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The CEO and cofounder of Palantir isn’t a fan of campus protests against Israel.
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He called the protests “pagan” and joked that some protesters should travel to North Korea.
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He also said he had “fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge” on his enemies.
Alex Karp, the CEO and cofounder of Palantir, said at a high-profile Washington, DC-based event that he wants to send college student protesters to North Korea as part of an “exchange program” to give them perspective.
Politico was the first to report Karp’s comments at The Hill and Valley Forum on Wednesday, which was live-streamed on YouTube. Other speakers at the event included the cofounder of AI startup Anthropic, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and several other members of Congress.
In a conversation about AI’s impact on warfare in Ukraine and Israel, Jacob Helberg, the senior policy advisor to the CEO at Palantir, mentioned “pro-Hamas slogans” chanted at “very prestigious universities.”
Karp claimed that some campus protesters were even pro-North Korean.
“We’re gonna do an exchange program sponsored by Karp,” he said. “A couple months in North Korea, nice-tasting flavored bark. See how you feel about that.”
Earlier in the chat, Karp took a shot at anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, where NYPD officers arrested 300 protesters earlier this week.
“Look at Columbia,” he said. “There is literally no way to explain the investment in our elite schools, and the output is a pagan religion — a pagan religion of mediocrity and discrimination and intolerance, and violence.”
He added that he thinks a “double standard” has spread across campuses where protesters dedicate themselves to “an architecture of antidiscrimination while dressing in masks and excluding the population that’s been most discriminated for the last 3,000 years.”
Palantir did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
President Joe Biden commented Thursday morning on the protests in a press conference, saying they haven’t led him to reconsider his stance on Israel.
Karp also said at the conference that he’s fantasized about drone-striking his VC competitors.
“I historically have been one that would rage against Silicon Valley venture people,” he said. “And I had all sorts of fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge — especially targeted — in violation of all norms.”
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