Palantir, the AI large that preaches U.S. dominance

Palantir, an American knowledge evaluation and synthetic intelligence firm, has emerged as Silicon Valley’s newest tech darling: one which makes no secret of its macho, America-first ethos now ascendant in Trump-era tech tradition.

The corporate’s attain spans the worldwide economic system, with banks, hospitals, the U.S. authorities, and the Israeli army amongst its ever-expanding consumer roster.

“We would like and want this nation to be the strongest, most necessary nation on the earth,” Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, just lately declared at a consumer convention in Palo Alto, California, the place AFP was the one media outlet current.

In armed conflicts, most notably in Ukraine, Palantir’s instruments assist consider potential targets in real-time, utilizing a number of sources, together with biometric knowledge and intercepted telephone calls.

“I am tremendous happy with… what we do to guard our troopers… (utilizing our AI) to kill our enemies and scare them, as a result of they know they are going to be killed,” the graying, curly-haired billionaire continued, sporting a good white T-shirt.

Washington has been filling Palantir’s coffers.

Within the first quarter, the corporate obtained $373 million from the U.S. authorities: a forty five% bounce from the earlier 12 months, and it isn’t all army spending.

This spring, federal immigration authorities (ICE) awarded the corporate a $30 million contract to develop a brand new platform for monitoring deportations and visa overstays.

The corporate then secured an funding of practically $800 million from the US army, including to the $480 million contract signed in Could 2024 for its AI platform supporting the Pentagon’s “Challenge Maven” goal identification program.

This marked Palantir’s first billion-dollar contract, elevating it alongside authorities contracting stalwarts like Microsoft and Amazon’s AWS.

Nevertheless, monetary outcomes “aren’t and can by no means be the last word measure of the worth, broadly outlined, of our enterprise,” Karp wrote in his letter to shareholders in early Could, the place he tossed in quotes from Saint Augustine, the Bible and Richard Nixon.

“Now we have grander and extra idiosyncratic goals.”

Palantir was based in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s preeminent conservative, Karp, and others with CIA backing.

The corporate takes its identify from the magical seeing stones in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”

“Younger individuals would say we’re like pure medication: very costly, extremely wanted… that make you stronger and higher,” Karp boasted on stage.

Palantir’s increasing footprint on the highest ranges of presidency has raised eyebrows.

A number of members of the Trump administration’s “DOGE” cost-cutting fee, initially headed by Elon Musk, got here from the corporate.

Current stories from The New York Instances, Wired, and CNN have detailed secret authorities tasks to create, with Palantir’s assist, a central database combining knowledge from completely different federal companies.

This improvement has created “a whole lot of considerations about how that data is likely to be used,” warned Elizabeth Laird from the Middle for Democracy & Expertise.

Palantir maintains it is not constructing “surveillance know-how” or a “central database on Individuals.”

Not like most conventional Silicon Valley firms which have stored army tasks discreet, Palantir now embraces its defence work overtly.

Sasha Spivak, director of technique, mentioned that when she joined Palantir ten years in the past, the corporate stored its sense of goal behind closed doorways.

“Right now we’re not ashamed, we’re not afraid, and we’re deeply happy with what we do and our purchasers,” mentioned Spivak.

Some worker teams are pushing again. In early Could, 13 former Palantir staff revealed a letter accusing tech giants of serving to to “normalize authoritarianism beneath the duvet of a ‘revolution’ led by oligarchs.”

They argue that by supporting the Trump administration and DOGE, Palantir has betrayed its acknowledged values of ethics, transparency, and defending democracy.

“Once I joined the corporate… there have been many good, motivated individuals; that is fairly uncommon,” mentioned one of many letter’s signatories, who needs to stay nameless, for worry of reprisal.

After months of looking for administration explanations about Palantir’s collaboration with Israel and ICE, a number of of those staff resigned.

“They mentioned, ‘We’re an organization that is very conscious of staff,’ however individuals asking about Israel have been shortly shut down and advised, ‘That is what we do; when you do not prefer it, you possibly can depart,'” the previous staffer recalled.

Jeremy David, co-director of the Well being division, performs down the controversies.

“My each day life is extra about nurses and medical doctors who typically hate us at first and are very grateful on the finish,” he advised AFP on the convention.

On stage, Joe Bonanno, head of information evaluation at Citibank, celebrated how one operation that beforehand required “9 days and generally 50 individuals” now “takes just some minutes for one individual.”

“Like I mentioned, and like Alex mentioned, I got here to dominate, crush and annihilate. So when you’re JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, sorry,” he concluded with a broad smile.

Some potential purchasers quietly admit they do not respect the war-like rhetoric, however they see no various to Palantir’s capabilities.