Inside Palantir: Building Software That Matters with Shyam Sankar

World events remind us that there is actually evil out there. Just horrendous barbarism is still possible. When a country goes to war, it's not enough to just have the Department of War fight these wars. It is actually the whole country. The idea that somehow the American people are not capable is the beggar's belief. I think our biggest risk as a country is suicide, not homicide. How do we win the AI race, particularly as it moves towards more physical AI and robotics, etcetera? The things that we did to to win in the past, we accidentally turned our back on, and there's an opportunity to reclaim that with vigor. In the moment right now, you could say, we need to build more web. We need to do this. We need yes. But the most important thing we need to do is The companies that won World War two weren't built to win wars. Chrysler made minivans. Every cereal box an American consumer bought was quietly subsidizing national security. In 1989, only 6% of spending on major weapon systems went to dedicated defense contractors. Today, it's 86%. The heretics who built the arsenal of democracy left for Silicon Valley, and the Pentagon lost its front door. Now some of them want to come back. Shyam Sankar has spent more than two decades at Palantir building technology for national security. He was commissioned into the US army and published Mobilize, arguing that America's real risk isn't China. It's losing the will to compete. I speak with Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer at Palantir Technologies, alongside a 16 z general partner, Catherine Boyle. So, Catherine, when we were talking about guests that we had to add on, Sean was at the top of your list. Why was that? You know, after the Jeremy Stern profile in Colossus and a lot of, I think, stories that have come out recently or podcasts that have come out about Shyam. He's one of these people that if you were in the know several years ago, you knew. He was the OG, like, fixer for everyone. You know, I think Trey Stevens, who's the cofounder of Anduril, came out on Twitter and said he's single handedly responsible for my career. John Doyle, so many of our founders have pointed to Shyam as the person who made their career and introduced them to Palantir, supported them in Palantir, but also sort of gave them wings to fly away from Palantir and to start something new. You hear that story time and time and time again. And Eric, you and I were talking about this. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I think Shom actually became more of a public figure. He was sort of the behind the scenes guy, the behind the scenes fixture. And I think the thing that really changed it was, Shom, and I'd love to to talk to you about kind of what was the inspiration for this. You …