Palantir and the Trump Administration

Last month the New York Times ran a long article about work the company Palantir Technologies was doing for the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. As the Times reported, "In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power." As Trump administration officials worked to implement this plan, "they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm."

According to the Times, Palantir has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, the Health and Human Services Department, and the Pentagon. In addition, Palantir is in talks with the Social Security Administration about buying its technology. The paper also says that "At the I.R.S., Palantir engineers joined in April to use Foundry to organize data gathered on American taxpayers...Their work began as a way to create a single, searchable database for the I.R.S., but has since expanded". This raises concerns that the Trump administration may be "Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data". Moreover, there are fears that "Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics".

Criticism of Palantir's work with the government appears related to two separate concerns. One is the work itself. If Palantir is able to collect sensitive information from across the government and combine it into a single analytical system, it would provide an unparalleled ability to delve into the personal lives of Americans, simultaneously revealing information about their financial status, health issues, and other personal data that is collected by the government. The second concern is about the firm's founder, Peter Thiel. Thiel was a co-founder, along with former Shadow President Elon Musk, of PayPal. Also like Musk, Thiel has roots in South Africa. According to The Guardian, Thiel "was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s where Hitler was still openly venerated." Thiel is a champion of the neo-reactionary movement that opposes democracy and equality and argues that the state should be run like a company with a techno-authoritarian president. Thiel once wrote that he had come to "no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

Thiel has close connections to the Trump administration. He is, of course, closely connected to Musk. Palantir and Thiel have also embedded themselves into the U.S. DOGE Service. According to the New York Times, "At least three DOGE members formerly worked at Palantir, while two others had worked at companies funded by Peter Thiel". Thiel has a particularly close connection to Vice President J. D. Vance. Vance first encountered Thiel while Vance was a student at Yale Law School and attended a talk with Thiel. Vance has described that encounter as "the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School". After graduating, Vance went to work for Thiel, and Thiel later invested in Vance's own venture capital firm. Thiel even wrote a blurb for Vance's book, "Hillbilly Elegy". It was Thiel who first introduced Vance to Trump, bringing him to Mar-a-Lago in 2021. When Vance ran for Senate the next year, Thiel contributed $15 million to Vance's SuperPAC.

In sum, a "techno-authoritarian" billionaire who doesn't believe in democracy and has close ties to both the Vice President and Elon Musk is creating a government-wide database that can be used to track detailed information about every American. If former Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden had tried such a thing, there is no doubt that MAGA heads would be exploding like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Imagine the conspiracy theories that would result? But since this is happening under Trump's governance, for the most part it is docilely accepted.

The one hint of opposition to Palantir and Thiel is coming from a small number of progressive elected officials. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent a letter signed by eight other Members of Congress to Alex Karp, Chief Executive Officer of Palantir, with a list of questions about Palantir's work for the government. The letter's signatories expressed concern that Palantir might be "enabling and profiting from serious violations of Federal law by the Trump Administration, which is amassing troves of data on Americans to create a government-wide, searchable ‘mega-database’ containing the sensitive taxpayer data of American citizens." The letter lists a number of federal laws that Palantir's work may be violating, including the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act. of 1974. The letter also warned that "Congress will fully investigate and hold accountable Trump Administration officials that violate Americans’ rights, as well as contractors like Palantir that profit from and enable those abuses."

As I have attempted to document in these blog posts, Trump is clearly operating as an autocrat. Autocrats are by nature obsessed with control. Palantir, by creating a government-wide information system that merges data traditionally kept separate (by law), can provide Trump with an extremely powerful tool for tracking citizens. Palantir is demonstrating how the combination of technology and authoritarianism can be extremely dangerous.