Founded in 2003 with CIA funding as what Peter Thiel called a “mission-oriented company” to “reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties” and profit off the War on Terror, Palantir Technologies has become the digital arm of the capitalist class’s rule. Co-founder Thiel named it after the all-seeing crystal balls in “Lord of the Rings” that corrupted their users with partial, manipulated visions — an unintentionally honest admission of its true purpose: surveillance of the many by the powerful few. As Trump’s second term accelerates the accumulation of vast troves of our data by the billionaire class, Palantir stands as the technological backbone of a growing militarized surveillance apparatus targeting immigrants, activists, and workers.
Trump’s surveillance state expands
Palantir’s reach now extends throughout the government and across borders, creating an unprecedented apparatus of control. Since Trump’s return to office, the company has secured massive new contracts — including an initial $480 million for Project Maven (the Pentagon’s AI drone targeting system) which has now expanded to nearly $1.3 billion, $30 million for ImmigrationOS (ICE’s immigrant tracker), and contracts for the Space Force’s C2 data platform.
The expansion of federal data-sharing capabilities has allowed Palantir to build what analysts call an unprecedented civilian surveillance infrastructure. As the surveillance capabilities expand, Palantir’s stock has surged over 200% since Trump’s election, including 80% in 2025 alone, revealing how Pentagon contracts — fueled by the nearly $900 billion U.S. military budget — create enormous profits from our loss of freedom.
The revolving door between Silicon Valley and the military has now become a direct pipeline. In June 2025, Palantir’s Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar was sworn in as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve alongside executives from Meta and OpenAI as part of Detachment 201, a new military unit designed to accelerate Pentagon adoption of AI and surveillance technologies. These tech executives were given senior military ranks without basic training requirements, allowing them to serve as part-time advisors while maintaining their corporate roles. This institutionalized relationship between surveillance companies and the military represents the culmination of what critics call the “military-AI complex,” where the same systems developed for consumer data harvesting are now directly integrated into weapons platforms and targeting systems.
Complicity in genocide
Palantir’s direct involvement in Israel’s military operations has made it an active participant in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, Palantir signed a partnership agreement with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to provide technology for “war-related missions”, with Palantir’s Executive Vice President Josh Harris stating that “both parties have mutually agreed to harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions.” The agreement provides Israel access to Palantir’s arsenal of products, including the company’s “Gotham” platform — their flagship military tool that is advertised as “a modern solution for efficient and responsible target management” for militaries and police forces worldwide.
What makes Gotham particularly dangerous is its command center integration and war-gaming capabilities. While Palantir’s exact role in specific military operations remains classified, its Gotham platform’s capabilities align precisely with Israel’s reported AI-driven targeting systems. +972 Magazine has documented Israel’s use of systems like “Lavender” that generate target lists with minimal human oversight — the exact kind of “efficient target management” that Gotham advertises. The timing of Palantir’s expanded partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Defense raises serious questions about the company’s potential contribution to the devastating civilian toll in Gaza.
A 2024 investigation by The Nation revealed how Palantir’s technology enables AI-driven targeting systems that have contributed to mass civilian deaths in Gaza. The same investigation also recalls how documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2014 revealed the NSA had been secretly providing Israel with raw, unredacted communications between Palestinian Americans and their relatives in Gaza and the West Bank – the exact type of surveillance data that feeds Palantir’s algorithms. According to investigative reports, Palantir’s algorithms help generate target lists for Palestinian neighborhoods, directly informing IDF bombing campaigns. The company’s technology has helped create what experts describe as a “digital twin” of Gaza, modeling civilian movements to optimize military operations with devastating precision.
The humanitarian toll of the genocide has been catastrophic, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, including thousands of children. Even capitalist investors like Norwegian fund Storebrand have divested from Palantir after recognizing this complicity. Yet Palantir CEO Alex Karp defended the company’s Israeli military contracts, stating they were “proud to support allies in their defense operations.”
The war on immigrants
In April 2025, Palantir secured a $30 million contract with ICE to develop ImmigrationOS, designed to streamline deportation of individuals targeted through predictive algorithms. According to a contract justification document, this system is part of a larger effort to build a platform that enables ICE to conduct mass deportations by providing “near real-time visibility” into immigrants’ movements, including tracking and reporting self-deportations. Most recently, ICE announced plans for expanded use of Palantir’s Investigative Case Management system supporting 10,000 concurrent users and managing tens of millions of subject records.
Behind the technical jargon lies real human suffering. Palantir has been weaponized by ICE since 2011, with its digital dragnet deployed under Obama, expanded under Trump, institutionalized under Biden, and turbocharged under Trump again — exposing how both capitalist parties collaborate in building the infrastructure of immigrant oppression.
In 2017, ICE’s Operation Matador targeted immigrant youth on Long Island, while students were detained for wearing Chicago Bulls jerseys or drawing symbols that authorities claimed indicated gang affiliation. In one case, a high school junior was arrested and detained for a month simply for being “observed at Brentwood High School with other confirmed MS-13 members,” until a judge ordered her release, noting there was “nothing else there.” In 2017, a Palantir-powered ICE operation called “Operation Matador” used social media monitoring to create “risk assessments” of immigrant youth. Documents revealed that ordinary teenage behaviors like wearing certain colors or making hand gestures in photos became “evidence” of gang affiliation used to secure warrants and justify detentions without criminal charges.
One Long Island teenager was detained for months based on these flimsy digital “indicators.” His “evidence” of gang membership? A drawing of his home country’s flag and a Chicago Bulls shirt — which ICE claimed was worn by MS-13 members. Only after sustained community pressure was he released, his education and life disrupted by algorithmic profiling.
Recent weeks have seen demonstrations targeting Thiel Capital in West Hollywood, with protesters directly linking Peter Thiel’s company to the current ICE raids. Demonstrators held signs declaring “Frodo has failed, Peter Thiel has the ring” and “Mass movement not mass surveillance,” highlighting the growing resistance against Palantir’s role in deportation operations.
The financial stakes are enormous — government contracts now represent over 42% of Palantir’s Q1 2025 revenue, with government segment sales of $373 million out of $884 million total. Despite growing resistance within the tech sector, including over 200 Palantir employees signing protest letters opposing the company’s contracts with ICE deportation operations, the company has doubled down on its immigration surveillance work under Trump.
Criminalizing dissent
In Los Angeles, anti-ICE protesters are now facing a militarized response from the LAPD, National Guard, and Marines. Behind this show of force lies Palantir’s digital infrastructure. The Brennan Center has documented how LAPD feeds social media data into Palantir platforms, creating detailed protester profiles that include political affiliations, social connections, protest attendance history, and even facial recognition markers used for real-time identification during demonstrations.
This surveillance creates a seamless chain connecting local policing, federal immigration enforcement, and military response. The same communities targeted by LAPD’s Palantir-powered “Chronic Offender” program — which used location data and social connections to flag primarily Black and Latino residents for heightened police scrutiny — are now monitored while protesting ICE operations.
This represents the digital evolution of COINTELPRO’s historical tactics — the FBI’s illegal surveillance program from 1956-1971 that infiltrated, surveilled, and disrupted civil rights organizations against the Black Panthers and civil rights movement. Just as COINTELPRO used informants and wiretaps to compile dossiers on activists, Palantir’s vast data collection creates digital dossiers that could enable the same kind of systematic targeting of dissidents. The danger is clear: the surveillance infrastructure being built today provides the tools for tomorrow’s political repression of anyone critical of those in power. Karp admitted as much, telling investors: “Palantir is here to disrupt. And, when necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.”
Growing resistance from within
The fight against capitalist surveillance begins with awareness, but we must go beyond merely understanding these systems. We need to build democratic alternatives while working toward seizing the technological means of production.
In a significant development, 13 former Palantir employees recently issued a public letter condemning the company’s work with the Trump administration. This rare rebuke from former employees demonstrates how even Palantir’s own workers recognize that the company’s collaboration with the Trump administration violates its stated founding principles and strengthens the capitalist surveillance state under the guise of a “revolution” led by oligarchs. This growing resistance within the tech sector itself shows that even Palantir’s own workers recognize the dangers of their technology.
Tech workers across the industry are mobilizing. The Alphabet Workers Union has organized thousands across Google to challenge surveillance contracts like Project Nimbus. This resistance follows a powerful precedent: in 2018, thousands of Google employees successfully pressured the company to abandon Project Maven, a Pentagon AI drone targeting program similar to what Palantir now provides. Over 4,000 workers signed a petition and dozens resigned in protest, forcing Google to establish ethical guidelines for AI and demonstrating how organized tech workers can effectively challenge military contracts.
Community-led alternatives
The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has already demonstrated how community organizing can dismantle surveillance programs. Through sustained public pressure, Freedom of Information Act campaigns, and direct action, they successfully terminated LAPD’s predictive policing initiatives and created models for community oversight of technology.
Meanwhile, Mijente’s #NoTechForICE campaign has built coalitions between tech workers and immigrant communities to disrupt deportation infrastructure, while the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition demonstrates practical alternatives through their Equitable Internet Initiative. These examples show how workers within surveillance companies, impacted communities, and grassroots technologists can collaborate to both resist digital oppression and create democratic alternatives to surveillance capitalism.
The technologies watching us were built by human hands and can be dismantled by human action. Our liberation depends on reclaiming control of the digital world being used to chain us. The power of Palantir exists only because we allow it to exist — together, we can build a world where technology serves the many, not the few.
Feature image: Palantir CEO Alex Karp speaks at the 2022 World Economic Forum. Credit: Flickr/worldeconomicforum (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
