Palantir Employees Question Civil Liberties Commitments Amid Second Trump Term

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Palantir Employees Question Civil Liberties Commitments Amid Second Trump Term
Photo: Gizmodo
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  1. It took just a few months of President Donald Trump’s second term for Palantir employees to question their company’s commitments to civil liberties. Last fall, Palantir seemed to become the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery, providing software identifying, tracking, and helping deport immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, when current and former employees started ringing the alarm.

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    Wired

    It took just a few months of President Donald Trump’s second term for Palantir employees to question their company’s commitments to civil liberties. Last fall, Palantir seemed to become the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery, providing software identifying, tracking, and helping deport immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, when current and former employees started ringing the alarm.

    Gizmodo

    Even Palantir employees seem to be waking up to what the company stands for, according to a recent report from Wired. When the U.S. launched a missile attack against an elementary school in Iran on Feb. 28 that killed about 175 people, mostly children, the employees reportedly started to question whether Palantir’s Maven technology had been used. Employees are also worried about the company’s lucrative contracts with ICE, an organization that has been terrorizing American streets in particularly heinous ways.

  2. That lifestyle, of course, isn’t something that decent people would be proud of. Palantir recently promoted a Reader’s Digest-style version of the book The Technological Republic, co-authored by CEO Alex Karp, in a tweet. The book advocates for reinstatement of the draft, says the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan following the atrocities of World War II was an overcorrection, and criticizes the concept of pluralism.

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    Wired

    Palantir’s leadership incensed workers yet again this week after the company posted a Saturday afternoon manifesto reducing Karp’s recent book, The Technological Republic, to 22 points. The post—which includes many of Karp’s long-standing beliefs on how Silicon Valley could better serve US national interests—goes as far as suggesting that the US should consider reinstating the draft. Critics called the manifesto fascist.

    Engadget

    In case you haven't gotten around to reading Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska's 2025 book, The Technological Republic, (because why would you do that to yourself?), the company best known for supplying AI-driven defense and surveillance software to the likes of the US Army, ICE and NYPD shared a 1,000-word X post this weekend covering its main points. The entire thing is both bizarre and deeply concerning. "The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal,” one of the 22 points states. "It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software." The book is billed as "a passionate call for the West

  3. Around that time, two former employees reconnected by phone. Right as they picked up the call, one of them asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?”

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    Wired

    Around that time, two former employees reconnected by phone. Right as they picked up the call, one of them asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?”

  4. Palantir was founded—with initial venture capital investment from the CIA—at a moment of national consensus following the September 11, 2001, attacks, when many saw fighting terrorism abroad as the most critical mission facing the US. The company, which was cofounded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sells software that acts as a high-powered data aggregation and analysis tool powering everything from private businesses to the US military’s targeting systems.

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    Wired

    Palantir was founded—with initial venture capital investment from the CIA—at a moment of national consensus following the September 11, 2001, attacks, when many saw fighting terrorism abroad as the most critical mission facing the US. The company, which was cofounded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sells software that acts as a high-powered data aggregation and analysis tool powering everything from private businesses to the US military’s targeting systems.

  5. “We hire the best and brightest talent to help defend America and its allies and to build and deploy our software to help governments and businesses around the world. Palantir is no monolith of belief, nor should we be,” a Palantir spokesperson said in a statement. “We all pride ourselves on a culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement over the complex areas we work on. That has been true from our founding and remains true today.”

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    Wired

    “We hire the best and brightest talent to help defend America and its allies and to build and deploy our software to help governments and businesses around the world. Palantir is no monolith of belief, nor should we be,” a Palantir spokesperson said in a statement. “We all pride ourselves on a culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement over the complex areas we work on. That has been true from our founding and remains true today.”

From the margins

3 details only one outlet reported

Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.

  1. 01 Gizmodo

    This week, Palantir announced the upcoming release of a new chore coat branded with the company’s logo. The company has been releasing gear since 2024, and this new coat is a great way to tell everyone what you stand for. Specifically, it communicates to everyone in your immediate vicinity that you support ICE and aren’t a big fan of civil liberties.

  2. 02 Wired

    While internal tensions within Palantir have grown over the last year, they reached a boiling point in January after the violent killing of Alex Pretti, a nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents during protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis. Employees from across the company commented in a Slack thread dedicated to the news demanding more information about the company’s relationship with ICE from management and CEO Alex Karp.

  3. 03 TechCrunch

    Palantir's ideological bent has come under more scrutiny as it's worked with ICE and positioned itself as a defender of "the West."

Assembled from 5 corroborated claims drawn from 5 independent outlets. Every passage above is taken verbatim — Dorothy doesn't paraphrase or summarize.

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Sources (5)

  • arstechnica
  • gizmodo
  • engadget
  • techcrunch
  • wired

Original Articles (5)

Culture Palantir Debuts Chic Chore Coat So the World Knows You’re One of the Baddies — Gizmodo
Enterprise Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism" — Ars Technica
Culture Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They’re the Bad Guys — Wired
Consumer Palantir posted a manifesto that reads like the ramblings of a comic book villain — Engadget
Enterprise Palantir posts mini-manifesto denouncing inclusivity and ‘regressive’ cultures — TechCrunch