• Palantir CEO Alex Karp defended the company's ethics and praised Trump's immigration policies at DealBook.
• Karp said Palantir is not building a surveillance database.
• Tech leaders, including Karp, are increasingly aligning themselves with the Trump administration.

Alex Karp, the chief executive of software company Palantir Technologies, doesn't need you to think the company he cofounded is ethical.

"We are highly ethical, but don't believe us on that," Karp said on Wednesday at The New York Times' DealBook Summit. Palantir — a company notoriously secretive about its products and customers, and whose flagship tools remain largely mysterious to outsiders — is "obviously not building a database," the executive said, denouncing the claim that Palantir makes surveillance tech.

Karp did say, "If you're legally surveilled … Could you put it in our product? Yes."

At the summit, the data analytics executive backed his company's work with ICE and the Trump administration's immigration policies. He also said he cares about two political causes: immigration and "reestablishing the deterrent capacity of America."

"On those two issues, this president has performed," Karp added.

His praise for Trump departs from his previous political support. In 2024, the CEO told The New York Times that he was supporting former Vice President Kamala Harris in the election and had donated $360,000 to former President Joe Biden's campaign.

When asked about his change in tune at Wednesday's summit, Karp asserted that political parties have vacillated, not him.

In recent months, Karp has spoken forthrightly on earnings calls and in interviews about a wide range of political and cultural issues. Last month, he told analysts and investors that Palantir was "the first company to be completely anti-woke."

In August, he criticized college grads who "engaged in platitudes" and said the company is offering "a new credential independent of class and background," a dig at elite colleges. As executives have ushered in an era of hardcore standards and the purported end of workplace loyalty, a sharp contrast to the cushy perks that once typified tech jobs, Karp has touted Palantir's "warrior culture."

Karp, a self-proclaimed progressive who wrote his college thesis on fascism, told The New York Times at Wednesday's summit that insinuating Trump is a fascist was "stupid."

Palantir's chief executive is by no means alone in rushing to Trump's side. Over the past year, tech CEOs have aligned themselves with some of the priorities of the president's second administration. Mark Zuckerberg changed Meta's content-moderation policies just days before Trump took office in January. Apple's Tim Cook gifted the president a 24-karat gold and glass statue — made in the US — to commemorate the company's $600 billion commitment to revivifying American manufacturing, a major objective for the administration. At a dinner at the White House in September, OpenAI's Sam Altman called Trump "a very refreshing change."

When asked whether he thinks Trump's immigration policy is constitutional, Karp said: "The more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you're going to need my product."

• The Pentagon's law of war manual calls attacking a shipwrecked enemy an "illegal" act.
• Reports allege a US drone strike targeted survivors of a drug-smuggling vessel in the Caribbean.
• The White House and Pentagon have denied news reports saying Hegseth ordered the strike on survivors.

The Pentagon's manual on the law of war doesn't list every possible illegal order, but on some points, it's explicit.

"Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked," it says, "would be clearly illegal."

The 1,200-page manual repeatedly stresses that a combatant who is unable to continue fighting is entitled to fundamental protections. It uses shipwreck survivors as a key example — which is why a September 2 counter-narcotics strike in the Caribbean is drawing intense scrutiny.

During the mission, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he watched live, the US military struck a suspected drug-smuggling vessel twice. The first strike appeared to kill nine people on the vessel; then the US military launched a second strike on the stricken boat that killed the two remaining survivors, The Washington Post reported last week, citing seven people with knowledge of the strike.

Hegseth called the Post report, which said the secretary had ordered a military leader to kill everyone onboard, "fake news."

"Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command," Hegseth said Friday.

The White House attributed the decision to conduct a second strike on the stricken vessel, executed "to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated," to Adm. Frank Bradley, who now oversees Special Operations Command, instead of Hegseth.

Bradley has been summoned to a closed-door briefing with Congress on Thursday.

His oversight of the strike mission marks a departure from normal military operations, typically overseen by a geographic "combatant commander." In this case, that would be the head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, whose retirement Hegseth unexpectedly announced last month; the admiral had been on the job for a year.

The Trump administration has said that the actions taken were legal. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said Tuesday that "Bradley made the right call."

When asked by Business Insider for comment on the follow-up strike, public affairs officials referred Business Insider to Hegseth's "X" post voicing support for Bradley.

President Donald Trump has distanced himself from the strike, saying he "wouldn't have wanted" a second strike, while also defending Hegseth, whom the White House said authorized Bradley to strike suspected drug-smugglers. "I'm going to find out about it, but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men," Trump said.

Legal experts say that if survivors were targeted after their boat was destroyed, it would represent a clear violation of long-standing US military law governing the treatment of wounded, incapacitated, or shipwrecked combatants.

Killing an enemy combatant or, in this case, a suspected drug trafficker who has been shipwrecked is a "patent violation" of military law that would be obvious to everyone in the chain of command, said Dan Maurer, a retired Army judge advocate general who now teaches at Ohio Northern University's law school.

"No one who is at all trained on the law of war would think that that's OK," Maurer told Business Insider on a phone call. "Whether they're wounded or sick or a POW or shipwrecked at sea, unless they're shooting at you, they are not a threat, and they cannot be attacked."

"There's actually an affirmative duty to pick them up, to rescue them, so they don't drown," he said.

The law of war manual says one of its core purposes is to protect people from unnecessary suffering, including the wounded, the sick, and the shipwrecked. The manual is based on international law, including the Geneva Conventions, which the US helped draft after World War II, Maurer said. Under those rules, combatants who cannot fight must be treated humanely, and in the case of those surviving at sea, rescued.

A person engaged in a suspected criminal act, but who is not an enemy fighter involved in war, is considered to be a "noncombatant" — force against such civilians is usually only authorized when they present an imminent risk to US forces.

Normally, maritime drug interdiction missions are conducted by the Coast Guard with occasional Navy support. While crews may use force in such operations, once a vessel has effectively been disabled and no longer presents a threat to personnel, Coast Guard crews shift to either rescue or detainment.

The Pentagon has described boat operators suspected of drug-smuggling as "narco-terrorists." In January, the White House designated drug cartels and "other organizations" as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, unlocking additional military authorities.

Congress has not approved authorization for the use of military force for these operations. The legality of strikes on suspected smugglers is in question, with the latest reporting on the killing of survivors raising fresh concerns.

The US military has carried out dozens of strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since September, killing over 80 people. Two suspected drug-traffickers survived a separate strike in October. They were picked up by American forces and returned to their home countries.

• MrBeast is developing a platform to connect creators with major brand marketers.
• The idea is to help Fortune 1,000 companies access the creator economy.
• His company is also expanding into financial services and mobile phones.

MrBeast is building out a platform to match creators and marketers, the CEO of the top YouTuber's company said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit on Wednesday.

Jeffrey Housenbold, CEO of Beast Industries, said the company was "building a two-sided marketplace in a global creator platform, matching creators with Fortune 1,000 marketers who want to be able to access the creator influencer economy in an efficient way to be able to build demand for their products and services."

A spokesperson for the company said the marketplace was in the general-discussion phase and that there were no specifics to share yet.

An early 2025 fundraising pitch deck viewed by Business Insider said the company was exploring a creator marketplace. It described the marketplace as identifying creators that fit brands' campaign goals, facilitating creator campaigns across platforms, and helping creators with monetization, viewership growth, and product launches.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has been expanding beyond his YouTube channel — which has over 450 million subscribers — and into other business lines for some time. He's already in consumer products through his Feastables chocolate line, and has action figures and an Amazon show, "Beast Games."

Housenbold on Wednesday ticked off other business lines the company was expanding into, including financial services and a mobile phone company.

Beast Industries took in over $400 million in revenue last year, according to investor materials viewed by Business Insider. The company lost money last year, mainly because of high costs in its media business, and has been on a push to cut costs as well as expand to new revenue lines.

As YouTube's biggest creator, MrBeast could bring his clout to the creator-marketer matchmaking space, which has been growing as advertisers shift spending from traditional media to social media creators.

Ad spending on creators in the US is expected to hit $37 billion this year, growing four times as fast as the overall media industry, a November Interactive Advertising Bureau report found.

• YouTuber MrBeast has plans to launch a mobile phone service called Beast Mobile.
• The service is likely to operate as an MVNO, or mobile virtual network operator, according to an investor deck.
• Other celebrities, such as Ryan Reynolds and the "SmartLess" podcasters, have taken a similar approach.

YouTube's top creator, MrBeast, wants to do more than just appear in videos on your phone. He wants to power your mobile phone service, too.

The content creator, who has over 450 million subscribers, is planning to launch a phone business called "Beast Mobile" as one of his company's next ventures, Beast Industries CEO Jeffrey Housenbold said on Wednesday, speaking at The New York Times' DealBook Summit.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is unlikely to try to build a mobile network from scratch. Instead, he may launch Beast Mobile via a business model known as a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, according to an investor deck from early 2025 that Business Insider reported on earlier this year.

An MVNO phone service typically utilizes the built-in infrastructure of a major carrier, such as T-Mobile or Verizon, allowing the virtual network operator to focus on branding and marketing the service to customers. The strategy has been in vogue among celebrities like the "SmartLess" podcasters, President Donald Trump, and Ryan Reynolds, who sold his Mint Mobile business to T-Mobile in 2023.

"The ultimate objective is to focus on the marketing and sales and outsource everything to a third party," Alex Besen, an MVNO consultant and founder and CEO of The Besen Group, told Business Insider earlier this year.

MrBeast's ambition to sell wireless plans taps into a broader push at his company to diversify the business beyond YouTube and media.

Over the past few years, the company has expanded into a variety of business lines, including its chocolate-bar brand Feastables and lunch-food brand Lunchly.

The company is also planning to get into financial services, Housenbold said on Wednesday.

Peter Kafka contributed reporting.

• Jeffrey Epstein's estate asserted attorney-client privilege for 277 emails with Kathryn Ruemmler.
• A court document says Ruemmler communicated with Epstein about lawsuits involving Epstein's victims.
• The estate says it shouldn't have to turn over the emails in a lawsuit.

Kathryn Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, came under a microscope last month after a cache of emails showed a deeper relationship between her and the now-dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein than previously known.

Those emails aren't the entirety of the communications between her and Epstein.

Epstein's estate is keeping secret 277 additional emails between him and Ruemmler, saying they are protected by attorney-client confidentiality. Many of those emails contain discussions of lawsuits by women who accused Epstein of sexual assault, according to a court filing made public this week.

The document, a 500-page list of emails the estate claims are privileged, indicates that Ruemmler gave Epstein legal advice or otherwise acted as his attorney.

At the time, Ruemmler was a co-chair of the white-collar defense and investigations practice at the Big Law firm Latham & Watkins, which previously said Epstein wasn't a client of the firm. Ruemmler hasn't publicly said whether she worked as an attorney for Epstein in an individual capacity.

Ruemmler — who now serves as Goldman Sachs' chief legal officer and general counsel — previously said she regrets her association with Epstein. A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs said Ruemmler and Epstein had a "professional relationship."

Ruemmler, through a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.

A battle between Epstein victims and his estate executors

The emails between Epstein and Ruemmler listed in the court document, known as a privilege log, span from October 2014 until June 2019, shortly before Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. They are distinct from the emails made public in November by the House Oversight Committee, which were obtained from the Epstein estate through a congressional subpoena.

The emails released in November show Ruemmler seeking career and real estate advice from Epstein, Epstein introducing her to his world of powerful contacts, and the two griping about Donald Trump's first term.

Before joining Goldman Sachs, Ruemmler was considered a legal star within the Democratic Party. She served as the top White House lawyer during President Barack Obama's administration and was considered a possible pick for Supreme Court justice or US attorney general.

A number of the emails released by the House committee — as well as those listed in the privilege log — show that Ruemmler was looped into email discussions with other attorneys whom Epstein had personally hired, including Darren Indyke, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Martin Weinberg, and Roy Black. A small handful of Ruemmler's emails to Epstein in the Oversight committee's tranche were also redacted for what was described as "privilege."

Epstein — a financier who counted ex-Apollo CEO Leon Black, ex-Barclays CEO Jes Staley, Prince Andrew, Trump, and Bill Clinton among his acquaintances — killed himself in jail in August of 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges related to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution as part of what was a widely criticized deal with Florida prosecutors.

The privilege log was filed in a case brought by several Epstein accusers against his estate's executors, Indyke and Richard Kahn, alleging they facilitated Epstein's sex-trafficking operation while respectively serving as his longtime personal lawyer and accountant. Indyke and Kahn have denied wrongdoing. Daniel Weiner, an attorney representing Indyke and Kahn, declined to comment on the privilege log but said the accusations against his clients are meritless.

"Messrs. Indyke and Kahn reject as categorially false any suggestion that they knowingly facilitated or assisted Mr. Epstein in the sexual abuse or trafficking of women, or that they were aware of that abuse during the time they provided professional services to Mr. Epstein," Weiner told Business Insider.

The 513-page document was initially filed to the court docket in September, under seal. Public versions of it, with redactions for victim information, were filed on Monday and Tuesday,

The log offers brief descriptions of each email for which the Epstein estate executors are asserting attorney-client confidentiality — arguing it shouldn't have to turn the emails over to opposing lawyers — without disclosing each message's contents.

Sigrid McCawley, an attorney representing the Epstein accusers in the lawsuit, said the estate ought to disclose many of the emails. She declined to comment on Ruemmler's presence in the log.

"Years after Epstein's death when his privilege protection should no longer matter, Epstein's executors Indyke and Kahn are making overbroad privilege assertions and refusing to produce critical information that would uncover the inner workings of his decades-long sex trafficking operation," McCawley told Business Insider.

Epstein named Ruemmler as a backup executor to his estate in a January 2019 draft of his will, according to a copy released by the House Oversight Committee earlier this year. The final edition of the will, completed shortly before his death, replaced her with Boris Nikolic, a former Bill Gates advisor. Indyke and Kahn, Epstein's first choice, ultimately became co-executors of the estate.

The privilege log's descriptions of the emails indicate that Ruemmler worked on a range of Epstein's legal problems, including numerous civil lawsuits from women who accused him of sexual abuse, as well as responding to "criminal complaints against Epstein." None of the emails are described as "estate planning" — a designation used in the log for some of the emails between Epstein and Indyke.

"Attorney client communication regarding strategy of defense of legal claims against Jeffrey Epstein," reads the description for one April 2019 email.

According to the document, Ruemmler and Epstein also communicated about a lawsuit from accusers that sought to undo his Florida plea deal, and about a long-running lawsuit that accuser Virginia Giuffre filed against his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. (Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of trafficking girls to Epstein and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Giuffre died by suicide earlier this year.)

Other descriptions for the emails are more vague. One, from October 2014, is described as "Attorney client communication providing information at legal request regarding sexual assault claims against Jeffrey Epstein."

The email has the subject line "CONFIDENTIAL – JE."