Palantir CEO Alex Karp Recorded a Video About ICE for His Employees

Palantir employees have spent weeks asking institution enactment for answers connected the company’s enactment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). On Friday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp yet appeared to springiness in—sort of.

In an email sent to each Palantir employees, Courtney Bowman, Palantir’s planetary manager of privateness and civilian liberties engineering, shared a prerecorded, astir hour-long video speech with Karp astir Palantir’s engagement with ICE.

“On the backmost of caller events, interior conversations, and calls from galore of you to amended recognize however enforcement enactment is wrestling with questions cardinal to Palantir’s spot successful the satellite today, I sat down with Dr. Karp earlier for a longform discussion,” Bowman wrote successful the email, viewed by WIRED. “To beryllium clear, our nonsubjective successful this speech was not to screen each item of each contention that graces the liveliest of institution Slack channels, nor to afloat assuage each interest that each of you whitethorn transportation … Most of all, Dr. Karp has made wide his committedness to reinvigorating his nonstop engagement with Hobbits and this treatment endeavors to exemplary the signifier of rigorous dialog that should beryllium astatine the halfway of Palantir’s prized culture.” (Palantir enactment sometimes refers to employees arsenic “hobbits,” aft the fictional Lord of the Rings characters.)

The video did not reply circumstantial questions astir Palantir’s merchandise capabilities, however, oregon however ICE was utilizing Palantir’s products. Instead, the video said workers could motion nondisclosure agreements if they wanted much elaborate information.

Palantir did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

For astir the archetypal 40 minutes of the conversation, Karp failed to code questions astir the company’s contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that littered interior chats weeks before. Instead, Karp focused connected Palantir’s relation successful gathering and maintaining Western power—a taxable helium often broaches successful public-facing interviews and successful his astir caller book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.

Towards the extremity of the video, Karp turns his attraction broadly to migration enforcement, saying that Palantir volition not person a argumentation “that’s antithetic depending connected the president,” and that Democrats besides prioritized these issues nether anterior administrations. Karp specifically cited erstwhile president Barack Obama, who said that the US is some a “nation of immigrants” and a “nation of laws” successful a 2014 address. Karp besides argued that institutions readying to interruption laws bash not bargain Palantir’s products, claiming that the products’ method capabilities marque it hard to fell malfeasance.

While Karp declined to spell into much item connected what the products Palantir provides to ICE enable, helium offered workers the quality to motion NDAs successful bid to person one-on-one briefings. At the extremity of the email linking retired to this conversation, Bowman said that the video was conscionable the opening of the institution becoming much forthcoming connected its enactment with ICE. Bowman did not stock what further accusation workers could expect successful the future, but helium said the Karp video was “a measurement forward, not a completion” of Palantir leadership’s discussions connected its ICE enactment with staff.

The video came aft weeks of interior unit from workers. Soon aft national agents changeable and killed Minneapolis caregiver Alex Pretti past month, workers flooded Palantir’s interior Slack questioning the company’s relation successful the Trump administration’s migration enforcement, however the products provided enactment successful tandem with ICE’s goals, and whether the institution should beryllium progressive with the bureau astatine all. The prerecorded speech with Karp offered small penetration to their questions.

In interior Slack conversations reviewed by WIRED successful January, workers complained of a deficiency of transparency connected however the merchandise galore of them merchantability and physique enables ICE enforcement.