It has information on where you live. It may know your immigration status, your social media activity, your financial records, and possibly even your medical history. It can stitch these fragments together in seconds and give the result to a government agent or an organisation. And it does this quietly from its headquarters in Miami, Florida. The company is called Palantir Technologies, and if you have not been paying attention, that may be exactly how it prefers it.
Or at least that is how it used to be until recently. Because of late, Palantir is getting vocal. It is even revealing its operating principles, and they, in some ways, show Palantir to be a dangerous company. Although, how dangerous, and in the right way or wrong, is something that is going to depend on how you interpret a lengthy tweet that the company posted on X around a week ago. In this post, the company summarised The Technological Republic, a book written by its founder and CEO Alex Karp.
The summary also, as the company noted, was aimed to answer the question that people often ask: what is it that Palantir stands for? The answer, in some ways, is terrifying and dangerous because in its post Palantir advocates a number of extreme positions, including mandatory military service for people and resistance to “the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism.” At one point, it effectively writes that certain cultures are inferior.
Now, if it was coming from the maker of ice-creams, it would have seemed like a poor joke. But Palantir is not an ice-cream maker. Or even an email provider. Gradually but surely, the company has become one of the most influential tech entities in the world because it works, often behind the scenes and on classified projects, with governments and militaries.
The beginning of Palantir
Before we talk of what Palatir calls its “manifesto”, a few words about the company itself. It was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings, who set out to build a system capable of integrating and analysing vast amounts of data.
Since then, Palantir has worked with the US federal agencies, state and local governments, international organisations, and private companies, helping them integrate, analyse, and visualise complex datasets, effectively acting as a central operating system for decision-making.
It does this through two core platforms: Palantir Gotham, which is used by governments and intelligence agencies, and Palantir Foundry, which is built for businesses. Both essentially do the same thing — take messy, disconnected data and turn it into something structured, usable, and meaningful. The usage to which this data can then be put may seem terrifying to some.
Remember the indestructible crystal ball, “the Palantiri”, or Seeing Stones, from The Lord of the Rings? That is the inspiration for the name. The idea is that just like the Palantiri used by evil wizard Saruman, Palantir too can keep an eye on the world and let its users — although not evil but military or federal agencies — quickly carry out whatever tasks they want to carry out.
A spy tech company
For most of its existence spanning over 2 decades, Palantir has operated in the shadowy world of intelligence agencies. It has often been referred to as a spy-tech company, although the question — what does Palantir do — has also been a recurring meme in the tech world. The idea is that no one really knows about its actual work, except probably its CTO Shyam Sankar. Side note: Shankar recently wrote a book — yes, it seems Palantir leadership loves writing books — on how the US is under threat and what must be done to prevent World War III.
Back to Palantir. Gradually details have emerged. The company does work with the CIA, as evident from the $2 million investment that it received in early days from the CIA’s venture capital arm to fund software built for counterterrorism. Rumours also have it that its Gotham platform helped US personnel track Osama bin Laden in 2011, knitting together phone recordings, satellite images, and financial transactions.
Palantir works closely with the Pentagon and its systems have been used in almost all recent US military operations across the world. Recently, a video from a sales pitch surfaced, in which a Palantir executive explains how the company helps the US military in a war zone.
Last year, Palantir signed a contract worth up to $10 billion with the US Army to support its software and data needs, and a $448 million deal with the US Navy to accelerate shipbuilding production. In June 2025, a United Nations report named Palantir as a source of AI tools linked to the Israeli military’s activities in Gaza. In London, Scotland Yard was found to be using AI tools supplied by Palantir to profile its own police officers, examining illness levels, absences, and overtime patterns.
In the ongoing conflicts across the Middle East, Palantir-powered systems have reportedly helped accelerate what military experts call the “kill chain”, the process of identifying and striking targets.
Within the US, the government also reportedly uses the Palantir tools to identify and track illegal immigrants. In April 2025, ICE signed a $30 million contract with it to develop a platform granting agents near real-time visibility into the movements and backgrounds of migrants, aggregating border entries, visa records, home addresses, and even social media activity.
In recent years, Palantir has mixed various AI systems with its tool for faster data processing. These tools reportedly range from Anthropic Claude to, more recently, OpenAI GPTs and others. Although, we do not yet know what capabilities Palantir has acquired with help of AI, it is safe to say it has gotten better, faster and more effective at everything it does. And when it comes to what it does, the business of the company seems to be related to surveillance, monitoring and warfare.
A manifesto noticed
Given the central role Palantir seems to be playing in a number of key areas related to governance and security, its 22-point “manifesto” has sparked a debate.
The manifesto essentially advocates for tech-driven solutions to a number of social issues, believing only a ruthless approach towards humans and humanity can keep the societies and world at peace. It also argues for a primacy for the US and is unapologetic about ideas that seem to belong to the early 20th century — such as superior and inferior cultures — instead of the early 21st century.
For example, in X post, here is what Palantir wrote:
The post, while drawing support among people who lean Right and Conservative, attracted some strong criticism. Many responded to the post and called it an overreach from a tech company, which is supposed to focus on creating software and services instead giving inputs to governments on how to run countries and the world.
For example, strong criticism came from Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and writer of Technofeudalism. He called it “hideous ideology in 22 points” and a sales pitch screaming that the “West needs more of Palantir’s murderous software.”
The manifesto has been noticed by people across the world. For example, one MP in Britain slammed it, saying it was a parody of RoboCop, a movie where an augmented cop plays judge, jury and executioner. “Palantir’s manifesto, which embraces AI state surveillance of citizens along with national service in the USA, is either a parody of a RoboCop film, or a disturbing narcissistic rant from an arrogant organisation,” Martin Wrigley said, according to a report by the Guardian.
For its part, Palantir says it is still a mere tech company making software and tech tools. In a statement to the Guardian, it said: “That is all we are: a software company. How (our) tools are used is determined by the customer, and constrained, legally, contractually and technically, by their instructions.”
But that doesn’t negate one simple assertion: at a time when AI can put terrifying power in the hands of governments and certain companies, Palantir may emerge as one of the most dangerous entities in the world. It may, with its work as well as its guiding principles, enable mass surveillance at unimaginable scale. In fact, given how powerful its systems seem to be, Palantir may put an unprecedented power into the hands of those who use its tools. And these people may or may not choose to exercise caution.
So far most tech companies, even if they hold vast amounts of data related to their users, have been happy using this data for targeted advertising. The Googles and Apples of the world have also limited themselves to business and a neutral stance on most social and political matters. This is why anytime they decide to work on some controversial projects, even their own employees raise concerns and alarms. But Palantir is built differently and has different ethos. It is, as its “manifesto” reveals, explicit in its stance. It is a new kind of company, and it may usher in a new kind of world, a more dangerous and unforgiving world.
– Ends
