But that's not how tech works. This is a political weapon, built on purpose, with his full knowledge of what it does. The fact that he can say this publicly without it being the biggest scandal shows how broken things are.
And here's the thing that really matters: Palantir isn't some startup in a garage. They have Pentagon contracts. They shape how the government makes decisions on surveillance and targeting. But they operate with almost zero public oversight. How is that acceptable?
The "other countries will do it anyway" argument is the same one they used to justify mass surveillance after 9/11. And we all know how that turned out. We don't have to pick between surrendering democracy or being invaded. That's a false choice.
The actual darkness here isn't that Palantir works in the shadows. It's that when Karp gets a chance to be honest, he basically admits they're built to undermine how democracy is supposed to work. And everyone's supposed to just accept it as progress.
It does so with survailance and information. In a free democratic society you can jaywalk when no car is around and be ok. In a survailance state, you can't, because it'll hurt your social credit score. Similar to what we see in certain Asian countries, effectively making you a B class citizen. Jaywalking is just an example of course, because we've agreed that is technically illegal but basically every human when confronted with a situation like that outside of bureaucracy will think it's ok you crossed the completely empty road. They won't think it's ok if the road wasn't empty. Which is the nuance in the system, that the survailance bureaucracy doesn't have.
I like to think of it in dungeons and dragons alignments. Democracy is in the neutral zone, perhaps with a slight chaotic basis, but over all you don't want it to be either too lawful or too chaotic. If it goes too far either way the other side will suffer. The reason it can be a little biased toward chaotic is because chaotic people don't try to force their way on lawful people quite as much as the other way around.
I guess more working class men in America are lawful? Over all though, the people with the power will be the people with the information and the wealth to impact the bureaucracy.