▶ Watch Video: Full interview: Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar
The following is the full transcript of the interview with Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer of Palantir, a portion of which aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Oct. 11, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re joined now by the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir, Shyam Sankar. Welcome to Face the Nation.
SHYAM SANKAR: Thank you for having me, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s good to have you here in person. We’ve been talking a lot about technology, artificial intelligence, and public perception of it right now, and that’s where I want to start with you because our polling shows there’s a problem here. 50% of those polled by CBS say AI will create more problems than it solves. 29% say it’ll solve more than it creates, and 21% just really don’t know. Like 45% of Americans want the government to restrict use and development of AI. Is your position there should not be any guardrails at this moment?
SHYAM SANKAR: No, not at all. That’s not my position. I think the- the burden is absolutely on the technology industry to show the American people that there are real benefits to AI and not kind of ephemeral sort of benefits like it can help me schedule travel, but actually meaningful benefits that result in job growth and prosperity for the American people. I think one of the things that’s really complicated in the current discussion, is that there’s an unseen force driving the narrative around AI safety, and it’s- it’s really this millenarian doomsday cult meets messianic complex called effective altruism. The most famous effective altruist that most Americans know is Sam Bankman-Fried, and the effective altruists are, it’s almost like a religion that they’ve been thinking about doomsday scenarios from AI since the early 2000s.
MARGARET BRENNAN: He was–he is jailed. He was the crypto investor—
SHYAM SANKAR: Correct.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Who defrauded investors. But this sounds very academic. Like, what makes you so focused on this?
SHYAM SANKAR: Because there’s only really roughly 2,000 AI researchers in America, and the vast majority of them believe in this sort of worldview around effective altruism. And if you hear someone like Jacob Coxon telling you that AI has a 10% chance of ending humanity, and you believe—
MARGARET BRENNAN: A researcher who had this warning recently.
SHYAM SANKAR: Yes, correct. And you believe he’s speaking as a technically informed individual who does this work, it’s a scientific critique. I think the American people would be right to be quite panicked and worried about what’s going on here. But if you understand that it’s actually a theological critique, then you can- you can kind of weigh it against the empirical facts of what is actually happening out there. You know, I take—I think there’s a profound truth to Pascal’s saying that every human has a god-shaped hole in their heart, and it’s important to understand that many of these folks in Silicon Valley who are building this technology have filled that hole with the machine God of AGI. And I mean, there’s so many interesting stories around this. Like, for example, so many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI. I believe so much— (CROSSTALK)
MARGARET BRENNAN: What? That makes no sense. What do you think—
SHYAM SANKAR: I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I will—I’m showing you my chips are all in. So there is kind of this mass psychosis, social delusion around it, and I think it’s getting in the way of actually what is happening with AI. Where is it meeting the American worker in industry? What are the results of doing that, and the doomsdayers have basically been wrong. Everything they predicted, they- they told us that ChatGPT 2.0 was too dangerous to release. They told us at this point in the timeline, we’d already have mass unemployment and job displacement, and the economists see that actually we’re having job growth in areas that we wouldn’t have predicted doing exactly that. So the technology industry has two burdens. One is to show very clearly to the American people that- that AI is going to result in economic prosperity and security for the nation. And two, to actually do and absorb the burden of engineering. You cannot abdicate this idea that designing safe products is your job. You can’t hand wave around it. If you look at the kind of narratives that come out of the doomsdayers, they seem like two contradictory narratives. One narrative is this technology is going to end humanity.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SHYAM SANKAR: And simultaneously, they say, “But I believe it has some chance of creating utopia.” So at first blush, this seems contradictory, but it has one thing in common, which is that you, as a human, have no agency. The machine god is going to decide the future, and only perhaps a small number of us can try to avoid the horrible outcome. And I think it obfuscates the more profound reality that we have a huge amount of human agency over how we’re going to use this technology to deliver the outcomes the American people expect.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well let’s talk about that because the other part of this argument would be, and no one who wants- the people who don’t want guardrails are simply in it for commercial reasons. They want to keep selling chips, or they just want access to market. So that would be the counter argument to the idea that you know what you’re saying, which is an ideological opposition to guardrails.
SHYAM SANKAR: Maybe we could just back up and who’s on the side of no guardrails?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, when- I want to get into the specifics here, because even just defining what guardrails is seems really complicated, and there’s not even common agreement on that right now. But Jay Clayton, who is the new DNI and the new AI czar, said this week the focus is on control and monitoring of technologies with the potential to do harm. So, what does that look like to you? Because it sounds like he’s not even sure yet.
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, I think there’s a very clear view that we should be regulating the application of the technology. So if you’re going to use this in medicines, you know the FDA- As a republic, we have 250 years of rich laws and history on how to manage liability. I don’t want to trivialize the metaphor, but you know, if I buy a car and the car is defective, that’s the car maker’s problem. If I then use that car to go drive into my neighbor’s house, that’s my problem. And you know, this sort of obfuscation. The narrative is this technology is a total difference of kind. I don’t think so. I think it’s a difference of degree.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, in that humans aren’t in control of it, it would be a different kind.
SHYAM SANKAR: No, humans are in control of it. Even if we look at the kind of salacious reporting around Hugging Face, the models did not do anything they were not instructed to do. You know, they were- the- the real first, you have human error. They- they were not in a sandbox. They had access to the internet. It was a horrible cybersecurity configuration. Then, from that perspective, they were asked to- to- succeed at a specific benchmark, and they were not given constraints on how to do that. And they said, “Oh, the best way to succeed at the benchmark is to get the answers to the test, and to do so.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, for that, who should take action to–
SHYAM SANKAR: –I think it’s a defective product. Like, if–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –Is it up to the Justice Department to then bring suit, like on the programmers, like who’s liable for the technology not, you know, staying within the sandbox–
SHYAM SANKAR: –The AI companies of course. In that, in that specific case, it would be the AI companies. If another company had licensed that technology to use in another in an application, and the product worked as expected, but you misused the product, then it would be you that are responsible for that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you believe that, am I understanding you, the existing laws on the books should be able to handle technology as it develops?
SHYAM SANKAR: I think it is a massive running head start. I think the laws on the books speak to a lot of the current considerations. Might we need a few more things on the margin? Sure, but I think we’ll figure that out as we go through it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So let’s talk about some of those things because you were with the president when he summoned some of these AI leaders recently, and he asked them all to sign a pledge to implement robust internal controls, partner with an external auditor and establish a committee to evaluate reports from auditors. That was Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Elon Musk. They all signed it. Palantir, your company didn’t. Why?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, those accords were for companies that actually make AI models, which we do not, so–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you help to use them and build out platforms. Like you don’t see a reason for constraints there.
SHYAM SANKAR: Oh, we- we do have those constraints. In fact, that- part of that’s our entire business, is how do you safely deploy these models in specific use cases. We’re just not a party that- we weren’t asked to be a part of the accord.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you were there at that meeting.
SHYAM SANKAR: I was.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, what happened? Like, what was the conversation?
SHYAM SANKAR: The conversation was really an assertion that the American people expect AI to generate economic prosperity and to do so securely, and that we as companies have an affirmative obligation to deliver on exactly those things, and that we have existing laws to look at this, and that we should be all taking this quite seriously, very productive conversation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because it sounded like the White House was saying something more should be done, and now you have this new AI Czar Jay Clayton going out to Silicon Valley this week. He said he’s launched this 120-day review of AI policy. What do you hope comes from that, or is this another one of these like blue ribbon commissions that doesn’t produce any–
SHYAM SANKAR: –No, I think a lot will come up to it, which is really focus and energy, and using the existing agencies and regulatory apparatus to make sure we’re on top of this stuff and providing support where it’s needed. I think one of the challenges, going back to my comments on effective altruism is, today, the so-called independent research organizations that are overseeing this are not really independent. They have conflicts with the labs. They are made up of people with a singular worldview around effective altruism, looking for the doomsday scenarios. You know, you have evaluators who are essentially pointing a loaded gun at a target, saying, “I can’t believe the gun worked.” When they should really be saying, “What guardrails do we have in place? You know- are you know are these products working to the specifications we designed, and what- what are the opportunities for misuse?
MARGARET BRENNAN: So I’ve spoken to people, for example, in the financial industry who say we did need some regulation here, but there’s the SEC, there is you know the CFTC, they oversee certain operations here. Don’t you think within the current institutions there could be some sort of entity that oversees technology?
SHYAM SANKAR: I think there’s going to need to be an incident response and reporting regime that creates more visibility and transparency into what you’re learning in the testing, well ahead of product launches that give visibility and transparency to the government of how people are doing and implementing exactly the existing laws.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Who does that, or who could do that?
SHYAM SANKAR: I will defer to Director Clayton on that, but I think that’s one of the things that I- I suspect they will be driving towards.
MARGARET BRENNAN: He’s got to figure that out. Well, we look at the last administration- President Biden and Xi Jinping came to like, a very limited agreement, but at least on one principle, which was humans, not AI, should retain control over decisions to use nuclear weapons. Would it be sensible–
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, that seems obvious.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that seems terrifying, first of all, that they had to come to a conversation about that, but shouldn’t that be expanded elsewhere in the defense space? Would you agree with that? Is that one of the areas–
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, the current part of the policy is there’s two parts of it. There’s the kind of military doctrine, which is that a human is always accountable for every decision that’s made, and the other part of it is that humans are in- in the decision-making processes that- that relate to lethal force here.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But in terms of the things where you think there should be more guardrails, is the defense space one of them? Biotech, I’ve heard others.
SHYAM SANKAR: All spaces need to- need to have a thought around safety of application.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But that’s still- who does that and how?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, I think the Department and the Congress should do it with defense. The Department of Transportation should do it with transportation. The FDA should do it with medicines.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But so, watch for that possibly happen. Because you know, I hear from people in the technology space this argument that we need to just go so furiously forward to compete with China. China is pushing for AI to be integrated into all of its industries, but they have the ability to also delay things to get government- governance to catch up, they’ve done that. They’ve tapped the brakes themselves before. So, do you think the U.S. should also consider tapping the brakes in certain areas, just slow things until they have some idea of the guardrails?
SHYAM SANKAR: You know, we have this beautiful, messy process in America, but I would argue, as frustrating as it might look, it’s kind of working. So, we have frontier models now that have not been released because people have realized maybe we’re not ready to release them. That would have been an unimaginable thought a year ago. And so as people are starting to wrap their heads around whether it’s the labs, government- I think it is a consequence of our messy process and the discussions that people are having that we’re evolving how we’re doing this, and the pace is naturally changing.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Let’s talk a little bit about DOD, the Department of War, Department of Defense. They have recently ceased using Anthropic products as part of this dispute over the firm’s insistence on safeguards for military use of AI. I know you’re aware of this case. Anthropic’s Claude was part of the Maven platform, which Palantir uses. How much of an impact will this decision here have, and who replaces them?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, the- the Department today has a wide range of model providers, everything from XAI and OpenAI to open-weight models like Nemotron from NVIDIA, so I don’t think- I don’t- there’s been no operational impact from that. I think there’s a kind of a broader statement which really has been powering the growth of our commercial business, which is companies are realizing, and it equally applies to the government, that you’re not going to pick any one model provider. That actually, your sovereignty and agency as an institution comes down to your ability to kind of control, decide which models you’re going to use in what context, have the ability to switch models, to be able to control the weights themselves, where you need to feel that control over them. It is your alpha. It is what makes your institution special.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you don’t know yet who’s going to replace them, but you don’t see a big impact from this kind of decision. It was certainly a huge story for Silicon Valley and the defense space to hear that–
SHYAM SANKAR: It’s already been replaced. It’s already been replaced, and users who are building AI applications get to pick the models that they’re using. It’s a suite of models that are available from, you know, Google, from XAI, from OpenAI. And what was the second part of your question there, sorry?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes, I was asking about the impact. It sounds like you don’t think it’s- it’s a big one. Look, I can move on here.
SHYAM SANKAR: No impact.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You have said recently that the war in Iran is the first major conflict where AI played a central role, particularly for targeting. Do you see risks for that?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, you know, targeting is this- is kind of this very salacious word. Really, targeting is a process, and if you think about military operations, you know, the ability to execute 1000 strikes in a single day would have taken two weeks of planning by 50 people before, and being able to do that with one person in four hours provides you a significant battlefield advantage against your adversaries. So, it’s really not about, you know, people jump immediately to something like AI picking the targets. That’s not what’s happening. It’s really given a set of effects that you want to create- I want to be able to take out the enemy’s air defenses. Okay, what targets relate to that? Okay, how do I then push them through a process where I understand are any of these targets on the no-strike list? Are any of these targets too close to civilian infrastructure? How do you do all the things that are so susceptible to human error under the time crunch- what’s doing in a way that has much higher repeatability and accuracy, so you can get more throughput to the system?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that goes to a broader argument about the elimination of some of the people who were involved in mitigating civilian impact from strikes. That was a Pentagon decision by Secretary Hegseth. In the case- you just talked about the thousands of strikes, and there were so many successful strikes in terms of the targeting in Iran. But there was also, as you know, this horrific one in Minab that killed at least 123 schoolchildren. Bloomberg reported some personnel relied too much on the AI in the Maven system made by Palantir using AI-enabled software. Have you determined what happened there?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, we should wait for the final report. But what I can say is that reporting is inaccurate.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The reporting from Bloomberg, you’re saying, is inaccurate?
SHYAM SANKAR: Yeah, it’s inaccurate, and actually, the likely cause is human error. And then- and quickly following that, we actually built additional AI agents that did more checking. That’s part of the process we don’t own, but responding to the urgency of the moment, we built additional AI that actually double checks more of the work outside the process that we own to ensure things like that couldn’t happen again.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you’re suggesting it was outdated intelligence or human error that fed information into the computer system. Is that what you’re saying?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, we should wait for the final report, but I think we will find–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you know when that’ll be released?
SHYAM SANKAR: I don’t.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because the initial reports have been widely reported on, including by this network. Do you see a harm in that being made public soon, or is it helpful to what you say are improvements you want to make?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, I- I will defer to the Department on the- on the timing of how- I have no control over that. But yeah, I would love the- the truth to get out there.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you believe that it was human error. That’s what you’re saying, not what they’re reporting, which is that they were relying too much on the AI.
SHYAM SANKAR: The Bloomberg reporting is wrong. Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: There are 120 House Democrats who wrote to Secretary Hegseth about this particular case and the use of AI in the strike, including Maven. Do you have any intention to go brief Congress about it or to share information?
SHYAM SANKAR: We have given briefings to Congress, and- and they can, you know, Congress is well aware of the capabilities of Maven.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But in terms of this strike and what went wrong, obviously something went wrong.
SHYAM SANKAR: I would defer to the Department on that. That’s- that’s not our place.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But it is because you are such a- Palantir is such- so interwoven with the U.S. government. I mean, it’s billions of dollars of government contracts right now, do you think more information should be briefed to Congress about the benefits along with the risks?
SHYAM SANKAR: Sadly, I’m just a technologist. I mean, on these policy issues, I would defer to others.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I want to quickly ask you before we go about the modernization efforts, which you are part of. I understand you are lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves in the Army Executive Innovation Corps.
SHYAM SANKAR: Correct.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Which is new.
SHYAM SANKAR: Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: There are also executives from Meta and OpenAI. So, what are you working on there?
SHYAM SANKAR: My principal role is to help with Army human resourcing in the G-1 department here. So, strategies on how do we, you know, the Army is drowning in talent, what we would call green suiters who actually know how to code, and they’re- they’re- they’re exceptional. How do we employ them? You know, they don’t fit in the kind of industrial era model, the Napoleonic codes. Their skills are kind of rank blind. You might have an E-4 who’s an exceptionally good coder. There’s not an obvious career path for them within the Army. The Army doesn’t know how to manage that talent. So, how do we identify who these exceptional people are? How do we protect them? How do we put them on projects that fully utilize their skills and turn them into valuable assets for- for the military?
MARGARET BRENNAN: So that’s your role within this Corps?
SHYAM SANKAR: That’s right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So for people who look at that and say these big corporations could have a conflict of interest because they’re also doing business with the U.S. government. How do you respond to that?
SHYAM SANKAR: Well, it’s carefully managed by- by the- the lawyers in the Department. We’re only allowed to work on projects where we don’t have conflicts.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And do you think–
SHYAM SANKAR: I would just say, more broadly, I mean it is the greatest honor to be able to serve in our U.S. military. You know, as an immigrant to this country, it’s one of these- My father, my late father, would have loved to have seen me go to a service academy. Life worked out the way it worked out. Arguably, I hope I have more to give back to my country in this capacity at 44 than I did at 24, and it’s a great pride.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you for your time today, Shyam.
SHYAM SANKAR: Thank you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be back in a moment.
