Every time you connect to the web, there is someone who is collecting the information you leave, whether it is your web provider, the server of the page you are visiting or the browser you use to access it.
All this information helps companies better understand the behavior of their customers and helps them design strategies and products that resonate better with consumers.
In the same way, this same data can be used to locate individuals who may be considered a threat – as the US did in 2011 to find Osama Bin Encumbered’s bunker in Pakistan – or to identify and target military targets, as the Israeli army is currently doing in Iran.
But for information to be useful, it is not enough to simply collect it: due to the growing amount of data that is invented on the web every day (an estimated 400 million terabytes), the organizations that collect it have to use specialized software – powered by man-made intelligence – to be able to organize it and, at the same time, interpret what it can reveal.
And currently, the consensus among the majority of cybersecurity experts is that there is no data analysis instrument in the world that can be compared, in complexity and scope, with that of the American company Palantir, particularly when it comes to security and military intelligence.
Michael Steinberger, columnist for the Original York Instances which published the book “The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir and the Rise of State Surveillance” in January, assures that part of the company’s success lies in the fact that it developed its technology with the help of the US intelligence services.
“The turning point for Palantir was receiving funds from In-Q-Tel, which was the capital investment arm of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency),” Steinberger explained to BBC Mundo.
“Beyond the investment, which was immense, Palantir engineers had access to CIA analysts, so they were able to develop the instrument with the help of these analysts.”
That makes Palantir tools widely used across different US government agencies.
Not only for intelligence entities such as the CIA, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the NSA (National Security Agency), but also for health entities such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) or, controversially, immigration agencies such as ICE (U.S. Immigration and Preserve a Watch on Customs Service).
ICE united statesa. Currently, Palantir’s tools are used to identify and locate the migrants it seeks to detain and deport.
“ICE’s work with Palantir began at a time of crisis, which is typical with Palantir,” Steinberger explained, “because they charge you a lot for their services and many organizations believe they can save by developing an ‘in-condo’ instrument.”
“But when the crisis hits, that’s when they decide to try it. That’s what happened to ICE in 2014: when a DEA agent was killed in Mexico and the government had to find the killers, they turned to Palantir, which integrated a large amount of data in just a few days and allowed them to find the killer very easily.”
In order to understand the role that Palantir currently plays in the American military industry, it is useful to return to the point where the company was born and to the moment in history that directly gave it its reason for being: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
From PayPal to the US government
Towards the end of the 90s, the web was going through one of its periods of greatest and most rapid expansion.
In what later became known as the “.com stammer,” thousands of entrepreneurs took the risk of launching web businesses.
Many companies that today are immense digital conglomerates began in that era, including PayPal, perhaps the best-known digital payments platform, which emerged from the merger of two different companies, Confinity and X.com, ventures led respectively by the then young investor Peter Thiel and the now considerable shareholder of Tesla and X, Elon Musk.
During those early years in which security for making online transactions was just beginning to develop, PayPal experienced a period in which it became the preferred site for scammers thanks to the anonymity it guaranteed.
In response to that, Thiel’s partner and co-founder of Confinity (later PayPal), Max Levchin, focused on developing an instrument that, through algorithms, could make the transactions that occurred within the platform secure and thus be able to unleash the full commercial potential of online purchases.
The instrument – named IGOR, commemorating the Russian scammer who would become the first to fall for the new tool – was so successful that it managed to reduce transaction fraud to less than 0.5%, putting PayPal at the forefront of online commerce.
As expected, the success of the tool also caught the attention of US authorities: the FBI became interested in it and began working with PayPal’s security team on fraud investigations.
And then, on September 11, 2001, everything changed.
“One way to look at the 9/11 attacks is that they were a failure in data integration,” says Michael Steinberger. “In fact, the 9/11 Commission report stated exactly that.”
“There was a failure to connect the dots, which led to this tragedy: The CIA had information, the FBI had information, but they weren’t communicating with each other. The information wasn’t being shared.”
For Peter Thiel it was clear that, faced with this data organization problem, IGOR could be very useful for the different US intelligence services, so he began to look for a way to contact the CIA.
The “philosopher CEO”
When Thiel began to look for the necessary capital to develop the project he had in mind, he met Alex Karp again. The two had become good friends during their time at Stanford University Law School despite being opposite poles of the ideological debate: Thiel, a devout conservative, and Karp, a convinced progressive, the son of a biracial couple.
Their friendship had been based primarily on their discontent with the education they were receiving at one of the best universities in the country and a shared passion for chess and heated discussions about deep topics.
When they met again after the 2001 attacks, Thiel recruited Karp – a doctor in German philosophy who had been a student of the philosopher Jürgen Habermas – to help him get new investors for the venture, being surprised by his passion for the project.
Palantir received its name in honor of the magical stones from the “Lord of the Rings” book series, which gave whoever had them the power to see the same thing that their enemies saw. The association with Tolkien’s work is so strong that the company’s employees refer to themselves as Palantirians and some of their offices are adorned with elven runes.
Despite his lack of experience in the military world, the company’s board decided to name Karp CEO, as he was the one who had the clearest vision of what they wanted to do with Palantir.
Despite his upbringing in a progressive California home and having studied philosophy in Germany, Karp’s options have been “evolving” over time, Steinberger explained, “moving closer to the way Peter Thiel sees the world.”
“Karp talks less and less about defending liberal democracy and talks more about defending the West as a cultural entity, which has always been the controversial position of Thiel, who says he does not believe that freedom – in reference to economic freedom – and democracy are compatible.”
Karp further defends US military and technological superiority as “the most important deterrent” in the world today: “Wars are fought with technology,” Karp said at a forum in Washington recently, speaking at the start of US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
“If you look at Operation Midnight Hammer (the US attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure in 2025), the operation in Venezuela (to capture Maduro) or the operation we are seeing in Iran, you see a society totally dominating, and that society is ours.”
“I always argue with my intellectual friends when they say, ‘But wouldn’t a system of rules where everyone is equal be better?’, and I say, ‘Yes, sure. In theory. But in this world, it’s either us or it’s China or it’s Russia.’
Recently, Palantir published online a 22-point summary of the options that Karp outlined in his book “The Technological Republic,” and that many described as the company’s manifesto.
The points reflect some of the most controversial options of libertarian thought in the United States, such as ensuring that while “some cultures have produced vital advances, others remain dysfunctional and regressive,” or that Western countries “must resist the superficial temptation of an empty and hollow pluralism.”
According to Karp, “an era of deterrence—the atomic age—is ending, and a new era of deterrence, based on manmade intelligence, is about to begin,” and “if a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for the instrument.”
The publication of this manifesto generated great controversy on social networks, with many comments expressing concern and rejection. British lawmaker Victoria Collins said the list seemed to be the result of “the ravings of a supervillain.”
“There’s one thing you have to understand about Palantir,” Steinberger says, “and that’s that it’s been political since its inception: It was founded to help the government in Washington fight the war on terrorism, which later morphed into the idea of, ‘We’re helping the U.S. government and its allies defend their way of life.’”
From the beginning, the company pledged not to sell its technology to countries such as China or Russia, seen as geopolitical adversaries of the United States.
“Right now, there’s no doubt about the competition, but in 2007 or 2008, it was a bold thing to come out and say you weren’t going to offer your products in the world’s fastest-growing market.”
On the other hand, the company does offer its services with countries that it sees aligned with US policies, such as Israel.
“They have always seen themselves as the guardians of the West. That has always been an atrocious idea for the company.”
“In the book I talk about Palantir’s relationship with the Mossad (Israel Intelligence Service), which approached them in the mid-2000s and has been a client ever since. After On October 7, 2023, the IDF (Israel Armed Forces) basically said ‘we need your product.’”
Other countries using Palantir’s tools include the United Kingdom – from health services to the Ministry of Defense – Ukraine, France, Canada, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Surveillance state?
In the more than two decades since Palantir was founded, its products have become a powerful weapon for the US and its allies.
Palantir developed the tools that led to the death of Osama Bin Encumbered in 2011 and were a key component in the withdrawal of all US deepest stationed in Afghanistan in 2021.
Additionally, its Maven data integration system is currently being used to identify military targets in Iran and to operate drones that the US has deployed in the region.
Palantir is also the company in charge of developing the “Golden Dome” instrument, one of the flagship projects of the second Trump administration: an anti-aircraft missile system similar to Israel’s “Iron Dome,” with the ability to protect the country against any type of threat, including nuclear missiles.
At the same time, Palantir provides services to civil companies such as Airbus, Panasonic, Merck and even the Ferrari team in Formula 1 for the management and analysis of their data.
It is because of this same versatility of its tools that Palantir insists that it should be government regulators, and not the company itself, that should set limits on the uses of its technology.
In an interview with the BBC, Palantir’s director in the United Kingdom and Europe, Louis Mosley, explained that Palantir’s instrument is designed to always require a human being to make decisions: “That’s how it’s currently programmed,” Mosley said.
But many critics have pointed out that the speed with which these tools analyze and make predictions can lead to confirmation errors on the part of users.
“This prioritization of speed and scale, as well as the use of force, leaves very little time for meaningful verification of targets to ensure they do not accidentally include civilian targets,” Professor Elke Schwarz, of Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC.
But for Mosley, “that’s really a question for our military customers.”
“They are the ones who decide the regulatory framework that determines who can make what decision,” he said.
Despite the criticism and concerns surrounding its technology, Palantir is valued at more than $380 billion and continues to grow.
“The question arises here of how much responsibility falls on Palantir regarding the use made of its product, and that is a very real question at this time, for example, with regard to its relationship with ICE,” says Michael Steinberger.
“Does Palantir have any responsibility for the abuses that are being committed? Are they aware of them? If war crimes have been perpetrated with this technology, does Palantir have any responsibility?” asks the Original York Instances columnist.
“These are some of the questions the company now faces; and they are questions that go directly to the heart of the controversy surrounding Palantir,” Steinberger concludes.
With reporting from BBC News AI correspondent Marc Cieslak and BBC Verify’s Matt Murphy.
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