It's one thing to criticize your former employer, it's taboo to do that. But to criticize an employer that also owns extremely lethal technologies and surveillance technologies that are highly invasive and used in war zones is something else entirely. HOST: It's 2025, we're all kind of used to government surveillance. The idea that we're all being watched all the time and don't own our own personal data has become normalized. We're also used to the military spending vast amounts of our money on just a few giant defense contractors. But one tech company wants to change both of those things, and become the ultimate military contractor and the ultimate arbiter of all of our data. ALEX KARP: Palantir is here to disrupt and make our the institutions we partner with the very best in the world. And when it's necessary to scare enemies and on occasion, kill them. ANCHOR: Check out Palantir shares surging 22% after the company cited a boom in demand for its AI software from the U.S. government. ALEX KARP: We're doing it! And I'm sure you're enjoying this as much as I am. Palantir, a tech company based here in Denver, claims they can revolutionize government systems with their data analysis software, Newly powered by artificial intelligence. They've been hired by the Department of Defense, the FBI, local police departments, and even the IRS and... Wendy's to take in the information those organizations collect, collect even more information, and use that data to draw conclusions. JUAN PINTO: It can be used to completely reconfigure, organizations' ontology, its reality, what systems matter, what information matters, what processes matter, how they are structured, what biases are introduced at each of those stages. We talked to a former Palantir employee, dug into decades of research, and listened to hours of Alex Karp's own words to unwrap the layers of Palantir's carefully cultivated sales pitch, how they capitalize on fear, uncertainty and unrest. KARP: I don't think in win-lose, I think in domination. This is a company built for bad times. Bad times mean strong finances internally. Bad times are very good for Palantir because we build products that are robust, that are built for danger. HOST: Let's rewind a little. Palantir’s story starts with one of the most effective things a company can have for sales: fear. After the September 11th attacks, the United States government began expanding surveillance both at home and abroad. This was, of course, a boon for the defense industry at large. Simultaneously, the Silicon Valley tech industry was growing fast and making people in a once obscure industry very, very rich, very, very quickly. like the founders and executives at PayPal-known as the PayPal Mafia, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman- the LinkedIn guy-and Peter Thiel. When PayPal was sold, Thiel had millions of dollars burning a hole in his pocket and an idea: PayPal had developed systems for detecting fraud and crimes on the platform. What if they could use similar thinking to analyze the world at large? So Thiel pulled from his network to build out a new company. One of the first hires was Thiel's Stanford Law School roommate Alex Karp, who'd gone on after Stanford to get a PhD in not business or computer science or engineering, but neoclassical social theory. The name of the company Palantir, after the Palantiri from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the rings. PINTO: in Lord of the Rings, a Palantir stone is a magical object that allows its users to predict the future or to see what's going on in a remote location. THIEL: It was originally created by the elves and was meant to be used for good purposes. It is a potentially very dangerous technology. It's very powerful. ARAGORN: How long have you hunted me? HOST: So that's Middle Earth, but what does Palantir do in... regular Earth? KARP: What we do is we use what legal scholars call predicate based research. So we would look at you and then we would go out and say, oh, there's lots of different things in your life that may be indicative of someone being somewhat involved in bad behavior. HOST: Put simpler, they make software that makes it easier for their customers to collect and analyze data, and then act on that analysis with and without AI. By 2013, ten years after their founding, Palantir's client list included the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Marines, the Air Force Special Operations Command, and more. Did your company help to track and kill, Osama bin Laden? KARP: You know... we can never... I'll tell you the the closest thing to an answer is, like, there, when you when you look at the like when you open the paper and look in the news about these kind of things, there's a two thirds chance, depending on the country involved, that somehow my company was involved. PINTO: Fundamentally, the mission that is pushed to employees is that we're solving the world's hardest problems. And supporting Western institutions. That is the main driver of, of sort of this militaristic culture that is developed inside of Palantir. KARP: If you do not feel comfortable supporting the legitimate efforts of America and its allies in the context of war, don't join Palantir. PINTO: This entire message of, like, we are the most lethal, we are the most, able to to surveil and process large amounts of data... INTERVIEWER: you have created the system which you call kill chain-- KARP: Privately. Publicly, the lawyers have some innocuous, say something like 'tech for the amelioration of unwanted blah, blah, blah' some some term we're supposed to... for me, it's the kill chain. Kill chain. Sounds good. HOST: Kill chain isn't an original term created by Palantir. It's the more general military verbiage for the series of decisions leading from identifying a target to taking their life. Palantir's contract added their software and artificial intelligence to the kill chain. KARP: it's quicker and better and safer and more violent. HOST: It's tech that Juan helped market. PINTO: It reduces the distance you have to the problem. But when you're able to take a step back and really see, all the narratives and how they were shaped and the actual application of these technologies, your whole world starts falling apart, which is something that, you know, definitely happened to me. HOST: Juan didn't leave Palantir entirely for ethical reasons, he just got another job, but the reason he eventually started speaking out against Palantir came after watching the Israeli invasion of Gaza following the October 7th attacks. Palantir has contracts with the Israeli Defense Forces. The exact nature of the contracts is opaque-intentionally- but there is evidence to suggest that Palantir's artificial intelligence tech was used for selecting targets in Gaza. Karp doesn't mind the controversy. In fact, it's part of the marketing. Palantir will even pick up the contracts that other companies rejected for political reasons. KARP: We are very comfortable being unpopular. HOST: Karp doesn't think controversy will lose Palantir customers. KARP: Whatever is pissing them off. They're still buying the product. HOST: Wendy's hired Palantir to help with their supply chain, Palantir works with health insurance companies to build AI for 'denials management' to protect 'revenue'. Do you want Palantir’s AI making decisions about what care is covered for you and your loved ones? They also do business with for profit hospitals, major investment banks, and even other defense contractors. In 2024, Palantir brought in nearly $2.9 billion in revenue, 55% of which came from government sources, with the vast majority being American. So let's look at their pitch to the American government. Last year, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar put out a presentation and whitepaper called The Defense Reformation. He cites The Last Supper, which was a secretive 1993 meeting between defense industry executives and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Over a dozen companies walked in and only a few walked out. That dinner is often cited as the origin of our consolidated military industrial complex, SANKAR: And to me, I think this was the definitive moment that kicked off the financialization of defense. From that point forward, it became all about buybacks and dividends and leverage ratios. HOST Criticizing the financialization of the defense industry? Calling out stock buybacks? That doesn't sound like a defense executive. That sounds more like the exact argument about the defense industry that WE have made before. PINTO: I think what's interesting to me about Palantir is how they co-opt the language of revolution. HOST: But Sankar's argument did work on somebody: Uncle Sam. The Defense Innovation Board, an advisory group within the Department of Defense cited Sankar's presentation multiple times in their 2024 report on why the DoD needs to divert more of their budget to emerging technology- that's giving money to Palantir. There's a reason Palantir just replaced Ford Motors in the S&P 100 in the months after Trump was elected. The Trump administration is an ideal customer for what Palantir is selling. First, there are many former Palantir employees sprinkled across the Trump administration from inside DOGE, to foreign policy advisors, to high level technology appointees, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, heavily invested in the company, is also heavily invested in President Trump and Vice President Vance. He was a major campaign donor to both. Then, the stated goal of DOGE is to streamline and combine government data, which is exactly what Palantir does. ELON MUSK: The ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other. HOST: And obviously, Karp is loving it. KARP: Disruption at the end of the day exposes things that aren't working. There'll be ups and downs. There's a revolution. Some people can get their heads cut off. Like, you know, it's like we're we're we're expecting to see really unexpected things and to win, HOST: And what is winning, according to Palantir? this is CTO Shyam Sankar in 2021. SANKAR: Turning to government. we continue to advance our mission of becoming the US government's central operating system as we extend our footprint across defense, healthcare and civilian agencies. HOST: the government's operating system, they want everything to funnel through Palantir. Palantir already has contracts with the IRS going through taxpayer data to save auditors time by finding the easiest audits to pursue. Now, wired reports DOGE will likely hire Palantir to create unified software for the entire IRS, a 'mega API' that would allow anyone with access to 'view and possibly alter' all IRS data in one place. That's all of YOUR financial information. and they have multiple contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services, including nearly $100 million to support HHS's core administrative data and applications' to 'manage, ingest, and access data securely across business domains.' HHS's core responsibility is Medicare and Medicaid. That's control over millions of Americans health records and their access to health care. So what does it mean for one contractor to have all that power data and taxpayer money as profit? Especially as AI gets involved? JUAN: As we kind of increasingly live in a simulated world, we lose touch with reality and the human decisions that matter. And we move closer towards, governance by algorithm not only made by decisions of, automated artificial intelligence systems, which is a problem, but more importantly, subject to decisions made by the people who are influencing these AI systems and creating them in order to fulfill an agenda for whatever their profit seeking or control seeking objectives are. And when I see DOGE kind of going into every agency and addressing the IT department first, I see it as an opportunity to try to change reality itself. HOST: But so what? Why am I telling you all this? Palantir has no problem being seen as Big Brother, as all powerful, as lethal. PINTO: We're at the brink of using these technologies potentially to, to run our government, to run our battlefields and our personal lives. Using artificial intelligence as a sort of panacea solution across our federal departments, and especially when they're again wielded by, people with a very distinct agenda, puts everyone at risk. HOST: It almost feels like that's been the plan all along. Here's co-founder Peter Thiel in 2010 at Libertopia, a libertarian conference, speaking about tech companies and government. And here's Alex Karp in 2009 on civil liberties with regards to Palantir's work. HOST: One co-founder openly wants to use the power of the tech industry to affect politics. The other wants his company to have oversight over how the government data they're paid to handle is used. And the founders of Palantir will retain control in the company no matter what through an obscure ownership structure. Their “Class F” shares grant then 49.99% of voting power even if they collectively own as little as 6% of the company. PINTO: At the start of this journey, I was extremely afraid, for the repercussions of this writing, for speaking out. But now I'm like, you know, even more convinced that this is absolutely necessary. HOST: We can't replace our current broken system with an even more broken one. And we can't let the worst people in Silicon Valley become our government. PINTO: It's not about whether you're actually at risk for speaking out or not. It's just the idea that somebody who's watching you is enough to push people into silence, PROTESTOR: And if you don't do your job we will hold you accountable. Because the American people are more powerful than Elon Musk. If you think we will get tired. then you have no idea who you're up against. This is our country. This is our future Thank you so much for watching. If you want to support more nonprofit reporting into corporate greed. Don't forget to like and subscribe and let us know in the comments what you'd like to see us cover next.