The Brooklyn Rail

The ongoing revelation of the MAGA Data Theft has reached a new level with the recent reporting of President Trump engaging the services of big data analytics company Palantir Technologies to build a vast federal data platform to connect millions of Americans’ private records under a powerful AI system. In fact, this project has been going on for some time, but it has accelerated in Trump’s second term. Palantir’s original clients in 2005 were all in the United States Intelligence Community (USIC), including the CIA, who, through their venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, was Palantir’s first investor.

Since taking office, Trump has pumped $113 million in federal government spending into Palantir. This doesn’t include a $795 million contract the Defense Department gave the company last week. Palantir has had federal contracts for defense work for fourteen years.

This bounty came after Trump signed an executive order on March 20 requiring the government to share data across agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Palantir makes all that possible, with its Foundry software that organizes and analyzes data. The combining of all these databases into one master list of personal information on American citizens gives Trump and his allies unheard of surveillance power.

Palantir began helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s enforcement and removal operations in 2014, but that help has increased considerably now, including a $30 million contract to track individual migrants’ movements in real time and identify people with civil immigration violations. Palantir has been in the immigration tracking and deportation business at least since 2017, working closely with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

The line separating the US government from the corporate entity Palantir has virtually disappeared, as it has disappeared between Elon Musk’s companies and the government.

Palantir was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Joe Lonsdale. Its main software products are Foundry and Gotham, which is more tailored for security and defense purposes, but Gotham is also now being deployed in the domestic sphere, using real-time data integration and AI to profile behavior and identify individuals who may be a threat to the current regime.

Some experts have called this the most expansive civilian surveillance infrastructure in US history, consolidating both data and power. When Trump was re-elected, Palantir’s stock rose more than 140%, and it’s gained 510% over the last 52 weeks. Last week, when the Times’ report of Palantir’s increased involvement in the new surveillance state came out, Palantir stock spiked another 7.7%. And it hit another new high on Monday.

Some employees of Palantir have objected to the company’s entanglements with Trump, and a number of them have left the company over it. In May, thirteen former employees signed a letter urging Palantir to stop working with Trump in surveillance. One strategist who left, Brianna Katherine Martin, posted, “For most of my time here, I found the way that Palantir grappled with the weight of our capabilities to be refreshing, transparent, and conscionable. This has changed for me over the past few months. For me, this is a red line I won’t draw.”¹

But in a call with investors in February, Palantir CEO Alex Karp was ecstatic:

We’re doin’ it! And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am! I’m very happy to have you along for the journey. We are crushing it! We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about. Palantir is here to disrupt. And, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.²

One of the places Palantir has killed them most is in Gaza, where they have long provided advanced targeting AI hardware and software to the Israeli military and spy agencies. It is Palantir that has targeted most of the civilian victims in Gaza using a powerful AI system called TITAN (Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node). Palantir says TITAN is a “next-generation Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance ground station enabled by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to process data received from Space, High Altitude, Aerial and Terrestrial layers.” We are now in the era of “AI war.” Palantir CEO Karp argues that “the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.”³

In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Palantir was a seeing stone or orb, making it possible to see over long distances and even through time, and thus to “speculate” into the future. Palantir worked in images exclusively, without sound, smell, taste, or touch. They were basically surveillance tools, controlled through force of will. If used too often or misused for selfish and malign purposes, they could corrupt the minds of the users to madness and despair, or to greed and the lust for power.

The name Palantir in Quenya combines palan, “from afar” with tir “to watch over.” In The Two Towers, Tolkien says that the wizard Saruman’s use of the Palantir and “all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom,” led to his downfall.