Alex Karp’s Fight for the West

There is no more apt appropriate perfect place for me to be interviewing Alex karp one of the most important builders in America and in the west that at uatx a school where students are not just consumers but where you are Builders yourselves Alex karp my guest today is many things he is a cross-country skier he is a long-range shooter he's a taiichi expert and he may be the only person in the world who knows how to Wield a sword but doesn't know how to drive he is also a collector of extremely prestigious degrees his PhD

thesis was called and I actually have to read this aggression in the life world the extension of Parson's concept of aggression by describing the connection between jargon aggression and culture at least that's what I think it was called I do not speak or write German he wrote it in German he's fluent in many languages since 2003 Alex has also been The CEO of P paler a company that I find very hard to describe in a single sentence but I'm going to try paler is a software and data analytics company that does defense and intelligence work

if that sounds a little too neutered for you think of it as a company that stops Terror attacks around the world while also helping M sports cars go faster and pharmaceutical companies build better drugs we're here today not just because of paler although we'll talk a lot about It but because Alex has just co-written an important new book book called The technological Republic which just debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list the book offers a vision of how Silicon Valley lost its way and how the future of America in the west

hinges on its finding its way back and [Music] fast Alex karp thank you so much for being here today thank you thank you um I hope this is working on I am very honored to be here with you tell us about the world you were born into Jewish father black mother leftist household tell us about the karp family and the way that your family shaped you um well I think the primary thing in my family so my my family my mother father but also extended family are you could imagine like something like the physics department

at Princeton me um uh an art colony my mom is uh was a Professional artist and um my dad uh is a pediatrician for underserved communities but the larger family is uh kind of a caricature of a very talented very high IQ uh and then what what is super interesting was we were um pretty I mean in retrospect we that we didn't I mean we didn't have a lot of money but um uh we were very focused on intellectual and historical rigor to the Point of almost I wanted to vomit all the time and like

and I was interested in some of this but there was like super Overkill um give me an example of like dinner table conversation um well you know first of all there's a I mean my mom has or you know she's 85 now but she has an encyclopedia knowledge of almost any any irrelevant fact you could ever want to know so like it might be like you know people used to Call and they're like oh we're having a tour guide at binmar nobody knows what the architect who the architect was of this building uh but we

knew one person would know and my mom of course would know and it would be like a 40-minute lecture uh and and then uh there probably would be some discussion that was kind of political about I mean they they of course I remember vividly think telling my parents but Reagan seems like such a Nice person they're like get wrong so uh lot of discussions about ethics human rights literature um to some extent math my dad's very mathematical um it it's it was exceedingly intellectual very Jewish and my mom became Jewish but it wasn't really it's

just like everyone there was and um and then um so high IQ and intellectual but you were dyslexic forever yeah no um so I yeah know I'm like I was in the closet it's funny I I I should be in the closet about my social life and when I was younger and all sorts of other things I never was and uh and um but I was in the closet about being dyslexic until say 78 years ago um and then I don't I just felt tired of being in the closet about it and um and uh

and yeah I I uh was very very good at certain things and and dyslexic at things there many Different ditions of Dyslexia my current fixation on is having an attenuated uh relationship to broader tonies so um and uh and then I was lucky to be in an environment where they were like hey there's something wrong here and then I got help and and then I ended up doing very well and lots of things but um but yeah I have a very different structure than my the rest of my family they they are born to be

in a lab or in a art colony and I I did very well in Academia but I am actually a builder um uh and um and that attenuation to um larger structures uh means the disadvantage is that when you're reading and writing you are bringing extra energy to the game that you wouldn't have to bring if you were not dyslexic the advantage I have if you want to make it I usually just explain as the attenuation allows you to be creative but since we're in an academic audience I would say um there's a There's a

combination there's a a concept of uh hermeneutics which is just a fancy way of saying uh how what overlay do you put on the thing that you're interacting with this in this case a text and so the classic and there are lots of discussions uh which you may be reading but it's a it's a it's a pretty important part of intellectual Germanic intellectual tradition the hum heroic tradition and you can think of Dyslexia as forced herotic because I Have to engage with the text with an interpretive layer that allows me to actually understand and process

the text in the way that you don't but then the the massive advantage of this is the text actually becomes you it's like the famous haalan Master Slave dialectic which I think you should read if you haven't but it's basically the basic thing is a slave becomes the master the master becomes a slave uh and and you see this in businesses all the time one Of the things I think like typically in a business uh people hire staff instead of equals and they like that because the staff says yes all the time but then the

person in charge gets addicted to the person saying yes all the time in fact the people that that your staff becomes your master and you see this but it's much much harder to create that Dynamic uh if you're dyslexic because in fact as much as I would like to interact one toone with the underlying text I can't Or the underlying business or the underlying business plan or the way you're supposed to build a software company or the way you're supposed to build a relationship um and that this you know uh but yeah I was the

odd duckling in my family although my dad is actually kind of slightly dyslexic and my uncle's slightly dyslexic but but not as pronounced like I got the full-on dosage but the you have the full-on dosage of Being having a really hard time reading and writing yet you go to college then you go to Stanford law school then you go and get a PhD at Gerta University which is famous of course for the Frankfurt School Marx group of marxist intellectuals s yeah I mean describ the the the origin of the FR I mean again this I'm

I'm I'm upping I'm doing the book behind the book here so since you're we're going to get to the book in a second we don't Have to get the book no I wanted to ask you like what what do you respect most about Marxism uh well the Frankfurt School isn't fake it's not actually Marxist it's the the frankfur school I mean there's a definitional question of who started it um but generally people would say um Haw or adoro but a lot of people would include benine from uh others and so it's it's it's like it's

like any school it's actually elliptical the modern version of it is actually Neoc contan and pro-american um I mean as much as you're allowed to be as a German intellectual um and so I was particularly interested in the second phase of the Frankford school so like and and actually habas and then a very famous uh thinker Luman who I don't know how much I should go detail you go want but you're at a university so um we don't need to get like deep into so the the the I was super interested we want to get

to like Killing terrorists great I'm happy to talk about that uh and I'm proud of that and and you should you know having pride in occasionally using violence is one of the like one of the main things that our universities have screwed up it is in the service of our nation and with great thought and uh applying the ethics of War which America does sometimes you have to kill the other side it's a fact and it's not always a bad thing but okay but on the on the on the on the Frankfurter School side so

it it it really was uh you know first of all Beni was actually a poet and I don't think he was in any so and and and haw Heimer and adoro were kind of actually closer to hiigaran so it it it really like their whole idea of of a ratcheting biocracy taking over our life might be familiar to us it's not it's like so it and then the later people the later especially Luman Luman is the most important figure no one reads in in German thought and Luman was built on Parsons and Parsons was this

incredibly important thinker that got banned because he wasn't willing to be leftwing basically um and the parsonian way of looking at the Universe um was taken over by Germans and is absolutely essential for any work you do in Germany luckily because of haard which ha was you know that I knew a lot about Parsons and so that was why I was a super hit in Germany because I was a technical expert in something very Important that no one had ever understood but by the way this is a lesson for life if you're a technical expert

in something that is important to somebody the two people in the world who are most important in the world and probably Luma is no longer lie but if they were would be had a fixation on this one thinker that no one was reading because they weren't it wasn't politically left enough lo and behold I was the only person they could talk to That knew more about that than they did uh which is actually hard with hmas and with Luman because they just like like these these another lesson from Academia that I would say like Germany's

got a lot of problems but when I was there I dealt with the best of the best of the best of the best and that taught me I was good enough to be a professor at Columbia in a tenure but I was not going to be them and by the way in but wait pause why you were good enough but you Weren't going to be them you didn't want first of all the I didn't that's the second I did I wasn't couldn't be them because of the dyslexia honestly like it was like to be Luman

you have to write a book every three months and a world class book and he read he had read everything and the attenuation with the language I it wasn't just a German thing but I was writing a German and that was going to create huge problems and also I discovered in talking to these people They're not Builders I mean I wouldn't have be able to explain this way but I figured out pretty quickly huh they're better at reading and writing and and also but I'm better at building and then the thing I thought vividly that

I think is turned out to be completely true um is and again this goes back to point one the building of the idea is more important than the academic version of the idea and it's really important to build And win and the the you could have long discussions about how the world should be structured with Luman haras or gotam or if you could meet any incredible thinkers but I had I thought somewhat arrogantly I had a rare idea a rare ability to build God knows why I thought it there was no evidence but I did

think that and I thought screw this I can build the [ __ ] idea but how did you realize that in yourself like even you know I was when I prepared that question I was not expecting you to go from adoro to Benyamin to your mind clearly is so interested in those ideas is even still now how do given that you had proclivities for that how did you realize I can go and run one of the most valuable and mysterious defense companies in the world how do you go from that we also crushing it in

commercial and the most successful I just want to say just want to say he so modest too you know I do get accused but You know one of my heroes is hin rashina and he was hinr was an incredible poet I there no reason to learn German but except for to read Gerta and H and goto was essentially um like Shakespeare but he wrote in modern German so we struggle when we read Shakespeare because we're it's like being dyslexic you have to translate it you don't have the emotional vibe that you would have if it

was Modern English Gerta it's Modern English modern German but it's it's Shakespeare it's and and so valuable like I would highly recommend everyone here read uh Dr Fus and once a year like it's it's like it's it's the most therapeutic most insightful piece of literature and but any case the other my other hero was hin rhina who was a German Jewish poet um was so prominent in uh German culture that when the Nazis couldn't really get rid of him uh and so there were all These things all these pieces of poetry that they then turned

into being anonymous uh and um he wasn't that modest so whenever I get accused of being ill modest I think well you know we all have our um uh and uh re classic liberal by the way hin China was like essentially what you could call a classic you know modern American liberal um and uh um but the for the academic version of this is having a deep enough understanding of an Academic subject whatever it is and I don't actually think it matters uh as much what the it sharpens it sharpens your mind to understand what

a plausible argument is so like you know in business or you know there are many different ways of doing business by the way and you'll find the king reflects the court and they're like some Business Leaders here I really admire uh and look up to uh I would never know how to run a business the way They do and we look like a freak Show to any normal business person on the inside and we kind of are and it works um so but there is a thing of like what is the rigor at which the

argument is true so one of the things you can think about about about and Vicken Stein you know Vicken Stein wrote uh his first piece of work and sent it in uh to his adviser his adviser said I'm not the amazing thing about this is there's nothing in this work that's wrong so you can think About that it took Vicken Stein to write a paper where nothing is wrong and one of the things Academia can help of course the the disaster we have in modern Academia is essentially you're learning a religion but if you were

learning Academia the rigor at which an article an argument or a concept could theoretically be true is a real rigor not even that you're right but that you're not wrong and I I think like you know obviously there's a translation Function when you're when you know we most people at Palante here are not particularly interested in having a lecture on heiger when they ask me how we should you know like for my feedback which honestly they don't always ask for um and often don't listen to like we have pans here they all attest to that

um uh we we do not have a culture where people follow my orders inherently and but I can mostly convince them um but the rigor of is this plausibly true is a Rigor that I got at home uh from because um the other thing is it's like because also interacting and negotiating with two highly intelligent unusual and difficult people my parents and trying to get my way is really hard and bu builds up a lot of skills that and this is why I think partner selection by the way is crazy important because you you have

to you want children business or romance or both in everything because you need you Need like the rigor of how do you convincing convincing my parents of something even if I was wrong and they were right is very hard so that sets a standard but then that standard is high and it's just like convincing a worldclass professor who's not politically biased so the kind of people you have roaming around here of something is actually hard and it's that rigor that actually sets the standard for doing important things in any part Of life and here where

I completely agree with my parents and it sounds like you know I have this thing where I'm interested in things that are true but not plausible so this is a true but not plausible statement I really believe doing something important is crucially important for fulfillment so that part is true and plausible and I don't believe that the money part of it is more valuable you just need enough money so you don't have to think about money And if you stay off meth and you live below your means you'll have enough money for that probably and

uh and so but then it's like how do I do something important with my life and the rigor of what it means to be plausibly right certainly not wrong is a skill that will save your life in your career and in your personal life over and over and over again that was an unintentional segue to your book because what the book is about I think the premise of the book Is about how Silicon Valley is full of some of the brightest cleverest Minds in the world and they are focused in or ly on building things

to make our lives slightly more luxurious and better on apps and social and things that will be forgotten and they're unmowed from a broader National project tell us a little bit more about that thesis and more to the point how that happened how did silic if the pretext of the book is Silicon Valley lost its way and you Could look at something like the Manhattan Project the marriage there between Tech and government as the high water mark how did and then we'll talk about Doge and maybe how doge is trying to remarry those two things

but how did Silicon Valley lose its way and become unmowed from a sense of having a sense of purpose Beyond really the market and Beyond these little companies how did it become unored from a sense of a broader commitment to America in the West um well there's a lot to that question and um it's I think um it it I don't know exactly where to begin but um start with what it should look like well I I think and again this is where I'm super into Academia still um I I I the classic positivist way

to look at the world is that you know you'll have something like the value of an object will be measured by the market and the value of the the object will have its value will correspond it'll be Something called Proto optimality which I'm sure you guys spend time thinking about here um have you guys heard of that they love that this is a conservative school proba every so but it's basically the market is fair and um I believe that and I see and I there's an AI Riff on this but I I think that true

Talent um management of Talent so let me do the management of talent for you how do you avoid becoming a sophist successful person who's super unhappy Which should be like let's assume everyone here can be Su it's um so you I think you want to do Endeavors that are larger than yourself that are more meaningful than yourself and where that endeavor probably can't be fully monetized uh and some people have that in their personal life some people have that in their professional life I'm pretty skeptical this this is where of like of the idea that

the market is rational and that if you the market will Price things in terms of their true value and so like it was more it was better for our society and Argo better for everyone in the society to have our most technical people building things that were both good for government and good for society but it's much more difficult and it's much more dangerous to build them uh and and so and then again I think what's in the book that I think I think our educational institutions have really Done us a disservice one of the

reasons I wanted to come here was and what is that disservice well the primary disservice was somehow teaching people that it's better to believe in nothing uh than into something whatever that something is like what you're really learning at an elite school is it it is there's an IDE the world is already understanding understandable and you should just follow this pre-ordained Arc and that pre pre-ordained Arc is a set of has a set of steps where you say you believe in something but actually you believe in your self-advancement and um and that then I think

what happened in Silicon Valley by the way there's been again Testament to America a huge shift I think you know it's like and and so like and that's partly because the ideas changed but qu quite frankly somewhat ill modestly it's because pounder did so well and now Other companies are doing very well and people say well I can do something that is a higher purpose and make money and and so and that again I'm not arguing for a non-free Enterprise because like if if you couldn't make money building Palante cheer or other defense Tech startups

the idea would be an idea they study in some faculty by people who can't get a job and um but but I think we went way too too far on this you know we are going to build things in the Easiest way possible um and those things um are at the margin going to be detrimental um for our society but the other way Academia really screwed us was it I think it's very hard to build things if you don't have a hierarchical notion of what's good and bad like why would you build something for the

us and our nation if all nations are equal or our nation is worse than other nations why would you take the risk and the effort to build something hard and Difficult you might fail at uh that would Advance our defense if you're defending our if our culture and the people we're defending oursel against are as good as rational as moral as likely to behave rationally as willing to protect the rights of various groups that have received discrimination why would you do that and the obvious answer is you would only do that if you're a Zealot

or insane or and that's why the reaction to us in the beginning was so Negative uh because like we were calling into question the very hierarchy of of of norms meaning non-h hierarchy of norms that powered the decisions people were making and then and then and then you can ask getting to these why why have we had such a corrosion of legitimacy it into like you know one of the things I like to ask people who in private rooms where who are defending things I don't think are defensible and I ask these people okay I'm

a kind of a Reformed old school liberal Progressive who was very unhappy and now had to leave like the Democratic party and whatever but I asked them in private name an institution that's run by the things you believe in that actually works any institution that where works is more it less is put into the system that goes out and the answer always is basically I don't I don't accept your frame which is by the way one of the most disingenuous like the number of Times I because I I love to have these fights kind of

in private rooms where people can be more honest I like that and I I run into very famous people and I asked them about like all sorts of things like how can you possibly accept my favorite rant obviously is you built a party or an institution universities other universities the primary focus of universities in the last 20 years has been anti-discrimination good I'm not in Favor of non-meritocratic discrimination nor is anyone I've ever met it you know like in favor of discrimination okay well if you're so not in favor of discrimination how can you P

how can you accept discrimination against the a people that has the longest history of discrimination in the history of humanity and the answer is I don't accept your frame if he is like okay well you know uh how do you how can you possibly tacitly defend Hamas I Don't accept your frame how could you how can you explain that you know there's I quoted like judge them by the fruits they bear how can you explain your ideology where there's not a single institution that you can say in private no one's putting you on this spond

in public that you believe is actually working by the very basic standard that you put in two units out you get two and a half you put in two units you get out more than two units and the answer is I Don't accept your frame and the now what's fascinating to me and is in the book is in most cases it's because uh they're they're doing this thing that you you will encounter everywhere in your life and something that Academia and I think actually my book can help protect against which is they are actually a

product of some ideology they become a product of some ideology that presupposes a universalistic Undiscussable presupposition behind which there's a grift and and and that and that pre proposition that they cannot they will not allow that it becomes religious in the sense that you cannot problematize it in academic language and not academic language would be discuss it uh creates a system where the dysfunction of the institution does not matter because the dysfunction cannot be discussed outside the frame which they defined which Cannot be called into question and the whole institution is sinking and you still

can't mention and this is like and and this is I think what Classic Education prevents it prevents you from becoming the product one thing that you've talked about a lot is this idea of for lack of a better term wokeness as a kind of P you've called it a Pagan religion why do you think it has been so seductive to people and why has it Succeeded stealthily and then I think in full blossom over at least the past two decades at conquering pretty much all of Academia pretty much all of the Legacy press and we

could go on and on and on why has it been so effective if it's so morally corrupt to I mean just today like as as as as the bius children were being buried with their mother in Israel at Barnard College you know one of the most expensive schools one of the most elite Schools in the country you had students taking over a building basically you know covered in cheering for Hamas would be a polite way to put it how how has that happen well there's the the Pagan religion which I would call the so why

is it you could say well Pagan religion the religious side and I'm Pro it's it's not like we have Judaism Christianity Islam is like ancient religions that this is a thin new Ideology that probably I don't think it's going to survive but it it it is religious in the technical sense that you can't verify the assumptions uh because asking if the assumptions are are are right is heresy and so that's the religious side um I think the Pagan side of the religion uh is really comes out when when they're um praying to their high god

of anti-Semitism and then you have a separate issue of why why is this Movement pretty fixated on um it violating its core principle of anti-discrimination by discriminating against Jewish people the the oldest minority in the history consistent minority in the history of human civilization um and I think the reason why it's particularly aggressive on those issues is the it is violative of the Court premise of the religious side of the equation that you would have a Minority that is uh discriminated against and successful and that's pretty enraging so I also think obviously uh the Jewish

communi stand in for larger you know Western culture or participants in Western culture particularly people who'd be viewed as West I.E white males are bad so but it's like a hyper version of that um and then there's something I think quite subtle that's that you know I talked about more in my dissertation Than I do in the book which is people assume that a contradiction will render an ideology ineffectual but I think in political context uh contradictions can be quite charismatic and so the obvious contradiction of this is like turns it into a Feeding Frenzy

of you know the ideology can't make sense and therefore it's sensible and therefore we can you know burn Effigies I mean the pure Aesthetics of it it's like if you had I Mean I'm I'm very Pro First Amendment so like I'm in favor of annoying uh inappropriate speech right up to the standard as elucidated by the Supreme Court so danger direct threatening but if you just like took turned off the volume and watch what's happening these conferences or these campuses you would think it's a reaction of the KKK like MTH everyone's masked they're burning things

like it's like looks kind of like the KKK but you Know it's like so even that should be an aesthetic but it but it's that in that inversion that I think the movement becomes quite charismatic um and and so it and then it you know so it it is and one of the most interesting things about that movement is a charismatic thin Pagan religion can bring together Hamas and the feminist Department of in University and you know it's like these are people that don't work well together you know but but there's no actual the Contradiction

is charismatic um now on the more positive side for the rest of us we're like this is [ __ ] nuts and we're getting out and we're going to start fighting and I think I would say what's very you know the positive side of this is um I think a lot of people I'd include myself were like okay guys you know you're doing your this is dangerous and we're going to have to fight back let's talk a little bit about politics broadly and Then more specifically the first page of your book has this incredible quote

I had never read by Michael sandal I think he's a professor at Harvard it it says fundamentalists rush in where liberals Fear To Tread and I think if there's a line I'll just repeat it fundamentalists rush in where liberals Fear To Tread I think if there's a line that summarizes the giant sort of like big picture politics of the West right now It's that it's basically the center left the center even the center right in some cases is too afraid to touch topics let's say like Islam immigration borders and so what happens is that right

genuinely right-wing and sometimes nationalist populist right-wing movements are rising to power do you see that trend abating is that sort of the world that we are going to be living in for the next Decades of Our Lives what did you have in mind when you put that At the front of the book well I mean one of the things I'm actually proud about is the book was written a year ago and you know it's like I've had to reread it it's like it honestly feels like it was written last week it feels it feels very

fresh and I'm I'm happy and by the way Nick did a phenomenal job um and I would say in complete cander all 95% plus of the ideas are mine 90% of the writing is his and the writing is phenomenal and uh um and there's a complexity in there Because I think one of the things he really did very well was take more kind of dyslexic crazy batet crazy stuff combined with like Germanic education and put it in a form where the idea is intelligible and that took 10 years of me screaming at him but and

then book went really quickly and um uh and there are a lot of basic and I mean this like foreign to how you would teach uh Academia in this country uh it's very Germanic under the hood um and but in a Completely fluent way and so um I I think like if you look what's happening in Germany you you have historically in Germany you had really three big parties go into complete detail here but you had essentially a center right party which would be equivalent to basically old school Republicans you have the social Democrats which

would be you know equivalent to Democrats if Democrats were focused on the working class um and You have uh essentially what they would call Classic liberals thinking it's a some real subtly there's a small party called the um fdp but um and then more recently out of this um 68 kind of revolution in Germany and in France you had the green party which was started in Frankfurt um and you have now a couple parties the very leftwing party I won't go into all details but super interesting history and you more Recently have the alternativ for

dostein which is the solidly right party but it's it's actually right different than how but um the the thing that's very relevant to education is about 30% of Germans um probably would welcome more migration but only about 15% of those people it's like issue number one and 100% of those people vote for the green party and so the green party has a rational reason their constituents Believe in this basically no one else in does and it's like the the the classically leftwing party most of their constituents are against it everyone in the conservative party is

and everyone obviously voting for uh the right-wing party is and even on the new leftwing party most of them this is not issue one and what's relevant for this book and for your life is the the greens have set set up a situation where because they say you could never coales coales with The farri party they as a matter practice control 100% control migration politics in in in Germany so you must never allow someone to control what your policy is based on who would support it and like this is like a classic thought trap and

they completely have controlled and in my view uh create a situation that is it is crazy dangerous because every time time in Germany there's a terror attack in the morning in the evening the greens are Out protesting against the far right it literally happens completely crazy and there are a lot of Terror attacks and then there's like you know and not all but most of those Terror attacks are from people uh from Syria and Afghanistan and there's a whole a whole swas of crime like sexual crime that didn't exist basically when I lived in Germany

and do exist now um and obviously that doesn't mean that everybody in from any group is ipof Facto guilty but the fact is you obviously should have a different migration policy and and what H what has happened over and over and over in Western countries is you get a I cannot touch this idea of this person touched it literally becomes taboo and then the people who convince you of that control the society in a in a way that that is destructive and corrosive for the society um how's that functioning here with Trump uh well I

mean I think on the Democratic side which I'm more of an expert in historically it's there the idea of stopping Mass migration illegal migration is a completely Progressive idea I grew up in a 100% Progressive family we didn't we didn't I didn't I don't think I really met anyone conservative classically defined until Joe lale or Peter teal well until I yeah much later in my life and I I Peter and I spent a Lot of time fighting about issues and and it's been very productive relationship over a very long time and um also you know

one of the C you know crazy important thinkers uh and Builders uh in the world and um uh it it uh the but um the the the the core problem in the Democratic party what is that if president Trump says he's against migration A like you I'm sure you realize the the economic effects of illegal migration are disastrous for poor people in this country disastrous Bernie Sanders used to talk about this this was the classically progressive position and by the way it's particularly bad for anybody who is like unlikely to be hired for whatever reason

and so classic progressives uh when I grew up were the most against uh uh illegal migration of any group and I remember at my my dinner Table like you know know the the evil Chamber of Commerce one of the ways they were evil is they were in favor of this they were in favor of tacit illegal migration to America and that was going to be bad for workers that was a card carrying talking point at every progressive table when I grew up and the idea that you would now again the Democratic party has constituents that

will disproportionally suffer under unlimited migration This country is not in favor of illegal migration is actually in favor of legal migration uh and so it you literally are committing suicide because you can't acknowledge that someone has done a better job of adapting a actually Progressive issue and this happens like you know there are many reasons why the Democratic party and Progressive movements are going to really struggle in the west over the next I would guess 10 years then one of the reasons actually in my view is like it's not in the book is whatever you

want to call AI just call it simplify it something works okay so like I have my version it would be large language models and my product okay but something it's like people assume that the pendulum is going to swing back like if you I I know smart German thinkers and smart Democrats and when I talk to them in Private they all say the same thing it's really true but the pendulum is going to swing back I don't think the pendulum is going to swing back and partly because they think the pendulum's going to swing back

they're making no radical change just like you know one of the blessings of building palent here is I've interacted with thousands of companies thousands and every clandestine military service in the west basically in some form and mostly directly and you know People always think you'll meet an institution that is massively underperforming and the person in charge will be like tomorrow will be better that's how you know it's going out of business and it it's like and so like I don't believe the pendulum's going to swing back I think that part of the reason it is

unlikely to swing back is because the progressive left has seated all rational issues to other parties right and far right and these issues are Legitimate and at the very least they cannot be banned from the Public Square like you know the First Amendment the Second Amendment immigration when do we go to war does a government work do the inputs into the government are they stronger you know is it a functioning institution does anyone believe it's a functioning institution which is also sometimes different um and uh and then the position of the progressive person should be

and historically was these Institutions really have to function if you want more money for the government or anything let's just say you have a business I Business Leaders here somebody wants money for the business and they want a lot of money what is the first thing you're going to make sure is true the business Works they have a product they have good people the people are motivated they're honest they are dedicated if you want a society where the institutions get better and maybe They need more resources the first thing you have have to do is

make sure the institutions actually work and there's no difference here between a government or a non-government or a military institution except for the military in my view is the most valuable thing we can have and it really has to work and and so what what now what why do why are why are like old school the the people running these parties unlikely to change because they've somehow either been Productized in their thinking like that's true but I could never admit it's true which is a big deal like yes it's true yes it's true we have

a problem with immigration and terrorism yes it's true we have a problem with like illegal migration yes it's true we have a problem where one party seems to be comfortable with discrimination but you're not allowed to admit it so that's half the problem the other half of the problem is a lot of these parties do the Core people who actually wake up in the morning and actually are pass passionate have ideas that the rest of us think are Bonkers crazy and I don't mean like crazy like I'm viewed I mean just crazy like Germany should

open its border again Germany should invite everyone to bring their relatives America should not do anything about migration we shouldn't talk about like what does it mean to uh have meritocracy we shouldn't talk about what does it mean to have institutions Intellectual life that are no longer intellectual that are actually run by people who should be intellects but are just basically high priest and priestesses of a Pagan religion that nobody wants and no one voted for and then the very simple question would be well if you are engaged in a religious Endeavor which I support

that you have a right to do why should I pay for it why is society paying for these Elite institutions Like and how much should we pay right like what it okay Doge yay or nay oh yeah I'm very I I mean I'm positive very positive y why hasn't I mean I guess they've only been working for like 30-some days but do you think that they'll go after the kind like I think if people saw normal Americans that their tax dollars were going to fund like queer dance therapy at Colombia which is probably a real

class at my alma moer they would be horrified By that well you know the primary reason I'm supportive of and by the way there's one of the great things about Doge is now companies are saying well you know how do I get the waste Fraud and Abuse already become a verb like literally I got an email saying we need to Doge this so it's there's the obvious fraud waste and abuse and then there's the okay does it work how well does it work what value am I getting from I the the the central issue again

and that unifies all these Things is you cannot have you cannot expect you cannot expect Society to support something that is not supportable it's not supportable to to have government institutions wasting huge sums of money and then you have so the waste then you have things that may not you might not want to call Waste but are clearly things that none of us want to pay for with our own money and it is our money uh and then you have a Question of how what are the unit economics of what you're doing um the let

me give a slightly different Riff on this uh one of the most important insights I had when I was in Germany is that I you know I don't really talked about one but I haven't really I I went around and talked to older Germans okay well what were you thinking you know what happened of course in Frankfort um all the old Germans were like oh none of us actually were Involved in that was a complete lie so it was like an Enlighten so of course nobody was pro-nazi right so but then I know a family

in a small village that were super nice to me and like took care of me and gave me a coat like really decent wonderful old school family and I talked to the father and I was like I asked him and he was like look we were all Nazis and the only person who wasn't was my dad and I could not figure out why he Wasn't until years later and then I I talked to him about like about like why did you become and these people were like became Democrats and built the German Society they were

my estimation is they were in no way you know National socialists anymore and what became very very clear in the conversations was they moved to become Democrats or you know Republicans pro Democrat democracy because what they saw was you know judge democracy by the Fruits it bears and we make the mistake at our Peril in the west to forget if we do not deliver fruits to our people in the form of a better fairer healthier Society we will lose people the de the thing about American democracy that is incredibly unique is most of us unlike

any other Society were born into this and have one essential frame so the for for us the danger is not becoming to believe in it or having a thin belief in it which I Think is what you are going to see if the West doesn't get his act together in like Europe uh for us the central danger is um you know how do we stop the threat from universities that really are not Believers in our principles as a nation from corroding those principles to the point where we are then not a exceedingly rare country where

in fact we do not have we are not judging the value of democracy purely based on the fruits it bears and then as a kind of a Dialectic we bear we profit more from those fruits by having a stronger better more resilient decent society that can do many things at once and and it's like and I and I and I like in the building the business and in writing this book and in my personal views those interactions where I saw the the institution must bear fruits completely changed how I thought because what I had learned

at Elite universities in an iodite elite family was that people were Purely uh living in as an extension of values those values could would never be called into question and I I think again the the we we have to be you know one of the reasons I want to speak here is I believe you are Builders of this and do not underestimate the impact you can actually have have if you you know in the battle I battle of ideas to we were talking about this earlier is the reason it's crucial in this country is because

to the extent we Lose like what I would say a deep belief in the First Amendment a understanding of the necessity of the Second Amendment an understanding of a right of privacy the a logical addendum of the idea of fairness one of the crazy things about America it's the only country right now with a vibrant the the Delta between America's techine and every others is huge and why is that well we organize around ideas We Believe In fairness and Meritocracy um we're willing to supplement Sub sub to to suppress our ego in the service of

a larger concept we're not over overly political actually in building things and we get to keep the fruits of our labor in a way that in many other countries you couldn't and this is totally unique and uh and but because it's Unique uh you know we don't we may not defend it as much as we should because we just assume it's normal it is not in Any way normal and I spent a lot of my life in in a culture which has produced incredible good and bad things in Germany and like what but we and

even compared to Germany this is something that is not replicable and we should be willing to fight for it I would say last and maybe want to ask a couple questions before I run out of energies uh but last not least what it is really important whatever people are very different in how they fight um some people in this Room I admire greatly because they fought quietly I I won't out any of them but you know and gone into places I couldn't have gone it when you know after October 7th uh and some people like

me are willing to just you know throw a couple punches and I don't I think you have to be honest about where you are in the fighting chain but I do think a willingness to fight is very important and um and you know there's Unjustified and non- Justified Violence there's Justified and unjustified action in public and and people are have different proclivities but you know um being willing to especially fight on the side of like thoughtful Liberty is much more valuable uh especially since most people don't want to do it um than one would imagine

and it really does reshape how people see things if you win okay let's take some questions from you guys I hope there's a okay perfect I know you Yeah we met at uatx live please go ahead and guys try and keep the question short so that we can get to as many of you as possible I want to go back to your terrorist killing comment um you talked about you should have pride in an occasional use of violence and at the University of Austin we're having a very heated but Lively debate about whether we should

be an open or closed society and there are illiberal influences that always want to come into these sorts of Places that don't really have a stasis yet and so I'm wondering what violence if any should we use to keep a liberal University liberal well you know H had this famous Hiner H had this famous thing where is like the pins and needles that you're trying to they were they were confiscating intellectual works and the Prussian Army and he was like you can't confiscate the pins and needles of my Sharp mind so I would encourage you

University to use the pin and needles of your sharp mind uh to win intellectual battles on an intellectual playing field so I don't think any other form of violence besides your intellect is warranted and I and I completely celebrate and welcome people with views that I find somewhat apparent but the right response the intellectual response is this is these are the reasons I think you are wrong and by the way in the battle to win that you know you know Really you using your sharp mind to humiliate their their their intellect their purpose their position

I think that's totally kosher and welcomed but but but nothing beyond that now uh and I would say and then people who violate you know want to move to other terrain of of debate meaning other forms of coercion that's just not what a university is about when I say using violence I mean you know America and our allies you know taking out people that Are planning to not meet us on the battle intellectual planing field but on the plane of violence and there I'm quite merciless I think we should raise rise early and kill but

in in like on the on what in universities and in broader life uh we want to think about the the magic and important nature of our first amendment which you can celebrate by being in dialogue with people you find offensive thank You all right so U Mr karp um in your opinion how should we actually help the working class of the United States uh well that was a trump impression huh I'm a senator from Vermont oh um well I me it you know um I do think having regulated the first thing is you have to

force the problem to be a problem by closing at stopping illegal migration to this country um and the Second you know like that that we make these things into Secrets but it's like at the your income potential will be directly correlated within a couple gener Generations so it's not immediate to your educational level basically and so like making sure that we get early and Effective Education to people uh the the the other so that that's kind of obvious and I think the other obvious thing is um you Know you really have to stop violence in

these neighborhoods like no one's going to no one's going in to teach somebody in a violent neighborhood and I I do think you know our our you know unfortunately like the the version of wokeness that where people in charge of these violent neighborhoods espouse ideologies that do not stop violence will never stop violence are basically keeping a permanent underclass um and I would say the other thing I think that We could adopt from Germany Germany has three different kinds of high schools so you have academic high school and you have two kinds of Vocational High

Schools and those Vocational High Schools produce really highly technical workers and uh and those workers by the way like at Airbus where we are you know they're very big user P here a lot of the people go to vocational and and this is I think our classic you know thing we have of high school here I think we Could learn a lot from Germany Switzerland and other countries where you have you know you you train people and you could do training especially with AI and other things with people you could lift people pretty high last

not least um you know the convergence while many of you may opt to embibe and occasionally do drugs it's uh you know I had a lot of fun I was not that into heavy that kind of stuff well but in Germany I had a lot of fun I won't go Into it but and that's important um it you know like intergenerational drug use um is has a huge impact on performance um intergenerational uh prison attendance has a huge impact on uh performance I think the true and deeply Politically Incorrect uh thing about this is you

the the best thing you could do in in this country to help people in the uh deep underclass meaning the chances that they'll get out Of it are low is expose them to religion and I suspect having creating a low violence High religion uh environment where you begin to meet people at the educational level they're actually at and rais slowly uh could have real impact over time combined with reducing immigration so that people just can't hire people you know from other sources I think you might see real impact there thank you for your support I

was really this is really for Mr car I was really glad to hear you talk about pleaser earlier you mentioned him a lot in your dissertation especially on Lutheranism and how it created like a culture of interiority in Germany I was wondering you mentioned Calvinism you mentioned wokeness here as being like other unstated unpraised assumptions that Define American society are there any other like Creeds or specific beliefs that you think fulfill like a similar function either to Lutheranism or to like interiority like a focus on interiority in American society well there's a lot to your

question um plnar was um what's called a um uh phenomenological Anthropologist which is a fancy way of saying um he believed in that the structures inherent in it between human beings would affect human relations and that may not seem very important kind of in the jargony way I just expressed it but um it it just Probably the biggest influence on political theory is actually that and other haiger plnar um uh hurl um and so I won't I'll leave that for now but be uh that and pnar wrote this incredible book that is I may not

be translated called the late nation which explains a lot of how America's organized in what makes America successful from his perspective and a phenomenal book um the uh the the the Calvinism comment is from you know obviously vber which I hope People are reading the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism uh which is um you know his idea was that they the anti-marxist idea of capital accumulation was Calvinists believe that success was an indication that God Favored you and therefore focused on building uh uh Enterprise and and Industry and and actually I think though

Silicon Valley one and I think Silicon Valley was deeply calvinist in America is a deeply calvinist meaning doing Building something important is good as opposed to what you will find the Lutheran critique which is kind of opposite um I think the the thing I there's the thing I don't talk enough about in the book is just American concept of fairness as a kind of civil religious concept and I I think one of the reasons why we can push more responsibility to the edge and do less reg goj stuff is you know there are American but

most Americans are deeply Fair and like a lot of what we discuss about you know discrimination other things really would fall under the rubric of That's Not Fair and we think of that as not an important concept but I think it adjudicates a ton of things in our society that otherwise are hard to adjudicate um and so yeah if I were writing an addendum to this book I would probably try to work more on those kind of things and then the role of uh yeah inequity and in with AI thank You Dr in your book

you argue that late capitalism detached from existential threat divides the Mandate for corporations between profit and the national interest um given that does that suggest that state capitalism is a feasible next phase of our economy and if so then how would the ends of that economy be determined and in the book you do mention geopolitical dominance as an end if that is the final end then why do you discount culture and cultural Hemony as valid goal like tool and a goal for the state you guys have multi-prong questions I don't know how I'm going to

get through all of them but um we're going to do a few more yeah I'm not I'm not in favor of State controlled capitalism mainly because I don't think it'll work so like I think it's a matter of theory but as a matter of practice I mean the book has a lot of contradictions in them and they're Purposely supposed to be there the way we run paler is like we have tech tech implementation devs and people who actually interact with normal humans completely separate so and most companies you wouldn't do that at paler that's how

we roll and it's worked for us and so I tend to think like yeah having people focused on National interest or higher things leads to better companies which leads to uh companies that are more valuable even if They're structurally you know undervalued like paler we were viewed as worthless for you know 18 years how much are you worth today I don't the company I don't know either actually but I I we're worth a lot and it's the beginning of our journey I believe that for lots of reasons but it's always like I tell people this

it sounds like propaganda but we we are we are very well positioned for what we're doing and people it's like No One Believes us a Palent jle 3 years later and then they're like oh man that [ __ ] was right but any case so State capitalism um I don't I I I push back on that I I don't believe that all cultures are equal I think the book actually if you were to give this book to like the philosophy Department political Theory or literature Department of any Elite School in this country they will burn

it but they'll burn it for a lot of reasons but the primary reason they will burn it Is I am not saying all cultures are equal in fact I'm saying this nation is incredibly special and we should we should not view it as equal we should view it as Superior um and there was a third question yes it was on discounting culture and tools for culture such as the social media apps that you criticize yeah or omit mentioning like Tik Tok in the book yeah well I I mean I'm not super Pro dedicating our best

town in the world to those things I think it was a huge mistake and I I wish we lived in a world where fewer smart people did that but do you think that they have a role to play in The Narrative battle in the battle for ideas well I mean they for yes and the thing about these those companies that's super interesting again not in the book but you know when you I I I I survived an Academia I don't know how I'm going to get through all these Questions I may not be able to

get through of them so um but I survived in Academia uh in at the Sigman for institute in Frankfurt with probably you one of the crazy things about my life is who pretends now they never knew me didn't work with me it's like so it's like you would think German Academia would be like like yeah we finally got someone with a salary but it's like like I've been disappeared like it's like it's like the artist that formerly Worked at this building they blow up the building so uh and I I worked I survived in Germany

by getting a job at the Sigman Foy Institute um which uh it was I learned a really lot from talking to analysts and but in any case the basis of uh analytics of of spian but but any cases do you have a a primary Ary and secondary uh processing system basically and the primary processing system is subconscious and the secondary one is conscious you can argue back and forth I Was like the local immigrant I had to write every week I wrote up Freud and that's how I survived every week was Freud and this Freud

and the vacuum cleaner Freud and this so I read a lot of Freud and Freud is a phenomenal right like one of the things it's whether you have been trained never to read him or trained to not like him the guy was the one of the true artists of in writing the German language so Freud and ichina were incred like masters of German so Any case um the social media thing the reason it's so impactful in my view is they connect right to your primary subconscious and alter how you see things and they're very very

effective at this and this is why yeah I've historically been you know P here very publicly skeptical of allowing Tik Tock to control the algorithm because you know the classic way of looking at this is they're you're having a dialogue with them that's rational but what's actually Happening is they're controlling your subconscious and so you know uh and and so and that's what they're built to do and then of course they have a huge incentive to do this because you're just like click click click click click we got to get through a couple more okay

let's do let's do three more I I'll tell you what I will come back and we can do like a more seminar academic thing uh and then whoever wants we can start with just questions because that's probably More valuable than me just going off on my guys I had a ton of questions on Israel Ukraine China if you have questions on any of those things feel please feel free but whatever you're thinking in our Roman history class um which Professor Reinhardt little different little off topic but um we went we went over um pius's concept

of an cyclosis in that um regimes rise and fall in a cyclical manner um and he details how democracies Tend to fall when its constituents become entitled to their Liberties and succumb to demagogues and factions and make the Democratic process um unable to proceed and i i i t I tend to find anecdotally this to be the case in that first generation immigrants tend to have a higher proc proclivity to civic participation because they recognize American Liberties um do you think that natural-born citizenship is ultimately Detrimental to maintaining the American Republic very provocative question and

let me give you a provocative answer no and now the classic way you're supposed to answer this question is like because IM ANS are so important and like half immigrants like me coming back and lots of uh and immigrants you know you are taking people forget the obvious people who come here are often truly unusual in their society and therefore create unusual results and and I mean I don't Have to list the results but obviously the Manhattan Project Einstein many of the tech leaders of this nation and actually when you go below the hood many

of the people that build tech companies at paler we have a lot of people particularly people children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants I I would say my least I have a lot of Politically Incorrect ideas but the idea that I would say in my view is the least Politically correct is I believe that in in internalizing the ideals of America is often a many many generation project and I think the people you know building the company and having the grammatical structure upon which you can build it are two different things and I I think

internal just take the first and second amendment if you like understanding those really in your gut that is a many many many generation thing for most populations and I have a great reverence For uh people in this cult culture who have been here for hundreds of years and I and I and I like I live in the Backwoods of New Hampshire and with you know and so I I I kind of I think these concepts are take a long time to internalize and believe and I'm super and I and I I think that's the contradiction

is yeah sure a lot of the builders in this country come from other countries and I support that I like that and I have a history of essentially re Coming back and my my dad's family you know were you know they were in um you know it's essentially Alon am Manzo Southern Germany Austria Switzerland lanstein for a thousand years um but yeah no I take the other side of that but it's a great question thank you I have a question for both of you in short there was a trend in England where the printing press

gave everyone the ability to speak freely the crown abused that to censor its citizens And to control the narratives and then after King Charles was beheaded then we had free speech again and then Parliament censored again so free speech censorship by the crown Free Speech censorship by Parliament and now we have we had a have had a censorship issue in the last 20ish years and we have ex and other dissidents who are helping to stop this issue what does the next wave of censorship look like and how do we stop it well you want to

answer this no I Mean I look I I don't I I I like I I really believe in the First Amendment because these things are like again one of the things that you know Freud famously said was you know if humans weren't inherently violent we wouldn't have all these laws to prevent violence so we inherently societies will try to restrict information because there's power and money and and proclivities and Views I I think the most important thing We can do in this culture uh maybe Bar None is to affirm unpleasant uh somewhat uh idiotic stupid

and you know uh often heinous speech and the and again I would just say well why is this institution important the institution you're at with people giving me great questions it's because you know you are an institution that embodies uh free speech in the First Amendment and there is a reason why it is the first amendment it's like people forget the Banality of it's like it's not the Fifth Amendment it's not the 10th Amendment it is the very first amendment of our Constitution and why is that because humans inherently would like to restrict it and

you know and it's and and we all find something offensive or stupid or heinous or discriminatory and that's the speech we have to protect I'll just say that it will come because power is corrupting and it's very very hard to throw the ring into the mountain Um I think one thing I'm noticing 30 days into the Trump Administration obviously a lot of exciting things happening a lot of certainly from a journalistic perspective a lot of things to cover it's been like a Non-Stop fire hose I think that and I don't think it'll surprise anyone in

this room who's on X or any of these other platforms that the self-censorship that this moment like the the moment is rewarding the Strongest version of the argument in other words the moment and and the algorithm rewards the most extreme expression of things and what I'm noticing is a lot of the most thoughtful people that I know people who are not in the extreme not politically pin downable are sort of receding because this is not about State censorship it's about sort of self-censorship or pulling back I'm noticing that Trend um it's one of the reasons

that we built the Free Press is To sort of capture those voices um but I see that I don't see that dissipating anytime soon well I'm very supportive of Free Press and of you but I would say then fight then don't dissipate I agree with that no I know I'm just yeah but yeah I strongly agree with that but it's it's it's a really like politically and culturally it is a moment where the the the extreme voices are winning the day and how do you create a version of the argument that is nuanced And complicated

and thoughtful and makes room for other people that is as attractive and sexy and and viral I like that's a question that I'm thinking about a tremendous amount um you go to any podcast company and they will say to you straight up center right does not sell far right cells and you see that with everything happening and so I think that that's sort of where where my mind is is I'm thinking about like Building New Media into this environment Excellent I'd like to thank you both for coming out today my question is as a as

also a dyslexic um I have it rather severely that and I see it more as a strength than a weakness but um as a successful dyslexic what would you what advice do you wish you would have heard or what would you like to what would you like to what do you wish you would have known you sooner um oh it's uh H well you do have To um I would not have believed it um so I'm not sure if I had gotten the advice I would have really listened and I might have thought it's just

someone saying this and uh and I would have cut off mine or your arms to got get rid of the dyslexia and I might still actually because I do see it as like a limiting factor for intellectual Endeavors and like I just you know I read a lot in grad school I don't read as much as I used to I I find I I read probably more than most people running a business but not anything like what I would probably otherwise like I I acquire my information in lots of ways I I actually give the

same advice to every I tell everyone internally uh and I always make there's one person who worked at p t probably T me saying this but I tell people internally uh and everyone who wants to hear my words of great wisdom uh you think at a paler everyone's dyslexic I am the only person Who knows it and it's like and and then people are like what do you mean and I tell people um uh you if you think that you're equally in if you think you're you're intelligent in all areas it's only because in most

areas you haven't met someone who's really intelligent and you're just deluding yourself and when you enter like essentially a a world where in whatever Endeavor you're going You're you're you're not going to do well if the person sitting to left and right is much much better than you at something and the advantage that dis lexics have I mean there it's a broad term but a a very Baseline Advantage is you know there's certain things you should not be doing for a living most people don't realize this like the number of times I've had to explain

to a software engineer a Dev or a Delta there's two kinds we have you know uh Maybe you should not be involved in like you know they'll be one they'll leave and they like I want to I want to be a business executive starting a business I'm like you you don't talk to humans like they're like well I can learn that it's literally it's like sh it's like yes you can learn to be half stupid at that but you're living in a country where there are savants at this like or you know like you your

law I mean there's like a like your lawyers like oh No no I can do the math for you it's like no you can't it's like well I I did some math I'm like yeah I know that like uh or um or uh or you know writing a pounder like you know I mean like you know we we don't really hire we have a team of people it's very small that actually write writing really well is important to us and so I have well we have Z misus here uh who wrote C of the book

we have Jordan and Sam and these are like very very strong writer let me Give you a different version um in this is just purely I don't think it's business but I think this is business things I know something about so call it business Academia shooting um there's something called a blue note you don't know if you know the Jazz has a blue note note it it's a note that very few people can hear and almost no one can play uh every worldclass jazz musician can hear and play it the people who produce Jazz can

can hear it but can't Play it basically so to succeed in a profession you at a very high level you will have to either be able to hear or play the blue note and then and so the primary thing and that's just a blessed position and very few people can hear it or play it but but then there are people who can hear it and play it and they're like oh I think I'll play the green note and this happens all the time I've been involved in I've built co-built paler and I've been involved in

20 years and I've been involved in innumerable businesses so Prima fascia a dyslexic has an advantage over a lot of people because you you know where the Blue Note could be you certainly know where it isn't right and so and and you would think oh yeah it's a basic thing but it's not something the other now a slight other it comes in where uh I think I have a unusual advantage that is you know it's I process sparse and non-existent data like my family can Retain the data longer and and with a larger amount but

I can process and analyze data that exists or facts that exist or facts that don't exist much faster than they can and they're crazy talented and if you talk to people at paler you can talk to them they'll be like that's some crazy [ __ ] but he's usually right isn't that what you would say yeah basically thank you yeah and so uh Alex carp Um thank you all so much for being here I've interviewed a lot of people on this show you are totally singular um and the technological Republic I assume based on those

questions that a lot of you have already read the book in great detail but for those who haven't let's keep it on the New York Times bestseller list for a second week in a row Alex thank you so much [Music] [Applause]