Palantir Just Told You What's Coming
When a Defense Contractor Publishes a Political Manifesto
Palantir just published a 22-point political manifesto on X. From the company’s official account.
If you're thinking it's not every day a tech company publishes a political manifesto - you're right. But you’ve got to admire the sincerity - though I suspect it has more to do with CEO Alex Karp’s ego than anything else - because what’s in it is pretty wild stuff. They say “hard power in this century will be built on software” - their software, naturally. Weirdly, they also want Germany and Japan remilitarized. And, shockingly to anyone who’s not been paying attention - they’re calling for a military draft.
The whole thing paints a vision of the world where coexistence with other civilizations isn’t really an option - the only path forward is permanent technological dominance.
And Karp isn’t shy about where this leads. Here’s a Fortune headline from last year: “The U.S. will very likely fight a 3-front war against Russia, China, and Iran.”
Now think about that for a second. A defense contractor - a company that profits from every conflict, every contract, every new theater of war - is publicly telling you that a three-front war is coming. And then publishing a manifesto calling for a draft so you can fight it.
Conveniently, every single point in this manifesto benefits Palantir’s bottom line. More militarization - more contracts. AI as the new deterrent - more contracts. A draft - more wars to sell into. This isn’t philosophy. It’s a business plan dressed up as a political vision.
Because remember, Palantir is not just any company. It was basically spun out of the CIA, backed by its venture fund. Back in 2018, it took over the Pentagon’s AI targeting project after Google’s own employees refused to build it - 3,000 of them signed a letter saying no. Palantir said yes. Their system now processes up to 1,000 targets an hour. And when that system was running and a girls’ school in Iran was bombed - 120 children killed, because a military database hadn’t been updated since 2013 - Palantir’s UK head said that’s the military’s responsibility, not theirs. 1,000 targets an hour, and nobody’s responsible.
Probably par for the course for a company whose CEO is on record saying, and I quote: “Palantir is here to disrupt... and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them.”
Now, some people will read this manifesto and nod their heads - because some things in it you can agree with. They talk about how Silicon Valley owes a debt to the country. How public servants should be held to higher standards. And who, on occasion, doesn’t want to go rah-rah-America and project power around the world? But it would be dangerously naive to assume any of this stays pointed outward - whether that outward is other countries, or your political enemies at home.
After all, it was none other than Palantir that built the COVID health databases - both in the U.S. and across the pond - that governments used to track their own populations. They helped identify people for January 6 prosecutions. And right now? They’re running a tool for ICE that pulls Medicaid records - doctor visits - to map where to conduct immigration raids. You can be fully in favor of enforcing immigration law and still think the government mining your health records to do it is a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
And it’s not just the US. Right here in Europe, where I am now, a Palantir scandal is sweeping across the continent. In the Netherlands, the Justice Ministry secretly signed a contract with Palantir in 2014, handed it to the military border police, and silently screened millions of passengers flying through Europe - names, dates of birth, nationalities, passport numbers. When Parliament asked the minister if they were using Palantir, he said no. Journalists got hold of the documents and proved he was lying. The ministry still won’t say when the contract ended - or if it ended. Or what happened to the data.
And none of what I outlined above is - to use tech-bro speak - a bug. It’s a feature. Palantir’s tech traces back to something called “Theory of the Mind” - developed by DARPA, the Pentagon’s advanced research agency. Built around a single concept: model the adversary. Predict how they think. Shape their environment to alter their decisions. And in this system, you’re not a citizen. You’re not a neutral party. You’re a potential troublemaker - an adversary to be tracked, modeled, and managed.
Regards,
Lau Vegys
There was a headline in the UK that stated the Met Police force used Palantir AI to root out corruption, abuse of power from members of their own force
Excellent read, Lau!