Alexander Karp, chief executive officer and co-founder of Palantir Technologies Inc.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

At a time when some tech companies are bowing to employee pressure to pull back from work with the government, Palantir CEO Alex Karp is loudly defending his posture.

Palantir, a Silicon Valley software and services company founded in 2003 with the explicit purpose of helping the intelligence community with counterterrorism investigations, filed its paperwork to go public on Tuesday. Karp, who started the company with venture capitalist Peter Thiel, among others, railed on tech culture and practices in his letter from the CEO.

“The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software,” Karp wrote. “But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires. Our company was founded in Silicon Valley. But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.” Last week, the company announced plans to move its headquarters from Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, to Colorado.

Karp said Palantir has “repeatedly turned down opportunities to sell, collect, or mine data,” contrasting it with consumer companies “built on advertising dollars.”

“Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial, while companies built on advertising dollars are commonplace. For many consumer internet companies, our thoughts and inclinations, behaviors and browsing habits, are the product for sale. The slogans and marketing of many of the Valley’s largest technology firms attempt to obscure this simple fact.”

Although he did not name any such companies specifically, Facebook fits the description -- an ironic touch given that Thiel was an early investor in that company and remains on its board of directors.

Karp said in the letter that government agencies have been hamstrung, in part by failed tech infrastructure and that Palantir’s mission is to help.

“Our software is used to target terrorists and to keep soldiers safe,” he wrote. “If we are going to ask someone to put themselves in harm’s way, we believe that we have a duty to give them what they need to do their job.”

He didn’t mention Google by name, but Thiel has accused the company of “seemingly treasonous” behavior for allegedly helping the Chinese government while backing down from a contract with the U.S. government after facing employee criticism.

Here’s how Karp addressed the matter:

“We have chosen sides, and we know that our partners value our commitment. We stand by them when it is convenient, and when it is not.”

In the risk factors section of its prospectus, Palantir identifies one potential risk as its unwillingness to work with China, which could hamper growth, given that it’s the world’s second-largest economy.

“Our leadership believes that working with the Chinese communist party is inconsistent with our culture and mission,” the filing says. “We do not consider any sales opportunities with the Chinese communist party, do not host our platforms in China, and impose limitations on access to our platforms in China in order to protect our intellectual property, to promote respect for and defend privacy and civil liberties protections, and to promote data security.”

Here’s the letter in full:

I.

Our welfare and security depend on effective software.

In times of stability, the right software helps our most critical institutions serve their markets and the public. In times of crisis, effective software can be essential to an organization’s survival.

Our software platforms are used by the United States and its allies around the world. Many of the world’s most vital institutions, from defense and intelligence agencies to companies in the healthcare, energy, and manufacturing sectors, rely on the software platforms that we have built.