On paper, the global financial system was built to allocate capital toward the most productive uses. But in practice, it has often become a force that funds collapse, with growing speed and sophistication.

We now live in an era where capital has lost its moral compass, accelerating the very crises it claims to mitigate and solve. Finance, instead of being a servant of life, has become its master — setting the rules for who gets to dream, who gets to survive and whose futures are deemed “bankable".

If Orwell warned us about Big Brother, Karp is quietly building his control room. Not with fanfare, not with propaganda—but with procurement contracts and PowerPoint decks. Not in backrooms with shadowy spymasters, but in full daylight with press releases and Q1 earnings calls.

While others sell platforms, Karp sells architecture—digital, total and permanent. His danger lies in the fact that he seems civilized. He quotes scripture, wears Patagonia and looks like a cool professor.

But behind the affection is a man laying track for a future where dissent is a glitch, ambiguity is a flaw and the human is just another inefficiency to be engineered out.

His vision—total awareness, preemptive decision-making, seamless militarization of every institution—is, in many ways, truly terrifying. So, while the media obsesses over Trump’s theatrics, keep your eyes on Alex Karp.

The most dangerous man in America doesn’t shout, he codes.

He’s selling a future where morality is outsourced to code and every human interaction becomes a data point to be processed, scored and acted upon.

For most new AI products, civilian or otherwise, some form of venture capital funding is often involved, especially if the AI venture in question might prove to be too risky to be funded through bank loans or other financial instruments. Venture capital is willing to take bets on innovation that other funders would be unwilling, or unable to take.

In the past two decades, this type of funding has primarily focused on Silicon Valley products for the civilian market, where the dynamics have allowed for extraordinary gains to be made for investors.

But as the defense market is growing, and the opportunities for extraordinary venture capital returns in the commercial spheres wane, those with large amounts of capital to invest see a new opportunity for huge gains in defense within their grasp.

It is unsurprising, then, that in the past five years, venture capital investment in defense technologies has surged. From 2019 to 2022, US venture capital funding for military technology startups has doubled, and since 2021, the defense technology sector has seen an injection of $130 billion in VC money.

Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez and expert Kristofer Doucette presented a report on Monday detailing transactions since Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro took office. Democratic governments should counter his attempts "to exploit cryptocurrency for moving illicit proceeds into the international financial system," the report said.

"Structures must be set up to combat this type of money laundering," said Doucette, national security leader at Chainalysis