DEFENSE/ICE/TECHNOLOGY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Alex Karp grew up in a liberal household and considers himself a progressive. He voted for Hillary Clinton, and he lives and works in Silicon Valley. Yet Mr. Karp, the chief executive of Palantir, has found himself increasingly at odds with his peers in the technology industry as it publicly distances itself from the government, particularly the Department of Defense, under President Trump. Mr. Karp readily admits he would prefer that Mr. Trump didn’t occupy the Oval Office. But he believes that Silicon Valley — already facing something of a crisis of user confidence over issues including privacy and foreign influence — is setting itself up for a fall…Employees at companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon don’t see it the same way. Google, under internal pressure, abandoned its contract with the Pentagon on Project Maven, which used artificial intelligence software to improve the analysis of imagery from drones. Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, has faced opposition from workers who want the company to end a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And Amazon employees have objected to providing facial recognition technology to police departments and other agencies. All of this has set off a quiet — but growing — debate across corporate America in the age of Trump: What does it mean to be a patriotic company when you vehemently disagree with your nation’s leader?”
–Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Silicon Valley Doesn’t Like Trump. It Can Still Work With the Government.,” The New York Times online, September 3, 2018