Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp aired his concerns with a party he often supports in an interview broadcast on Feb. 17 on CNBC’s Squawk Box program.

Karp co-founded the software firm Palantir Technologies, a top defense contractor, with Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s most outspoken conservative libertarians.

“I’ve been a Democrat most of my life,” Karp said before adding, “I don’t like watching the Democrats just commit suicide.”

He took issue with progressive leftists’ general opposition to DOGE, saying most Americans support its identification of fraud, waste, and abuse in federal spending.

“I just view this as yet another example of the progressive left boxing themselves into a suicide dance,” he continued, questioning whether this group was seeking to communicate with Musk in good faith.

“Why is it that we do not know where every penny of our money goes? How do you explain that to people?” he asked, adding that DOGE’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful means of bringing transparency to government spending.

“It feels like the people criticizing Elon don’t want it to happen. And this is going to destroy those people,” Karp said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a frequent participant in protests against DOGE, told The Epoch Times that engagement between progressive Democrats and Musk is difficult because “it’s hard to engage with an oligarch who’s trying to tear apart our democracy.”

“There’s just a host of conflicts of interest that ought to deeply trouble progressives,” Blumenthal said of Musk’s effort, citing possible access to data of Musk’s business competitors.

Yet, Blumenthal said, he would be glad to speak with Karp, “or anyone else.”

Karp, a self-described socialist with a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory, has donated tens of thousands to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. His money has also backed various individual Democrats, including Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.).

In recent years, he has stepped up his donations to the GOP, including to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Karp said a turning point for him was Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the latest massive escalation in a decades-long tit-for-tat between that state and Palestinian leadership.

Several months into the conflict, he flew his company’s board to Israel in a show of support. The firm maintains an office in that country.

Karp, who is Jewish, took other tech leaders to task for failing to back Israel in as public a way as he had.

“I think so few people speak out because they believe they can skirt by with no opinion, but there is no one who doesn’t have an opinion on Israel, especially if you are a big company,” the tech CEO said at the time.

In the months leading up to the 2024 election, Karp said he would be “voting against Trump” despite his reservations with Democrats, backing the candidacies of both former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Other tech leaders have backed away from the party that found ready allies in Silicon Valley during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated to Trump’s inaugural fund and, on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, said that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-19-related content.

The Epoch Times has also reached out to Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) a Democrat on the House DOGE Caucus, for comment on Karp’s remarks.

Sources familiar with DOGE staff described a mood of resilience among those working to fulfill President Donald Trump’s pledge for government reform.

“The young DOGE engineers seemed surprised and initially unprepared to be personally targeted by so much animus,” one source familiar with DOGE’s operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity as they were unauthorized to speak to the media, told The Epoch Times. “But they are energetic and dug in.”

Even as DOGE faces criticism from many congressional Democrats and is beset by lawsuits seeking to restrict its access to government data, its early results—including billions in cuts identified to The Epoch Times by the White House—may just be the tip of the iceberg.

DOGE aims to deliver $2 trillion in federal spending cuts during its 18-month lifespan. It ends in 2026 on the 200th anniversary of July 4th, 1776.

As DOGE seeks to overcome hurdles, billions could be just the beginning.

The Mood Amid Threats

The Epoch Times has reviewed numerous posts on the social media platform Bluesky that are aimed at DOGE and its reported staff members. Many disseminated personally identifiable information, including names, ages, and home addresses.

A source told The Epoch Times that federal law enforcement was dispatched to protect family members of DOGE employees after their names were leaked. As of publication time, the Department of Homeland Security had not confirmed that with The Epoch Times.

On Bluesky, an anonymous user called DOGE workers “Nazi scum,” adding, “The only good nazi is a dead nazi.” The post listed the reported names of several DOGE workers.

A Bluesky user whose name matched that of an employee at Boston University’s business school posted a “Wanted” graphic with DOGE employees’ names, faces, and the words “Dead or Alive.”

A statement from the university described the post as one from “an employee on his personal social media account,” adding, “the views expressed do not reflect the values of Questrom School of Business.”

Members of Congress, including DOGE oversight leaders, voiced shock and anger at the threats.

“That’s horrible,” Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, told The Epoch Times. “I haven’t really seen the severity of it, but that’s horrible.”

On the other side of the aisle, a spokesperson for DOGE critic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) told The Epoch Times that she “strongly opposes political violence toward anyone, for any reason, in all forms.”

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), who is also concerned about DOGE’s impact, told The Epoch Times, “I unequivocally condemn violence of any kind.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who oversees the House DOGE Caucus’s defense and veterans’ affairs portfolio, told The Epoch Times that “if those people broke the law by doxxing these folks and doing that and threatening them, they should be thrown into prison.”

“I don’t mean jail. I don’t mean a fine,” he added. ”People that are doing these death threats need to go to prison, or it’s not going to stop.”

Under the Privacy Act, agency officials or others who disclose the personally identifiable information of federal employees could be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined up to $5,000. Threats on social media may also cross the line into threatening interstate communications, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Ed Martin, the new U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in an open letter to Musk and DOGE recruiter Steve Davis that those “discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically” against DOGE would be pursued “to the end of the Earth” in the name of accountability.

A source familiar with DOGE said its employees were somewhat surprised by the “murderous and very personalized targeting.”

DOGE is a temporary organization repurposed from U.S. Digital Services. Trump and Musk previewed the idea to prospective voters on the campaign trail.

The president created the department through a day-one executive order, establishing DOGE teams across the federal government. A February executive order from Trump directs the heads of agencies to cooperate with DOGE with the aim of reducing the government workforce by removing nonperforming employees.

Many individuals publicly associated with DOGE are very young and highly technically accomplished.

One reported DOGE staff member won part of a $700,000 prize after he used artificial intelligence to help decipher an ancient Greek scroll. The scroll was scorched nearly two millennia ago when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

Another source described the DOGE workers as different in kind from typical employees of the modern federal apparatus—a government far removed from the days of the Manhattan Project and the Apollo missions to the moon, when many great scientists and engineers devoted their lives to public service.

The source attributed the hostile reaction to DOGE workers to “a reflexive skepticism of and hostility toward the modern archetype of the great man.”

The source said the highly personal attacks appeared to be part of a conscious strategy to tear that image down.

Just weeks into DOGE’s inception, unnamed sources within federal agencies are leaking details about it and its employees to journalists—a phenomenon reminiscent of what occurred during the first Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the temporary organization has documented its funding cuts on social media platform X, the platform owned by Musk.

A barebones DOGE webpage at doge.gov promises full details on the savings it has achieved “no later than Valentine’s Day.”

“These DOGE guys are completely action-oriented and totally unfamiliar with the landscape of narrative and media,” a source told The Epoch Times. “They’re just pure doers in a century of bureaucratic uselessness.”