Ep 153: Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar on Heretics, AI Weapons, and Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy

**Shyam Sankar** (0:00)
The reason we're going to win in whatever domain it is, is that we're crazy. Even we don't know what we're going to do when we get punched in the face. And I think that's actually an exceptional quality.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:08)
You're the CTO of Palantir.

**Shyam Sankar** (0:09)
So how do we give our service members that Iron Man suit? How do I make them superhuman?

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:14)
You're the 13th employee.

**Shyam Sankar** (0:15)
Most people were working at Gold Sh** Calendar Apps here. There was these 12 people who were like, yeah, we're going to solve problems in national security.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:21)
Palantir was a bunch of heretics early on.

**Shyam Sankar** (0:23)
We're not here to ring the next sale. We're here to transform the institution. That has led to a culture that is wildly focused on outcomes.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:30)
What are Shyamisms?

**Shyam Sankar** (0:31)
I described Forward Deployed Engineers as people that metabolize pain and excrete product.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:36)
I have to ask you about some of these magical AI weapons. The clash between Anthropic and the Pentagon.

**Shyam Sankar** (0:41)
You need people making these decisions who are accountable to the American people.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:45)
What made the Palantir culture unique?

**Shyam Sankar** (0:46)
It wasn't actually clear that we're going to succeed at all, but I'd rather fail working on something this important than succeed on building something completely trivial and worthless.

**Joe Lonsdale** (1:02)
Shyam Sankar is one of my favorite American innovators. He's been leading Palantir for over 20 years as its CTO now and built a lot of what the company stands for. He's a lieutenant colonel in the army, that's right, after making a billion dollars and changing the innovation world. He's also serving in our armed forces because he loves America. He has a great new book out that's a best seller called Mobilize. He's gonna tell us about the crisis of the American Industrial Base, how to revive what made us great, and how to prevent World War III. Let's hear from this patriot. Welcome to American Optimist. Really excited to have my friend Shyam Sankar with us today. Shyam, thanks for joining.

**Shyam Sankar** (1:35)
Great to be here with you, Joe.

**Joe Lonsdale** (1:36)
So Shyam, you've been a key leader at Palantir, you're the CTO there, you're Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. You have an awesome new book out, Mobilize. I think you're in town in Austin here, you're getting an award tonight. So you're the man of the hour. How's everything going?

**Shyam Sankar** (1:49)
Look, it's going great. I think that I'm so excited about the kind of the vibe in the country right now, the opportunity to fix so many of the problems that we've been staring at as it relates to the Defense Industrial Base, our national security, and mobilizing the country. So I'm pumped.

**Joe Lonsdale** (2:01)
It does kind of feel like the world came our way a little bit, huh? Like from the last 20 years.

**Shyam Sankar** (2:06)
Yeah, I think there are certainly a number of us who've kind of been seeing inside and outside of government seeing like the trends of the world. I mean, part of the thesis of the book is if you really go back to 2014, you have the militarization, you have the annexation of Crimea, the militarization of the Spratly Islands in 15, Iran with breakout capability for the bomb. You've had a pogrom in Israel, the Houthis holding Red Sea trade hostage, global trade hostage from the Red Sea, it's pretty hard to look at this and not think perhaps we've lost deterrence.
And as a country that spends a trillion dollars a year on defense, you know, how is this happening? Why is this happening? I think there are a lot of lessons from our past. You go back to World War II, the early Cold War, the fundamental innovative American spirit that actually provided for our defense.
Now we have a huge number of founders who've shown up to invest in the national interests. We have bold leadership throughout our military services to seize that opportunity. And I think this is the moment.

**Joe Lonsdale** (3:00)
I was really, really worried in 2015, 2016 where things were going. And it kind of like, I think a lot of us respond to that by jumping back in and getting our friends to jump back in. It does feel like it's gone the right way the last 10 years.

**Shyam Sankar** (3:10)
I agree.

**Joe Lonsdale** (3:11)
Well, you know, let's go back a little bit before we dive into the book and Palantir. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing. Your father grew up in a mud hut in India. You and your family were nearly murdered in Nigeria. And how did you make it to America? And what does this country mean to you?