Palantir's reputation problem comes down to what it does for the US government, and its founders are not backing away from that work.

• Joe Lonsdale, who helped start Palantir and spent its first decade there, says the distrust is partly the price of being successful and partly the nature of the work.
• The company builds tools that help the government act faster and hit targets more effectively, which means it gets blamed when people dislike what the government is doing.
• The core question is whether a tech company should stop helping the government whenever it disagrees with the sitting administration.
• Palantir's leaders come from opposite political camps — CEO Alex Karp from the left, Peter Thiel from the right — but agree that making American government work better is worth the backlash.

Outlook: Expect Palantir to keep taking government contracts and keep absorbing the criticism that comes with them.