Palantir Technologies & the Surveillance State
Pulling back the digital curtain to reveal who’s behind the controlled chaos
In this first of a many-part series, we explored the threat posed by the increasingly concerning partnership between Palantir/Peter Thiel and the Trump regime. But first, in Part 1 of the episode, we opened with a brief discussion of some…
Top News Stories
Minnesota’s Democratic Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were assassinated in their home by a far-right domestic terrorist disguised as a police officer. (Katie attended the visitation at the State Capitol, where the couple laid in state along with their dog Gilbert, who was also killed. She was one of the last of thousands to wait in line at the end of the day, where she was interviewed by Kare 11 News’s Jess Hart, just one hour after President Biden paid his respects.) Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were also shot in their home before the gunman was finally apprehended by law enforcement two days later. Both survived the attack, as did their daughter, who Yvette threw herself on top of to shield her from bullets. Vance Boelter confessed to the murders and is being indicted at both the state and federal level: ‘The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced multiple charges against Vance Luther Boelter Monday and will seek first-degree murder charges.’
On June 27, SCOTUS ruled on nationwide injunctions via a case about birthright citizenship: A ‘6-3 decision, authored by Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, allows the president to implement his order to end automatic birthright citizenship as litigation on the matter continues.’ The ruling has not only ‘limited federal judges’ ability to temporarily pause President Donald Trump’s executive orders nationwide’; according to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent, it is also ‘an existential threat to the rule of law,’ as it ‘permit[s] the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued’ (MSNBC).
A $150 billion line item in Republicans’ so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” has extremely concerning implications for biotech surveillance that potentially involves not only Peter Thiel/Palantir, but also RFK/NIH, Elon Musk/Neuralink, the state of Florida, and possibly even the concentration camp that just opened there in the Everglades. A content creator named Drey who goes by the handle unoriginal_sins on TikTok lays out the facts that have her worried about the security of Americans’ private medical and health data in this video, namely…
RFK said in a June 24 Congressional hearing: ‘“My vision is every American wearing a wearable [device] within four years,”’ which ‘can include smartwatches and fitness trackers — like Apple Watches and Oura rings — and medical devices that monitor health metrics like heart rate, blood pressure and glucose levels,’ according to Politico.
Then Congress passed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill on July 3, which…
defunds NIH/CDC by 50% (CBS)
earmarks billions of dollars for an NEW health initiative originally called the Rural Health Transformation Program:
Senate version: $50 bil. over five years (2026-2030)
House amendment: $150 bil. over five years, and they’ve dropped Rural from the program title
Experts have warned that the cuts to health care in the “OBBB,” otherwise known as HR1, would put hundreds of rural hospitals at risk. HR1 Section 71401—which lays out the “Health Transformation Program,” seems intent on substituting much of that hands-on care with “remote monitoring,” also know as wearable biotech:
(C) Promoting consumer-facing, technology-driven solutions for the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
(D) Providing training and technical assistance for the development and adoption of technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals, including remote monitoring, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies.
(8) Review – There shall be no administrative or judicial review under section 1116 or otherwise of amounts allotted or redistributed to States under this subsection, payments to States withheld or reduced under this subsection, or previous payments recovered from States under this subsection.
According to Palantir Technologies’ press release about their $443 mil. contract with CDC (signed in 2022)…
‘“We are honored to continue and expand our long-standing partnership with CDC in support of public health surveillance and outbreak response,” said Dr. William Kassler, Chief Medical Officer for USG at Palantir. “Beyond COVID, by incorporating innovative genomic workflows into traditional public health surveillance, CDC is building upon its foundational investments in a modernized technology infrastructure.”
‘Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. […and] many of which involve factors or circumstances that are beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties include our ability to meet the unique needs of our customer; the failure of our platforms to satisfy our customer or perform as desired; the frequency or severity of any software and implementation errors; our platforms’ reliability; and our customer’s ability to modify or terminate the contract.’ (Yikes.)
Elon Musk’s company Neuralink signed a contract with the University of Miami in February to expand its human brain chip implant trials and recently ‘put an implant into a human brain’ in one step closer to Musk’s goal of allowing people to ‘wirelessly connect their brains with phones and other devices.’
Conveniently for Musk, Florida governor Ron DeSantis very recently vetoed legislation that would have allowed families to sue for medical malpractice if it results in death. According to Newsweek, the vetoed bill ‘would have repealed a 1990 Florida law that bars unmarried adult children over the age of 25 and their parents from recovering medical malpractice damages in cases involving the deaths of their parents or children. This law has been known as the "free kill" law and Florida is the only state in which it exists.’
There is only about a 50-mile distance between Alligator Auschwitz and the University of Miami’s neuroscience research facility. (Watch Drey’s video if you’re having trouble connecting all the dots. It may seem like a stretch, and hopefully it is, but considering RFK’s past remarks about wanting to put Black children who take Adderall for ADHD into "wellness farms” to “break their addiction” and “reparent” them "through forced physical labor, it might be prudent to plan for the worst.)
That last story takes us into Part 2 of the episode…
A deeper exploration of Palantir Technologies and the surveillance state
In our many-part series on this topic, we’ll endeavor to do the following:
Pull back the curtain & reveal who’s behind the controlled chaos
Understand their goals & tactics: No war but class war!!!
Follow the money & stop the pipeline!
Step 1: Pull back the curtain
On June 30, Robert Reich published an op-ed in The Guardian entitled ‘Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans,’ in which he wrote,
‘Draw a circle around all the assets in the US now devoted to artificial intelligence.
Draw a second circle around all the assets devoted to the US military.
A third around all assets being devoted to helping the Trump regime collect and compile personal information on millions of Americans.
And a fourth circle around the parts of Silicon Valley dedicated to turning the US away from a democracy into a dictatorship led by tech bros.
Where do the four circles intersect?
At a corporation called Palantir Technologies and a man named Peter Thiel.
In JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a “palantír” is a seeing stone that can be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality. During the War of the Ring, a palantír falls under the control of Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.
Palantir Technologies bears a striking similarity. It sells an AI-based platform that allows its users – among them, military and law enforcement agencies – to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information and physical characteristics. These are used to identify and surveil individuals.
Of course, Palantir Technologies doesn’t want to be perceived as dangerous or unethical. According to their website, ‘We build platforms for integrating, managing, and securing data on top of which we layer applications for fully interactive human-driven, machine-assisted analysis.’
Dig around on the website a bit, however, and you’ll also find that in January of 2024, the company signed a contract with the Israeli Defense Ministry ‘to supply technology to help the country’s war effort,’ known to most people as the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza.
Palantir also sponsored the big Squeaky Tank Military Parade on Trump’s birthday.
Then there’s the New York Times’ recent piece, ‘Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans,’ which adds more fuel to the fire of public concern:
‘The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies’ to the tune of ‘more than $113 million in [new] federal government spending.’ Those agencies, some of which already worked with Palantir prior to the expansion, include…
Social Security Administration
Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Health and Human Services (HHS)
New contracts: DHS & Pentagon, $795 million contract with Department of Defense
In March, 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.’
‘The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.’ This certainly doesn’t assuage our doubts surrounding HHS’s announcement of “no new autism registry.” The federal government already has the information they need for a registry: it’s really just a matter of putting it all in one place for ease of use. (Read more in our newsletter on Substack: ‘RFK’s Autism “Study” & Nazi Eugenics.’)
‘Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.’
Implications:
‘Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
‘Linda Xia, a signee who was a Palantir engineer until last year, said the problem was not with the company’s technology but with how the Trump administration intended to use it. “Data that is collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses,” Ms. Xia said. “Combining all that data, even with the noblest of intentions, significantly increases the risk of misuse.”
‘Mario Trujillo, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said the government typically collected data for good reasons, such as to accurately levy taxes. But “if people can’t trust that the data they are giving the government will be protected, that it will be used for things other than what they gave it for, it will lead to a crisis of trust,” he said.
In response to the NYT report, a coalition of 10 Dem senators—including Ranking Member on the Finance Committee Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, & Jeff Merkley—release the following (excerpted) letter on June 17:
‘We write to demand information regarding reports that Palantir Technologies (“Palantir”) is 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.
‘According to press reports, Palantir employees have reportedly been installed at the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), where they are helping the agency use Palantir’s software to create a “single, searchable database” of taxpayer records. The sensitive taxpayer data compiled into this Palantir database will likely be shared throughout the government regardless of whether access to this information will be related to tax administration or enforcement, which is generally a violation of federal law. Palantir’s products and services were reportedly selected for this brazenly illegal project by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Several DOGE members are former Palantir employees.
‘The unprecedented possibility of a searchable, ‘mega-database’ of tax returns and other data that will potentially be shared with or accessed by other federal agencies is a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump’s Administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other American. This potential ‘mega-database’ at the IRS and elsewhere also raises myriad potential violations of privacy laws designed to strictly limit those who can access the tax return records of individuals and businesses, specifically the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act of 1974.
*Bunch of stuff about how strict tax privacy laws are & how this would totally violate multiple laws*
‘What is more, the Privacy Act of 1974 provides general safeguards against the federal government’s processing of personal information about U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. [...]
‘The IRS hiring Palantir to help it establish a “mega-database” of government-held personal data, including sensitive taxpayer data, for seamless processing for a limitless number of purposes blatantly violates the notice, transparency, and procedural requirements of the Privacy Act. As you should be aware, contractors are explicitly covered by many of the Privacy Act’s requirements. Palantir, including individual Palantir employees, can face civil and criminal liability for violating the Privacy Act.
‘Palantir's troubling assistance to the Trump Administration is not limited to its work for the IRS. According to press reports, Palantir’s work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) includes helping the Administration “leverage data to drive enforcement operations” by “producing leads for law enforcement to find people to deport and keeping track of the logistics of Trump’s mass deportation effort.” Such an opaque tool in the hands of an Administration that openly violates the due process rights of immigrants is a grave threat to our Constitution. Former acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause, acting Chief Counsel Bill Paul, and Chief Privacy Officer Kathleen Walters all appear to have resigned or been reassigned over the IRS’s agreement with ICE.
‘Furthermore, you have bragged that Palantir enables its military customers to “bring violence and death to our enemies” and that your software is “used by U.S. and allied defense and intelligence agencies for functions like target selection and mission planning.” We are concerned that Palantir’s software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans’ rights. Donald Trump has personally threatened to arrest the governor of California, federalized National Guard troops without the consent of the governor for immigration raids, deployed active-duty Marines to Los Angeles against the wishes of local and state officials, condoned violence against peaceful protestors, called the independent press “the enemy of the people” and abused the power of the federal government in unprecedented ways to punish people and institutions he dislikes.
‘The Trump Administration has spent taxpayer dollars on Palantir software at numerous other government agencies and paid it billions of dollars to conduct similar data gathering efforts. For example, the Department of Defense recently awarded Palantir a $795 million contract to lead data fusion and artificial intelligence programs throughout the U.S. military, with the possibility to increase the award to $1.3 billion. Additionally, the Trump Administration has deployed Palantir’s Foundry software at the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health.
‘Palantir is certainly not the first American company to earn huge profits by enabling violations of human rights by authoritarian governments.
*Bunch of examples of tech companies doing super shady surveillance stuff in other countries*
‘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. Accordingly, we request that you preserve any emails, text messages or other records related to Palantir’s work for the Trump Administration in anticipation of future litigation and Congressional oversight. Please also provide answers to the following questions no later than July 10, 2025:
Please provide a list of all current Palantir contracts with the United States government. For each contract, please provide the following information: the dollar value of the award, the agency that awarded the contract, the name of the Palantir software or product being deployed as part of the contract, and a detailed description of the services being performed as part of the contract.
Has Palantir sought or received assurances from the U.S. government that its executives, board members, and employees will not be held responsible for violations of federal law, including the internal revenue code?
Has Palantir provided insurance coverage or commitments to pay legal costs and fines to any of its executives, board members, or employees in connection with the company’s work for the U.S. government or any foreign government?
What services, features, or assistance, if any, has the Trump Administration requested and Palantir declined to provide, due to concerns related to privacy, civil liberties, or potential violations of federal, state, or international law?
Is Palantir aware of the requirements placed on agencies and contractors by the Privacy Act of 1974? Have you advised the government of those requirements, or offered to assist in their compliance? Do you believe the government is currently satisfying its requirements under the Privacy Act?
Does the company have a “red line” for potential violations of human rights, U.S. law or international law by the Trump Administration that would result in Palantir terminating its services for the U.S. government?
How many Palantir employees have quit since January 20, 2025, citing the company’s work for the Trump Administration?
Palantir then released a company statement on X that said in part,
“Palantir is not building a master database. Palantir is neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens. No amount of parroting of this false accusation will make it true. We are committed to America, regardless of which party the American people have voted into office. This should be obvious given our continuous work with the government for nearly 20 years. […]
“Palantir’s software is built at every stage to uphold, not undermine, legal and regulatory protections as well as the ethics and standards that help institutions govern the appropriate uses of powerful technologies. Americans are entitled to better government. We object very strongly to The New York Times, or anyone, portraying technology and privacy as opposing forces; we believe that, done well, they reinforce each other.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wasn’t buying any of it, based on his statement:
“Palantir is terrified of legitimate questions from members of Congress, so their expensive flacks and high-priced lawyers have produced a. They deny accusations we did not make, and refuse responsibility for what Donald Trump’s administration does with the products they build for his political appointees.
“It is Exhibit A for why Americans are demanding real transparency about Palantir’s contracts and what the Trump administration is doing with Palantir’s technology.” (The Hill)
Tune in next week as we discuss warnings from concerned former Palantir employees and dig into the life and leanings of the PayPal Mafia don himself: Peter Thiel. Buckle up! The cognitive dissonance might explode your brain.
 | A guest post by
|