U.S. must "absorb a lot of risk" in AI race, says Palantir's Karp

Driving the news: AI "could go wrong in lots of ways. But, again, I would say we need to absorb a lot of risk there, because it's either going to go right and wrong for us or it's going to go right and wrong for China," said Karp, who has long espoused West-must-win views.

• "I get yelled at all the time for Ukraine, ICE, Israel and generally telling the truth."

Zoom out: China's DeepSeek and pennies-on-the-dollar models scrambled AI watchers and raised alarms among national security analysts earlier this year.

• "We're not doing this in a vacuum," Karp told Axios' Mike Allen. "We are going to be the dominant player, or China is going to be the dominant player, and there will just be very different rules depending on who wins."
• "You will have far fewer rights if America is not in the lead."

Follow the money: Palantir, the world's 70th largest defense contractor by revenue, this year inked a potential $10 billion software-and-data deal with the U.S. Army and continued delivering to the service Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Nodes.

• The high-tech trucks promise to improve intelligence parsing and targeting via AI and machine learning. (Also involved are Anduril Industries, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris Technologies.)

The bottom line: "Honestly," Karp said, "the most important thing Palantir does is prevent war."

Go deeper: Palantir's $10 billion Army contract continues its D.C. win streak