SpaceX, Anduril, and a few others some of the most important companies in America. They are the ones that are pushing America forward. Not selling ads. But upsetting the incumbents that are undermining the DoD and national security, and making real technical progress. These are the companies that if it comes to war are going to be pushing us forward.
See you're already assuming war is coming and that it is a fact of life, inevitable just as winter is. With that mindset there is no other alternatives from the get go
If you walk around with a gun in your pocket drooling about self defence scenarios you might end up escalating a situation that could have been avoided altogether.
And you're assuming war is not coming? That there will never be another war? Don't get me wrong, I'm anti-war, but that sounds like an unwise assumption to make given history.
> If you walk around with a gun in your pocket drooling about self defence scenarios you might end up escalating a situation that could have been avoided altogether.
True, but this is another big assumption about the character of the person carrying the gun. The statistics on people with a permit to carry and the usage of their weapons tell a different story than you present. That is, they are much more likely to deescalate, most defensive gun usages require no shots fired, and license to carry owners are much less likely than the general population to commit or be convicted of a crime.
That's a nice quote, the problem is that once you gave birth to a giant you need to keep feeding it. We can see how it's going for Russia right now.
It also doesn't mean you should build private surveillance companies tightly coupled to a single political party, with all the conflicts of interest it brings
That's one way to see it, the other way to see it is that they're bleeding russia dry while making big bucks on arms sales, basically forcing the EU to buy fracking gas at 4x markup and ensuring they'll get all the juicy reconstruction contracts.
In the first place, they are pushing USA deeper into the dystopian hell. And they will likely start some wars along the way (if they haven't already), to justify their revenues. But I guess any direction is a forward..
I had no idea Alex Karp was black.
Anyhow:
> On CNBC’s Squawk Box, he shook both fists simultaneously as he railed against short sellers betting against Palantir, whose share price has climbed nearly 600% in the past year: “It’s super triggering,” he complained. “Why do they have to go after us?”
This and a few other sections make me wonder how much introspection the guy has and whether he ever concedes that he is wrong.
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