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.
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— 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.
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