美国间谍科技公司帕兰蒂尔（Palantir）首席执行官亚历克斯·卡普（Alex Karp）利用本周美国中期选举的历史性结果，为这家军事软件供应商宣称了一个意想不到的头衔：反战运动的先驱。帕兰蒂尔第三季度收入同比增长96%，达到23.1亿美元，尽管其股价在财报发布后下跌了8%，财报于周二发布，当时美国选民在投票箱中给予共和党沉重打击。
Alex Karp, CEO of US spy-tech company Palantir, used this week's historic US midterm election results to claim an unlikely mantle for a military software supplier: pioneer of an antiwar movement. Palantir's Q3 revenue rose 96 percent year-on-year to $2.31 billion, although its shares fell 8 percent following the results, which it reported on Tuesday as US voters were delivering a resounding defeat for Republicans in the voting booth.
对卡普而言，这些数字代表了“这一时刻已成为真正理解的焦点”，并可能有助于解释“我们社会正在发生的事情”。从首席执行官的角度来看，它们不仅反映了公司的财务表现，也反映了其整体“使命”。“这一使命的理由是，我们支持你们的超额收益（alpha），我们支持你们的主权。我们支持战士。我们很高兴能因为赚了这么多钱而更多地支持战士。但我们认为，我们有道德义务成为我们行业的主导者，”他对投资者表示。
For Karp, the figures represented "the reality that this moment has become a real focal point of understanding" and might help explain "what is happening in our society." From the CEO's perspective, they not only reflected the company's financial performance, but also its overall "mission." "That mission reason is we support your alpha [above average performance], we support your sovereignty. We support the war fighter. We are delighted that we can support the war fighter even more because we're making so much money.
对于关注卡普的人来说，这是熟悉的自利说辞：将帕兰蒂尔为军事和情报客户的工作包装成一场道德十字军东征，同时挑衅其批评者。“这里有一个更大的问题，即拥有一家围绕我们所信仰并至今仍信仰的世界上最重要使命建立的企业意味着什么，即支持我们的战士，[并]让他们回家，”他说。这一切并不妨碍他将帕兰蒂尔描绘成一股和平力量。
But we believe we have a moral imperative to be the dominant player in our industry," he told investors. For Karp-watchers, this is familiar self-serving shtick: turn Palantir's work for military and intelligence customers into a moral crusade, and goad its critics along the way. "There's this larger question of what does it mean to have a business that was built around what we believed and believe now is the most important mission in the world, supporting our war fighters, [and] bringing them home," he said. None of this stops him presenting Palantir as a force for peace.
“我们视自己为真正且可行的反战运动的先驱，”他在致股东信中写道。他在第三季度财报电话会上进一步阐述了这一点。
"We see ourselves as the pioneers of a genuine and viable antiwar movement," he wrote in his shareholder letter. He expanded on the point during the Q3 earnings call.
“我们的产品旨在避免战争，这意味着对手知道他们将遭受如此巨大的痛苦，以至于事实上不值得发动战争，同时也能增强社会凝聚力，因为我们将让部队更健康、更安全、毫发无损地回国，这会让我们的社会高效得多，”他说。这种反战说辞与卡普于2024年12月向支持唐纳德·特朗普的超级政治行动委员会“让美国再次伟大公司”（MAGA Inc.）捐款100万美元的行为显得格格不入。
"Our products are built to avoid war, meaning the adversary knows that they will have such pain inflicted upon them that, in fact, it's not worth going to war and also to create social cohesion because we're going to bring back our troops healthier, safer, undamaged and that makes our society much more effective," he said. That antiwar pitch sits awkwardly alongside Karp's $1 million donation in December 2024 to MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting Donald Trump.
随后，特朗普发动了针对委内瑞拉的美国军事行动，并与伊朗开战，尽管战事拖延，他却反复承诺后一场冲突将是短暂的。卡普在电话会议上未提及这两个话题。
Trump subsequently launched a US military operation in Venezuela and went to war with Iran, repeatedly promising the latter conflict would be short-lived as it dragged on. Karp did not address either topic on the call.
此外，卡普声称帕兰蒂尔“打造的产品能保护公民自由并阻止恐怖主义。如果不阻止恐怖主义，右翼极端势力就会抬头。如果以牺牲权利为代价阻止恐怖主义，我们谁都不想要那样。”这种公民自由的说辞也引发了对帕兰蒂尔与美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）长期合作关系的审视，该局对其锁定和拘留对象的待遇曾招致美国法官批评。
Elsewhere, Karp claimed that Palantir "built products that would protect civil liberties and stop terrorism. If you don't stop terrorism, you're going to get a radical fringe on the right. If you stop terrorism without rights, none of us wants that." That civil liberties pitch also invites scrutiny of Palantir's longstanding relationship with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose treatment of people it targets and detains has drawn criticism from US judges.
卡普似乎乐在其中，享受着他和同事们制造的争议漩涡。他还向投资者提供了这样的见解：“未来正在变成现在，而现在就是当下。”无论未来如何，他似乎坚信帕兰蒂尔有道德责任为之开出发票。®
Karp seems to enjoy the circus of controversy he and his colleagues have created. He also offered investors this insight: "The future is becoming the present and the present is now." Whatever that future holds, he seems confident Palantir has a moral imperative to invoice it. ®