“Our product is used to scare and kill enemies.” – Alex Karp, CEO, Palantir.
Palantir Technologies Inc., founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, initially marketed itself as a data broker, data miner and database of big data services. It was a service provider that was meant to help companies by collecting scattered data from their databases and converting it into one, removing biases, and uncovering hidden trends within the data to maximise productivity and revenue generation.
Palantir kept very neutral language when marketing itself: “a service that is uncovering trends in data.” However, that neutral language slowly morphed into abstract language. Executives call it a company that “can solve the world’s hardest problems” and “a company whose values support western institutions” and call their systems “a decision-making architecture.” Palantir did not deploy troops or launch missiles for the military. It merely did something deadlier than any weapon in the 21st century: it organised data and found meaning in it.
It wasn’t until 2008 that the US government began to notice Palantir and award it projects. This made Palantir the preferred choice for both civilian and government institutions. As of now, Palantir has contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Department of Defence, the Marines, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USA), and even the Israeli Defence Forces.
Creation of Palantir’s System
Following 9/11, the security systems of the United States were questioned. A study of the data from trained pilots flying over high-risk zones could have prevented this event. Where many Silicon Valley companies and tech giants turned away from intelligence and government-based projects, one man saw the revolution he could bring in and compete with giants like Lockheed Martin. This moment became the turning point in history: the creation of Palantir.
Palantir founder Peter Thiel was one of the PayPal Mafia members, one of the first people to change how transactions happen around the world. During its initial phases, PayPal faced problems with online fraud. PayPal was losing $23,000 per day, millions per month. Initially, it used systems that traditional banks used, but the problem arose when there were thousands of data entries and all of them were stored in a single database system, making sense of it and detecting trend patterns from it was not humanly possible. To address this issue, one of the co-founders developed an algorithm called “IGOR,” which was used for fraud detection in online transactions by scanning database entries and employing early machine learning algorithms to identify fraud patterns and recognise when they were occurring.
Peter Thiel saw an opportunity here if a system could scan through millions of data entries in real time for this platform. How will it work in defence systems where the data is massive and of a different variety? He went on to pull himself away from PayPal and started to invest heavily in this idea, which later became Palantir.
Role of Palantir’s Systems in Wars
Although Palantir executives and spokespeople deny its direct involvement in wars, as they simply provide a service, it’s always up to the leaders to use or abuse it. Palantir’s abstract stance is becoming clearer as it has developed many systems specifically for use in defence, such as Gotham and the Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP).
- i) The Afghan War
After becoming a loyal client of Palantir, the US government used Palantir’s Gotham in the Afghan War. Gotham is a robust software that unifies data from ground reports coming from on-site soldiers, satellite systems, radio communication, and CCTV footage to trigger a “kill chain,” a military term which means sets of decisions taken from identifying a target to eliminating it.
The US military gave Palantir access to its databases in exchange for information about the targets to eliminate. This software was still in its early days of inception, so engineers went for a hybrid approach. AI will output information in a “God’s Eye” view, giving a clear map of data collected from all of the approaches mentioned above, and humans will react based on their understanding and potential. Gotham was used extensively to identify potential targets and eliminate them.
- ii) Gaza War
After the contract with the Israeli Defence Forces, Palantir was confronted repeatedly about its involvement in the Gaza genocide. On one occasion, when the CEO was asked, “Is your software and AI killing Palestinians?” A callous response was given by him: “Well, some of them were terrorists.” The IDF used Palantir’s Gotham and the geospatial platform GAIA to kill civilians in Gaza; the Ukraine-Russia war also employed similar technology. It works by detecting movement on the ground and heat signals emitted from the person and guiding either a missile or a drone to hit the person or target. Palantir has not stopped at Gotham; according to a report on the Business and Human Rights Centre, “The company is currently developing an even more powerful AI targeting system called TITAN (Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node).” According to Palantir, TITAN is a “next-generation Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance ground station enabled by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to process data received from space, high altitude, aerial, and terrestrial layers. Although designed for use by the US Army, it’s possible that the company could test prototypes against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Future Plans
Palantir isn’t the only big player; other companies, some of which are already well-known, are also vying for a spot. Palantir’s political strategies, along with its ability to capitalise on fear and remain largely unrecognised, keep the company ahead of its competitors. Their goal is just one: be the only choice for military-industrial complexes. As quoted by Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, “I don’t think in competition; I think in domination” when questioned about Palantir’s competitors.
Palantir promises to revolutionise government systems using its data analysis tools and AI-driven solutions. Soon, Palantir will adopt a singular approach in which human intervention in defence will no longer be necessary. Palantir is expanding its innovation from software to hardware in order to achieve this.
AI-controlled missiles, tanks, and APCs will litter battlefields, eliminating the possibility of human-to-human conflict. Machines will do that job; this is the revolution that Palantir promises to bring in warfare: lethal precision achieved through software, no missed targets and no feelings to get involved. Palantir demonstrates that while humans may lack efficiency in killing, machines will defy all laws to execute a single command.
Palantir is not just revolutionising warfare; it’s normalising it. No amount of abstraction or dodgy explanations can erase the question that is being raised in this “revolution.” When software kills, who is more morally responsible, the software, the one who’s using the software or the one who coded it?