Real Alpha
Watch modeSubscribed

All-In · 3 min · Sep 9, 2025

China is best countered by strengthening the United States

Alex Karp says China applies pressure to expose weaknesses, and argues the U.S. should focus on its own stability. He compares that approach to Tai Chi and to competing in business.

Alex Karp

Alex Karp is CEO of Palantir.

Co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel and has run it as CEO, selling data and AI software to governments.

  • Chamath Palihapitiya, Host · Founder & CEO, Social Capital

    Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.

  • Jason Calacanis, Host · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH

    Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.

  • David Sacks, Host · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures

    PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.

  • David Friedberg, Host · CEO, Ohalo

    Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.

About this segment

Alex Karp says China applies pressure to expose weaknesses, and argues the U.S. should focus on its own stability. He compares that approach to Tai Chi and to competing in business.

From “Palantir CEO Alex Karp: Why the West is Destroying Itself, Data Empire, Skeptics, How to Win”, Sep 9, 2025. Watch the full episode

“it's their job to destabilize us. It's our job to be stable.”
Alex Karpat 33:50 · All-In33:50

Takeaways

  1. Treat domestic stability as a strategic priority.
  2. Karp uses Tai Chi as a model for understanding pressure.
  3. He says strong businesses avoid direct competition by building an edge.
Watch 2:57 from 31:51

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 13:34Palantir says its safeguards make data analytics harder to abuse6:30
  2. 22:19The West weakens when it stops valuing its own culture8:26

  3. 31:51China is best countered by strengthening the United States2:57

  4. One more moment in the full episode
Up next · BG2Xiaomi built a car factory in three years with 2,000 workers7:03

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 32:00

    We were able to designate these cartels as terrorist organizations, there's all this drugs flowing in, we're trying to shut that down. The precursors are still coming in very aggressively from China, and so I'm just curious, what is the geopolitical frame that we need to think about China in? How much are they facilitating everything that's happening at the southern border? How responsible may they be for the fentanyl epidemic in the United States? What should we do about it? Well, you know, it's funny, like, obviously, Palantir and I are wildly skeptical of the CCP, but, you know, I think I'm the highest ranked Tai Chi practitioner in corporate life in the world, and it's like, in, you have... You're like, sorry, say that again, you're like, S-level Tai Chi. Well, you know, like, that video, that was very high-level internal martial arts.

  2. 32:47

    I'm not at that level, but, I mean, among my corporate peers, it's like, yeah, I have the equivalent in VO2 max terms of like a 72 or something like that. And in Tai Chi, the kind of part of the culture that I admire works like in Tai Chi is you put pressure on all parts of the system to expose the weak part of the system internally of your adversary. And that is just the way Chinese, like at least Tai Chi martial arts works, even, I mean, not useful for fighting, but it is very useful for thinking Tai Chi and, or as useful for fighting as it, you know. So, and if you want to engage the way, the way an engagement with China works is you make your, or in Tai Chi terms, you want to engage with China, you better make sure the internal dynamics of this country are very strong. It's magically the external dynamics over there will shift.

  3. 33:44

    Are they trying to destabilize our country with fentanyl, with TikTok? And do you have concerns about that? Well, okay, obviously. Yeah, obviously. But again, I'll tell you what. So they're obviously... I'm in full agreement. No, but my version always of this is it's their job to destabilize us. It's our job to be stable. And it's like when you're... Most people here are running successful businesses.

  4. 34:09

    It's actually well said. It's our job to be stable. It's our stable. The Tai Chi version of you're not going to have to enter the fight if you're strong. There is no fight. If there's a fight, the famous martial arts thing is if you're in a fight, you're not a martial artist. Correct. And this is the same thing in business. When you get to the point where you're competing with someone, you've really fucked something up.

  5. 34:29

    If you look at the Palantir version, yeah, do FDEs, do ontology, do ontology, orchestrate them at scale, grow 93%. Man, people don't want, or work with the U.S. government.