Shyam Sankar, the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir Technologies, is a prominent voice in the technology and defense sectors. Drawing from his extensive experience, he has shared numerous insights on innovation, strategy, and the future of technology.

On Technology and Innovation

  1. On the true value of data: "Data is not the new oil; data is the new snake oil. There is nothing inherently valuable about data – it is only valuable if you can use it to make a decision." [1]
  2. On the purpose of technology: "The world thought technology would be a great leveling force, but it has led to more winner-take-most, power law outcomes... Technology was supposed to enable the median human to do so much more, but it has actually made the very best much more valuable." [2]
  3. On the stagnation caused by technology: "The Great Stagnation is caused by technology and not despite it. Software in particular is suited to layers of abstraction turned obfuscation in a way hardware is not. AI only accelerates this trend." [2]
  4. On the commoditization of AI models: "The models are commoditizing. Yes they're getting better across both closed and open but they're also getting more similar and the price of inference is dropping like a rock." [3]
  5. On the limitations of AI chat: "I think chat is kind of structurally a dead end. It's not it's it's it's highly charismatic, but you can do actually not that much with it." [4]
  6. On the real value of AI: "All the economic value is is going to be in thinking about AI as a type of labor." [4]
  7. On human-computer symbiosis: Sankar is an advocate of JCR Licklider's "intelligence augmentation" (IA) approach, where algorithms and brains work together to solve problems, as opposed to a pure artificial intelligence (AI) paradigm. [5]
  8. On the problem with SaaS: "The SaaS industry is a frequent target of the Great Stagnation because it is chasing high margins rather than high value outcomes." [2]
  9. On the importance of implementation: While AI is powerful, it is "insufficient because it fails to diagnose the underlying systemic drivers of the productivity dysfunction, let alone redress them: implementation for advantage." [2]
  10. On automation and edge cases: "Automation is is limited by edge cases... The tool chain that enables you to capture, learn, feedback the edge cases to get there as quickly as possible is the winning tool chain." [4]

On Defense and National Security

  1. On the Defense Reformation: Sankar has authored a treatise arguing for a "Defense Reformation" to overhaul how the U.S. military buys, builds, and fights to ensure victory on the modern battlefield. [1][6]
  2. On the AI arms race with China: "We are at war with China. We are in an AI arms race... This war started long ago it was an economic war with the ascension of China to the World Trade Organization the greatest IP theft in history the greatest wealth transfer in history." [3]
  3. On respecting the adversary: "I don't think you can get away with the facile explanation that the Chinese just copy and we're the only innovators. We have to wake up with the respect for our adversary and realize that we are competing." [3]
  4. On the problem with the defense industrial base: The "Last Supper" in 1993 led to the "financialization of defense," where the focus shifted from innovation to dividends and buybacks. [2][7]
  5. On the failure of central planning in defense: "Everyone including the Russians and the Chinese have given up on communism except for Cuba and the DoD... the way we run it it is a centrally planned, you might say centrally unplanned, process." [8]
  6. On the irrelevance of requirements-driven processes: "If you're in a firefight in the time it really matters nobody cares what the requirement was they care about whether what they have is going to help them win." [7]
  7. On the need for agility: "The key competitive differentiator is agility how quickly can you respond to a new real." [7]
  8. On euphemisms in defense: "I think we've done ourselves a great disservice um using euphemisms like near-peer." [9]
  9. On industrial mobilization: "It is not about wartime mobilization; it is about mobilizing so that there is not a war." [1]
  10. Productivity over stockpiles: "Productivity is More Lethal Than Weapon Stockpiles." [7]

On Business and Strategy

  1. On the "Forward Deployed Engineer" model: Sankar pioneered Palantir's model of embedding engineers directly with clients to solve complex problems in real-time, a customer-centric approach that became a cornerstone of the company. [10][11]
  2. On the primacy of winning: "The thing that we hold sacred is the primacy of winning. It's this idea that we should all be thinking backwards from first principles of what's actually required to manifest the outcomes in the world that that matter." [4]
  3. On creating competitive advantage (Alpha vs. Beta): "You need alpha not beta you need software that's going to make you more different not more similar to the same shit that doesn't work." [12]
  4. On the nature of growth: "Real growth is scary, hard, periodic, and responsive to your environment." [13]
  5. On the founder persona: "The founder is not always right; initially, they are intuitively driven and can only fully explain their intuition over time." [1]
  6. On culture and rebellion: "I want to institutionalize the notion of rebellion... you got to bet on talent and the people and give them the space to run... this is an artist colony not a factory." [14]
  7. On the dialectic of change: "If you just completely accepted the world as is you would never change anything... And if you're completely pining away for a world that doesn't exist then you're just a dreamer... maintaining that dialectical tension I think is where all the value is created." [9]
  8. On "Cargo Cult" thinking: He warns against "cargo culting"—following processes without understanding the underlying principles—and emphasizes the need to anchor on whether something is actually working and winning. [2][14]
  9. On the importance of building: He chose to join a startup over consulting early in his career, believing that building is the primary purpose. [6][10]
  10. On competing on speed: The goal is to create a declarative approach to the backend, similar to what AWS did for infrastructure, to allow businesses to "compete on speed." [4]

On America and Society

  1. On American possibility: "My parents' journey showed me that America is not a place where everything is perfect, but is a place where anything is possible." [1]
  2. On domestic manufacturing: "Everything that we can make at home in America, we should make at home in America." [1]
  3. On energy consumption: "We should be using more energy, not less... The basis of modern civilization is energy and the more energy you use, the better your standard of living is – the more things are possible." [1]
  4. On the crisis of legitimacy: A "legitimacy crisis" in institutions, where things fail to work as expected (like doors falling off airplanes), breeds nihilism in society. [4][7]
  5. On the need for perspective: He speaks of his father raising him with a "stark sense of the counterfactual," contrasting the opportunities in America with the dangers elsewhere. [7]
  6. On security and privacy: "To us as engineers that sounded stupid like don't both of those things matter... engineers, they build things so you can have more of both." [6]
  7. On the founder persona in America: "The founder persona is a unique legacy of America that we should celebrate and embrace." [1]
  8. On the danger of self-loathing: He notes with concern that a recent survey showed only 27% of youth believe in American exceptionalism, attributing it to a lack of being presented with the alternatives. [7]
  9. On the importance of the physical world: "There is something human about the mechanical world, the physical world, and spending time on those things." [9]
  10. On the urgency of now: "The time to mobilize was yesterday." [3]

On Personal Philosophy and Mindset

  1. On the substance of work: "The substance is the code not the quality of my tie." [6]
  2. On learning from painful experiences: "So much of the journey is is really figuring out what's the difference between how you wish the world works and how it actually works." [9]
  3. On the nature of dharma (purpose): "As many a wise master has observed, there are countless paths to dharma – indeed, there are as many forms of dharma as there are seekers." [13]
  4. On disruptive innovation: "When you are doing something truly disruptive, you are in a David versus Goliath situation." [13]
  5. On embracing complexity: "Simple minds want to know if winning depends more on doing A or B. The winner, however, realizes that you have to do both." [13]
  6. On the importance of process (or lack thereof): "There is no process. It will be painful." [13]
  7. On the inspiration from being on the front lines: "They come on the fire cells of Djibouti and the factory floors of Detroit where you can see first-hand what's happening – and that's all the inspiration, all the creativity … it comes from that environment." [1]
  8. On the value of product pain: "If it's organizational pain please let me know, but if it's product pain that's great we want that." [4]
  9. On the mindset of improvement: When observing early SpaceX, he noted the mistake is to judge where they are today, not "how quickly are they improving, how good is that team." [6]
  10. On ambition: "You need software that allows you to enhance and enable your ambition not thwart it." [12]

Learn more:

  1. Shyam Sankar – Chief Technology Officer of Palantir: The Future of Warfare | Shawn Ryan Show #190 - Podcast Notes
  2. Technology is the Problem - Shyam Sankar
  3. Shyam Sankar on the US vs China AI Race - YouTube
  4. Building Enterprise Autonomy with Shyam Sankar, CTO - YouTube
  5. Shyam Sankar | Speaker - TED Talks
  6. Shyam Sankar - Chief Technology Officer of Palantir: The Future of Warfare | SRS #190
  7. In Conversation With Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar: The Defense Reformation - YouTube
  8. Shyam Sankar Reveals How Palantir is REVOLUTIONIZING US Defense! - YouTube
  9. Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir Technologies: Inside Palantir's Vision to Transform U.S. Defense - YouTube
  10. Who is Shyam Sankar? The billionaire technologist driving Palantir's AI-boom
  11. Shyam Sankar | Hudson Institute
  12. PALANTIR CTO SHYAM SANKAR HAS A MESSAGE FOR AMERICA | DailyPalantir #103
  13. Shyam Sankar | Substack
  14. How to Win in the Age of AI and Autonomy | Shyam Sankar on TBPN - YouTube