The protection tech behemoth has set the web on fireplace with a tweet likened to the ramblings of a comic book e-book villain
American surveillance tech contractor Palantir launched a 22-point manifesto over the weekend, calling for a “new era” of AI-enabled US navy supremacy. The web went wild, with the textual content being labeled a blueprint for “technofascism.”
Posted on X on Saturday, the doc goes far past the everyday mission assertion of a Silicon Valley tech firm. It outlines Palantir’s positions on the position of know-how and navy energy within the twenty first century, stating: “Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation;” “hard power in this century will be built on software;” “national service should be a universal duty,” “the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone.”
To perceive how a personal company can really feel empowered to demand such far-reaching coverage modifications from the state, it is necessary to grasp what Palantir is, and the way enmeshed with the ‘deep state’ it truly is.
What is Palantir?
Palantir – named after the obsidian seeing-stones from Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by way of which the darkish lord Sauron retains watch on his underlings – is a software program agency primarily serving the protection and intelligence sectors. The firm was established in 2003 by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale (who labored for Thiel’s Clarium Capital), Stephen Cohen (who interned at Clarium) former Sigmund Freud Research Institute researcher Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings, a PayPal engineer.
Palantir was the brainchild of Thiel, who mentioned that he realized “the approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism.” Thiel’s thought was nurtured by the CIA, which invested $2 million within the firm in 2005 through its in-house enterprise capital agency, In-Q-Tel. “I wish I had Palantir when I was director,” former CIA chief George Tenet – who arrangeIn-Q-Tel- advised Forbes journal in 2013. “I wish we had the tool of its power.”
Palantir is at present valued at round $352 billion, a valuation that represents roughly 80 occasions the corporate’s annual income. This obvious overvaluation is fueled by Palantir’s in depth contracts with the US authorities and its alphabet soup of protection and intelligence companies.
What does Palantir promote?
Palantir’s flagship product is an working system referred to as ‘Gotham’. Not a surveillance system as such, it pulls collectively and analyses present knowledge which will in any other case take days to sift by way of. For instance, if US Central Command is planning a missile strike out of the country, Gotham can mix maps and satellite tv for pc footage from that nation, knowledge from different companies, together with human intelligence from the CIA and alerts intelligence from the NSA, and native surveillance knowledge to current CENTCOM with potential targets.
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Gotham and MOSAIC – one other Palantir goal identification program that pulls digital knowledge together with surveillance footage and IP addresses from a goal space – use AI to label the simplest targets for navy strikes. The US admits that it has used these applications to pick targets throughout its ongoing battle on Iran, however insists that people make the ultimate resolution to fireplace.
Gotham has additionally been used as a policing surveillance instrument. The Los Angeles Police Department, for instance, makes use of Gotham to gather knowledge on civilians – together with names, addresses, social media exercise, private relationships, and surveillance pictures – in an effort to hint their connections to recognized criminals and predict the probability that they may go on to commit crimes.
Gotham can “centralize everything an agency knows about a person in one place, including their eye color from their driver’s license, or their license plate from a traffic ticket – making it easy to build a detailed intelligence report,” a former worker advised Wired final 12 months.
A bunch of anti-ICE demonstrators maintain a rally in entrance of Palantir’s workplaces in Washington DC, April 1, 2026
Getty Images; Celal Gunes
A bunch of anti-ICE demonstrators maintain a rally in entrance of Palantir’s workplaces in Washington DC
Who are Palantir’s prospects?
Palantir’s consumer record is in depth. In the US it consists of the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CIA, FBI, NSA, US Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Special Operations Command, in addition to dozens and even tons of of police departments and different legislation enforcement companies. At current, there isn’t any single, publicly-available record of Palantir prospects inside the US.
Abroad, Palantir’s know-how is utilized by the British Ministry of Defense, Israel Defense Forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in addition to police departments and authorities companies in France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK.
Why is a personal surveillance tech firm releasing a manifesto?
Palantir is at its core a knowledge aggregation firm, however one set aside by its shoppers, its advertising, and the ideological streak of its executives. The firm markets itself not as a faceless vendor of knowledge collation and evaluation software program, however – in its personal phrases – a supplier of “an Al-powered kill chain” that permits “decision dominance from space to mud.” Palantir refers to its consultants as “forward-deployed software engineers” and its inner emails as “situational awareness” studies. CEO Alex Karp portrays himself as deeply concerned in navy choices that he, a minimum of on paper, should not be.
Palantir’s mission, he mentioned on an earnings name final 12 months, is “to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them.” As the general public face of the corporate, Karp has defended the IDF’s use of Palantir software program to plan strikes in Gaza, and referred to as for the US to organize for a three-front battle towards China, Russia, and Iran.
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The manifesto might be seen as a continuation of this gross sales pitch. Adapted from Karp’s 2025 e-book, ‘The Technological Republic’, the 22 factors envision a world by which Palantir’s merchandise might be in even greater demand. Take the next factors:
- “The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.”
- “The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”
- “The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Ouradversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.”
- “The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin.”
- “The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”
- “Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime.”
Karp’s merchandise are implicitly offered as the answer to those issues, and his ‘peace by way of energy’ message appears tailored to please the newly-neoconservative President Donald Trump, whose administration his firm will finally signal contracts with. After AI agency Anthropic was booted from a Pentagon program over its refusal to allow mass home surveillance or absolutely autonomous weapons, Palantir’s manifesto is equal components gross sales pitch and pledge of fealty.
The the rest of its factors delve into culture-war territory, declaring that visionaries like Elon Musk must be applauded for his or her perception in “grand narrative,” that the “pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted,” and that “some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”
Who are Karp and Thiel and why are they controversial?
These factors replicate Karp’s ideological bent – he describes himself as “progressive, but not woke,” and a “tech nationalist.” Karp has additionally portrayed himself all through the years as a “socialist” and a “neo-Marxist,” and has persistently voted Democrat, whereas praising a few of Trump’s insurance policies. His solely constant beliefs look like that “the West has a superior way of living,” and that this way of life should be defended “by applying organized violence.” Karp is a vocal defender of Israel, and has referred to pro-Palestinian protesters within the US as “an infection inside of our society.”
Thiel, in contrast, is a way more partisan determine. An avowed conservative, he has donated to libertarian and Republican causes, and bankrolled Vice President J.D. Vance’s 2018 senatorial marketing campaign. While Thiel has described himself as a libertarian, he donates to the interventionist Alliance of Democracies (established by former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and sits on the steering committee of the Bilderberg group.
Peter Thiel speaks at The Cambridge Union in Cambridge, UK, May 8, 2024
Getty Images; Nordin Catic
Thiel funded wrestler Hulk Hogan’s 2015 lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker, virtually a decade after the news weblog outed him as homosexual.
What are individuals saying in regards to the manifesto?
Palantir’s manifesto has garnered an overwhelmingly damaging response, with commentators describing it as “scary,” “technofascist,” and “the ramblings of a comic book villain.”
“The manifesto’s vision…is that of a US government and its tech allies as dominant players, unconstrained by accountability,” political scientist Donald Moynihan wrote. “A world where soft power has real and lasting impact is simply less profitable for a company like Palantir relative to a world where we blow a lot of stuff up.”
“If governments were actually doing their job, this Palantir document wouldn’t be a manifesto they proudly boast about, but a clear sign of the urgent need to purge its software from the public institutions it has infiltrated,” French entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand wrote on X. “They’re effectively saying ‘our tools aren’t meant to serve your foreign policy. They’re meant to enforce ours’.”
The manifesto is extra vital than any motion by Trump, Russian thinker Alexander Dugin argued on X. “Trump is insignificant pawn on the serious chess board. His role is total destruction. The preparations stage. Palantir is much more serious. It is the plan to safeguard the declining dominance of the West by radical means.”
(RT.com)