It took just a few months into President Donald Trump’s second term for Palantir employees to question their company’s commitments to civil liberties. Last fall, Palantir became the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery, helping develop software identifying, tracking, and deporting immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, when current and former employees began sounding the alarm.
Around the same time, the two former employees reconnected by phone. As he answered the call, one of them asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?”
“That was his greeting,” says another former employee. “The feeling is not of ‘Oh, this is unpopular and difficult,’ but of ‘This feels wrong.'”
Palantir was founded, with initial venture capital investment from the CIA, at a moment of national consensus after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when many saw fighting terrorism abroad as the most important mission facing America. The company, which was co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sells software that acts as a high-powered data aggregation and analysis tool that powers everything from private businesses to the US military’s targeting systems.
For the past 20 years, employees could accept intense external criticism and awkward conversations with family and friends about working at a company named after JRR Tolkien’s corrupt all-seeing orb. But a year into Trump’s second term, as Palantir has deepened its ties to an administration that many workers fear is wreaking havoc at home, employees are finally raising these concerns internally, as concerns over America’s war on immigrants, the war in Iran, and even company-issued manifestos have forced them to reconsider their role in all this.
A Palantir spokesperson said in a statement, “We employ the best and brightest talent to build and deploy our software to help defend the United States and its allies and to support governments and businesses around the world. Palantir is not a monolith of trust, nor should we be one.” “We are all proud of our culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement on the complex areas we work on. This has been true since our founding and remains true today.”
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