Putin Wants Me Dead, Says AI Chief – Sri Lanka Guardian
Putin Wants Me Dead, Says AI Chief – Sri Lanka Guardian
https://slguardian.org/putin-wants-me-dead-says-ai-chief/
Publish Date: 2026-05-13 00:56:00
Source Domain: slguardian.org
The chief executive of Palantir Technologies, Alex Karp, has claimed he is on a Kremlin hitlist because of his company’s support for Ukraine’s military operations, marking a striking escalation in the controversy surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in modern warfare. Speaking to The Times UK, Karp said he believed Russia had targeted him personally due to Palantir’s role in supplying AI-driven systems that assist Ukrainian forces in processing intelligence and coordinating strikes. He offered no details on how he had learned of the alleged threat, but insisted the company’s technology had become central to how Ukraine conducts parts of its war effort against Russia.
Karp’s remarks come amid growing scrutiny of how Western technology firms are shaping the battlefield in Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion. According to Ukrainian officials, Palantir’s systems are used to analyse vast streams of intelligence data in real time, helping the military identify targets, improve operational efficiency and support long-range strike planning. The software has been credited by Kyiv with “levelling the playing field” against a larger and better-resourced adversary. Karp, a Stanford-educated billionaire known for his outspoken views on geopolitics, first visited Kyiv in mid-2022 shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, a trip he described as widely considered reckless at the time given fears that Ukraine’s capital could fall quickly.
During a recent visit, Karp met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukrainian officials, including digital transformation minister Mykhailo Fedorov, to discuss battlefield systems and civilian applications of Palantir’s technology. Zelenskyy later described the meeting as productive, while Ukrainian officials indicated that Palantir’s tools had been integrated into what they called “deep-strike operations planning”. These remarks, combined with Ukraine’s increasing use of long-range drones and…
