The defense tech behemoth has set the internet on fire with a tweet likened to the ramblings of a comic book villain

American surveillance tech contractor Palantir released a 22-point manifesto over the weekend, calling for a "new era" of AI-enabled US military supremacy. The internet went wild, with the text being labeled a blueprint for "technofascism."

Posted on X on Saturday, the document goes far beyond the typical mission statement of a Silicon Valley tech company. It outlines Palantir's positions on the role of technology and military power in the 21st century, stating: "Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation;" "hard power in this century will be built on software;" "national service should be a universal duty," "the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone."

To understand how a private corporation can feel empowered to demand such far-reaching policy changes from the state, it's important to understand what Palantir is, and how enmeshed with the 'deep state' it really is.

What is Palantir?

Palantir - named after the obsidian seeing-stones from Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' through which the dark lord Sauron keeps watch on his underlings - is a software firm primarily serving the defense and intelligence sectors. The company was established in 2003 by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale (who worked for Thiel's Clarium Capital), Stephen Cohen (who interned at Clarium) former Sigmund Freud Research Institute researcher Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings, a PayPal engineer.

Palantir was the brainchild of Thiel, who said that he realized "the approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism." Thiel's idea was nurtured by the CIA, which invested $2 million in the company in 2005 via its in-house venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel. "I wish I had Palantir when I was director," former CIA chief George Tenet - who set upIn-Q-Tel- told Forbes magazine in 2013. "I wish we had the tool of its power."

Palantir is currently valued at around $352 billion, a valuation that represents roughly 80 times the company's annual revenue. This apparent overvaluation is fueled by Palantir's extensive contracts with the US government and its alphabet soup of defense and intelligence agencies.

What does Palantir sell?

Palantir's flagship product is an operating system called 'Gotham'. Not a surveillance system as such, it pulls together and analyses existing data that may otherwise take days to sift through. For example, if US Central Command is planning a missile strike in a foreign country, Gotham can combine maps and satellite footage from that country, data from other agencies, including human intelligence from the CIA and signals intelligence from the NSA, and local surveillance data to present CENTCOM with potential targets.

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Gotham and MOSAIC - another Palantir target identification program that pulls digital data including surveillance footage and IP addresses from a target area - use AI to label the most effective targets for military strikes. The US admits that it has used these programs to select targets during its ongoing war on Iran, but insists that humans make the final decision to fire.

Gotham has also been used as a policing surveillance tool. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, uses Gotham to collect data on civilians - including names, addresses, social media activity, personal relationships, and surveillance photographs - in order to trace their connections to known criminals and predict the likelihood that they will go on to commit crimes.

Gotham can "centralize everything an agency knows about a person in one place, including their eye color from their driver's license, or their license plate from a traffic ticket - making it easy to build a detailed intelligence report," a former employee told Wired last year.

A group of anti-ICE demonstrators hold a rally in front of Palantir's offices in Washington DC, April 1, 2026

Getty Images; Celal Gunes

A group of anti-ICE demonstrators hold a rally in front of Palantir's offices in Washington DC

Who are Palantir's customers?

Palantir's client list is extensive. In the US it includes the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CIA, FBI, NSA, US Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Special Operations Command, as well as dozens or even hundreds of police departments and other law enforcement agencies. At present, there is no single, publicly-available list of Palantir customers within the US.

Abroad, Palantir's technology is used by the British Ministry of Defense, Israel Defense Forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as police departments and government agencies in France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK.

Why is a private surveillance tech company releasing a manifesto?

Palantir is at its core a data aggregation company, but one set apart by its clients, its marketing, and the ideological streak of its executives. The company markets itself not as a faceless seller of data collation and analysis software, but - in its own words - a provider of "an Al-powered kill chain" that enables "decision dominance from space to mud." Palantir refers to its consultants as "forward-deployed software engineers" and its internal emails as "situational awareness" reports. CEO Alex Karp portrays himself as deeply involved in military decisions that he, at least on paper, shouldn't be.

Palantir's mission, he said on an earnings call last year, is "to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them." As the public face of the company, Karp has defended the IDF's use of Palantir software to plan strikes in Gaza, and called for the US to prepare for a three-front war against China, Russia, and Iran.

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The manifesto can be viewed as a continuation of this sales pitch. Adapted from Karp's 2025 book, 'The Technological Republic', the 22 points envision a world in which Palantir's products will be in even higher demand. Take the following points:

• "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation."
• "The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software."
• "The question is not whether AI weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Ouradversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed."
• "The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin."
• "The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia."
• "Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime."

Karp's products are implicitly presented as the solution to these problems, and his 'peace through strength' message seems tailor-made to please the newly-neoconservative President Donald Trump, whose administration his company will ultimately sign contracts with. After AI firm Anthropic was booted from a Pentagon program over its refusal to enable mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, Palantir's manifesto is equal parts sales pitch and pledge of fealty.

The remainder of its points delve into culture-war territory, declaring that visionaries like Elon Musk should be applauded for their belief in "grand narrative," that the "pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted," and that "some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive."

Who are Karp and Thiel and why are they controversial?

These points reflect Karp's ideological bent - he describes himself as "progressive, but not woke," and a "tech nationalist." Karp has also portrayed himself throughout the years as a "socialist" and a "neo-Marxist," and has consistently voted Democrat, while praising some of Trump's policies. His only consistent beliefs appear to be that "the West has a superior way of living," and that this way of living must be defended "by applying organized violence." Karp is a vocal defender of Israel, and has referred to pro-Palestinian protesters in the US as "an infection inside of our society."

Thiel, by contrast, is a much more partisan figure. An avowed conservative, he has donated to libertarian and Republican causes, and bankrolled Vice President J.D. Vance's 2018 senatorial campaign. While Thiel has described himself as a libertarian, he donates to the interventionist Alliance of Democracies (established by former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and sits on the steering committee of the Bilderberg group.

Peter Thiel speaks at The Cambridge Union in Cambridge, UK, May 8, 2024

Getty Images; Nordin Catic

Thiel funded wrestler Hulk Hogan's 2015 lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker, almost a decade after the news blog outed him as gay.

What are people saying about the manifesto?

Palantir's manifesto has garnered an overwhelmingly negative reaction, with commentators describing it as "scary," "technofascist," and "the ramblings of a comic book villain."

"The manifesto's vision...is that of a US government and its tech allies as dominant players, unconstrained by accountability," political scientist Donald Moynihan wrote. "A world where soft power has real and lasting impact is simply less profitable for a company like Palantir relative to a world where we blow a lot of stuff up."

"If governments were actually doing their job, this Palantir document wouldn't be a manifesto they proudly boast about, but a clear sign of the urgent need to purge its software from the public institutions it has infiltrated," French entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand wrote on X. "They're effectively saying 'our tools aren't meant to serve your foreign policy. They're meant to enforce ours'."

The manifesto is more significant than any action by Trump, Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin argued on X. "Trump is insignificant pawn on the serious chess board. His role is total destruction. The preparations stage. Palantir is much more serious. It is the plan to safeguard the declining dominance of the West by radical means."

(RT.com)