A US-based high-tech surveillance company whose big data AI tools are used by Israeli security forces and U.S. law and immigration enforcement agencies.
Palantir Technologies Inc, headquartered in Denver, is a software company that specializes in data analytics for security and surveillance. In 2023, 55% of the company’s annual revenue derived from government clients, and 62% came from customers in the United States.
Palantir has been a politically oriented company since its inception. It was founded in in 2003 using $2 million in investment rounds from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. Throughout the years, Palantir has vigorously defended its contracts with U.S. military, immigration, and police agencies, pledging to “stand by them when it is convenient, and when it is not.”
In 2020, the company became publicly traded and moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, Calif., to Denver. Palantir has intentionally distanced itself from the rest of the tech sector, with CEO Alex Karp stating, “We have chosen sides, and we know that our partners value our commitment.”
Palantir has been providing its AI-powered tools to Israel’s military and other security forces at least since 2017, including its predictive policing system (see more below). Since Israel began its genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023, Palantir has reported “seeing high demand from Israel for new tools,” and has been providing Israel with more products than before.
In January 2024, the company held its board meeting in Israel and entered into a “strategic partnership” with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to help the “war effort.” Palantir CEO Alex Karp has stated that he is “proud” of supporting Israel in every way” possible. Karp later said that his “outspoken pro-Israel views” have caused employees to leave the company.
Palantir offers four main data analytics software platforms that can be adapted for a variety of clients and uses without requiring the company to create new software:
- Gotham: A platform developed for militaries and intelligence agencies, it is used to integrate and organize data from many sources; detect patterns; and create answers to queries.
- Foundry: A platform developed primarily for commercial industries and businesses that has also been used by government agencies for public health monitoring.
- Apollo: A commercial software platform that enables Palantir’s software to be used “in the cloud, on-premises, or even more rugged environments.”
- Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP): A platform that provides artificial intelligence (AI) to existing Palantir software, such as the Apollo, Foundry, and Gotham platforms.
Palantir uses third-party software such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to host and operate certain platforms. Its main data providers include DigitalGlobe, Dow Jones, Dun & Bradstreet, Epidemico, LexisNexis by RELX, and Thomson Reuters.
Immigrant Surveillance in the US
Palantir serves as a strategic partner to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with its systems being described as “mission critical” to the agency’s operations. As of September 2024, ICE has awarded Palantir contracts worth over $257 million. According to activist group Mijente, ICE uses Palantir’s tools to conduct workplace raids, deportations, and family separations.
Palantir has provided ICE with two complementary systems based on Gotham. The first, the Investigative Case Management System, is used by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Enforcement and Removal Operations, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and select ICE attorneys. It stores immigrants’ data from multiple sources, including family relationships, immigration history, employment history, biometric identification, license plate readers, social media profiles, and contact information.
ICE’s Investigative Case Management System (ICM) was used in the separation of immigrant families in 2017. The operation of targeting and arresting family members of unaccompanied immigrant children who crossed the border used Palantir’s ICM system to build cases against people slated for deportation. During this operation, ICE arrested 443 people, many of them relatives of immigrant children. Palantir provides ongoing maintenance and support for ICM. In 2022, ICE awarded the company a three-year contract worth a potential $97.7 million for ICM operation and maintenance.
The second key system that Palantir developed for ICE is known as FALCON. Also based on Gotham, FALCON is a more purely analytical tool than the ICM. It ingests massive amounts of data from ICM and other ICE systems and provides analysis that ICE agents use to target people and to plan raids. Despite Palantir’s claims that it does not assist ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations with deportations, FALCON is a key tool used by ICE to power workplace raids—including high-profile raids in 2019, 2018, and 2016—arrests, and deportations.
Despite internal dissent and external pressure from groups like Mijente, Palantir has defended and renewed its contracts with ICE.
Police Data Sharing and Predictive Policing in the US
Palantir has provided its Gotham data management platform and predictive policing technologies to international and U.S. police agencies. These databases contain personal information provided by data brokers and shared by other law enforcement offices and agencies on the local, national, and international level.
Law enforcement does not need warrants to access this data, which is made available through “fusion centers,” state-level resource hubs run by the Department of Homeland Security. The California fusion center, for example, shares information collected by police agencies in 30 cities and allows them to access this database through the Palantir system. Press has reported on U.S. police using Palantir systems in Salt Lake City, Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New Orleans, and San Diego.
The Palantir system incorporates information about individuals and their associations and relationships, including license plate data, credit card and bank statements, educational records, mental health diagnoses, business partnerships, arrest records, family relationships, prison visitations, and more.
The Palantir predictive policing tool analyzes patterns in people’s routines, associations, and activities, highlighting suspicious patterns that potentially resemble those of people associated with crime or gang activity, even if there are no indications of actual criminal involvement. This allows police to criminalize people and communities based on patterns of associations, leading to disproportionately negative effects on criminalized communities; privacy concerns; and a lack of transparency.
Military Artificial Intelligence
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is Palantir’s largest client within the U.S. federal government. Between 2008 and September 2024, the DOD awarded the company contracts worth just under $1.2 billion.
Palantir provides the U.S. military with artificial intelligence (AI) systems used to power military surveillance and weapons systems. In 2018, for example, the company replaced Google as the new contractor for “Project Maven,” a Pentagon program to build an AI-powered surveillance platform for unmanned drones that can track vehicles and people. The system will, supposedly, be used by the military to prioritize targets and plan raids in combat zones. Palantir executive Shyam Sankar has described the project as “this generation’s Manhattan project.” Google abandoned this project in 2018 following employee backlash that included an employee-written letter stating that, should Google be involved “in the business of war,” it would join the ranks of “Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics,” and struggle “to keep the public’s trust.”
Palantir also develops and tests AI and machine learning capabilities using its Gotham and Foundry platforms. In 2020, for instance, the U.S. Army awarded Palantir a $91 million contract to test AI for “defense use cases.” The company was contracted to upgrade the U.S. Army’s Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A), a platform that obtains data from over 700 sources and shares and stores intelligence for military outposts all over the world. This award is part of a larger contract worth $823 million in which Palantir and BAE Systems will compete to develop parts of DCGS-A until 2027.
- In March 2021, Soros Fund Management revealed that it had sold its entire stake in Palantir, at the time worth approximately $500 million. In November 2020, the Fund had announced plans to divest from Palantir because the Fund "does not agree with Palantir's business practices."
- In November 2020, Soros Fund Management sold all its shares in Palantir because of Palantir's business practices regarding the "negative social consequences of big data."
- In September 2020, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote a letter to the SEC asking the agency to investigate Palantir before their public offering, citing conerns about the company's lack of transparency.
- In September 2019, over 1,200 students from 17 U.S. universities signed a pledge that they would not work with Palantir because of its relationship with ICE.
- On August 28, 2019, the largest conference for women in computing, the Grace Hopper Celebration, dropped Palantir as a sponsor after a petition with 200 signatures was submitted citing its relationship with ICE.
- In August 2019, 60 Palantir employees signed a petition calling for an end to its contracts and relationship with ICE, including its role in family separations.
- In August 2019, the LGBTQ tech organization, Lesbians Who Tech, removed Palantir from its annual job fair because of public dissent to Palantir’s role in ICE workplace raids.
- In June 2019, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference at the University of California at Berkeley dropped Palantir as a sponsor after 140 academics signed a letter citing its questionable relationship with ICE.