On Friday, The New York Times reported that Palantir, the AI-focused software and military contractor, has expanded its “work across the federal government in recent months” after it had been tapped by President Donald Trump to create “detailed portraits” or a digital ID on Americans “which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies,” such as from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Health and Human Services Department, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education.
The development comes after Trump signed an executive order in March charging the federal government to share data across agencies in the name of “stopping waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Palantir employees told The Times that the company’s engineers had been “quietly” discussing creating a digital ID for Americans and that they had grown worried about placing such sensitive data in one place.
“Current employees are discussing the implications of their work and raising questions internally,” Linda Xia, a former Palantir engineer, said.
“Data that is collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses,” she added. “Combining all that data, even with the noblest of intentions, significantly increases the risk of misuse.”
In early May, 13 former Palantir employees, Xia being one of them, signed a letter condemning the company’s breach of “transparency, free speech, and rigorous debate on the impact of technology.”
Anonymous government officials told The Times that Palantir’s pick to create a program compiling data on Americans “was driven by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.”
The vague assertion does not lend one with much to go on. However, according to D.H.S. spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, Palantir “has had contracts with the federal government for 14 years.”
Indeed, before Congress axed its “pre-crime” initiative program Terrorism Information Awareness, colloquially known as Total Information Awareness, in September 2003, SEC filings showed that Palantir had been officially incorporated in May 2003. Peter Theil, the company’s founder, said around that time that the company’s aims were “to reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties.”
In 2004, Theil hired philosophy PhD Alex Karp. In a 2020 profile for The Times, Karp chose to pose under a portrait of sadomasochist philosopher Michel Foucault, a proponent of the panopticon, who believed people could be controlled under the suspicion that they were being watched.
According to Maus Strategic Consulting, following the disbandment of Total Information Awareness, Palantir found in the “intelligence community (and Karp’s European investor connections) … a new channel for funding.” This allowed the intelligence community to circumvent the law and offshore surveillance programs to a private company — establishing what’s become known as a public-private partnership.
In an interview with Bloomberg from January 2024, Karp announced to the publication he had struck such relationship with Israel in its war on Gaza.
“This strategic partnership,” he said, “aims to significantly aid the Israeli Ministry of Defense in addressing the current situation in Israel.”
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