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The Omniscient Eye: Palantir and its Omnipresence in the Global Intelligence Community
- THE GEOSTRATA
- 6 hours ago
- 10 min read
In Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings, there exists a handful of crystal orbs that possess immense powers. These orbs allowed their possessor to communicate across vast distances and view events that were occurring anywhere in Middle-earth. But one of the orbs was later obtained by the series’ main antagonist to conquer the entire Middle-earth. Tolkien named these orbs Palantíri (seeing stones). This influenced four young men to brand their tech company, which would later become one of the world’s most effective, powerful, and dangerous data analysis software- Palantir Technologies.
Illustration by The Geostrata
PROLOGUE
Years before 9/11, an FBI officer named John P. O’Neill recognized Osama bin Laden as the central architect of a global terror network. John tirelessly investigated the early al-Qaeda strikes, including the 1988 US embassy bombings in Africa, USS Cole bombings, and also led the investigation of the 1993 WTC attack. His frequent clashes with the other government officials, such as the CIA, gained him interagency enemies. His efforts to track the terror operatives were repeatedly distorted as the CIA withheld much critical information from the FBI. In 1997, he reportedly warned in conferences that terror organizations are equipped with infrastructure within the United States and have the capacity to attack at any time.
Frustrated due to the bureaucratic impediments, he retired and accepted the role of director of security for the WTC complexes. Just weeks after he joined, the WTC experienced one of the worst attacks on U.S. soil: 9/11. Tragically, John died in the North Tower of the WTC while helping with evacuation efforts.
The inability to share information between the intelligence agencies became pretty evident with the September attacks. While the local law enforcement agencies, the FBI, CIA, and NSA kept records of important data, they were unable to aggregate it together and find meaningful connections. People started to question whether the attacks could have been prevented if the government were capable of connecting its multiple streams of data.
With the dawn of the Internet, it was easy for organizations to keep records of their data. But this availability also led to massive data hoarding, for which none of them had any adequate capacity to aggregate and find connections or meanings between the huge streams of data. The problem was revealed, and the U.S. started its mission to resolve it.
GENESIS
It was during this time, 2003, amidst the backdrop of the global ‘War on Terror,’ that four young men from Stanford University sketched the outlines of a software capable of aggregating and connecting multiple streams of data, which would become Palantir Technologies. Peter Thiel, the vibrant co-founder of PayPal; Alex Karp, a philosophy student turned financier; Stephen Cohen, a coding prodigy; and Joe Lonsdale, a number-crunching architect, together co-founded and formulated the foundation of the software. Using PayPal’s fraud detection system as the cornerstone, Palantir produced robust software platforms that would aggregate seemingly unrelated massive streams of data and paint them into clear, interactive maps of networks.
Depending on the customers, the data streams would include their financial transactions, communication logs, and satellite imagery etc.
For example, if a terror cell planned attacks, Palantir’s platforms would reveal to its customers the connections buried deep within their data noise. The initial run was difficult. Karp pitched their software to Venture Capitalists with absolute honesty by assessing ‘what could go wrong’ rather than delivering an optimistic sales pitch. This led to organizations resisting signing contracts as they were skeptical about allowing their data to be aggregated by a private enterprise.
In early 2005, after draining the initial funding from Thiel’s Founders Fund, the company was on the edge of dysfunction. Monthly expenses flew over the capital earned, programmers worked overtime to mitigate bugs and strengthen encryption protocols, while rumors circulated that Palantir would be forced to lay off half of its staff or completely shut down altogether. This is when, like God’s hand, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture firm, came to help. After a series of security clearances and clandestine conversations, they provided Palantir with a $2 million investment. This lifeline further became the entry point for Palantir into the United States Intelligence Community and contracts.
ROLE IN GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
During most of its run (2003-2019), Palantir operated in an arcane and deliberate manner with little to no social media representation. They strategically avoided conferences and rarely published papers. Later in 2020, they bypassed a traditional IPO and implemented a direct listing on the Stock Exchange, officially becoming public.
U.S. GOVERNMENT'S PET
Compared to their counterparts and other big tech firms in Silicon Valley, who tend to distance themselves from the U.S. government, Palantir, on the other hand, immersed themselves with U.S. government contracts. Even now, approximately 60% of its revenue comes directly from the U.S. government.
“Our primary motivation is executing against the world's most important problem in this country and allied countries,”
Karp said, fixating on his obsession with Western civilization. In 2008, Palantir built its best software ever- Gotham. It was developed for defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies. The CIA began using its alpha versions in 2005 and officially deployed them in 2008. The DoD’s U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force adopted it between 2008 and 2013. The FBI, NSA, and related agencies also reportedly started utilizing Gotham during this timeframe.
Gotham integrates data from multiple seemingly unrelated sources like satellites, drones, and OSINT, allowing decentralized decision-making. A Special Forces member stationed in Afghanistan cited it as ‘plugging into the Matrix’ when using Palantir’s Gotham platform for the first time during the Afghan operations. By typing a village name into the system, a map appears detailing the locations of all reported skirmishes and IED incidents in that area. Using the timeline function, the soldiers can see the recent attack origin points and plot the takeover of the village accordingly.
It was also used to pinpoint the terrorist financing networks, reveal trends in roadside bomb attacks, and uncover the Syrian suicide bombing networks during the Iraq invasion (2002-11). It had also disrupted a Pakistani suicide bombing plot on a Western target and also discovered an espionage infiltration of an allied government. It's rumored that Palantir played a role in the assassination of Bin Laden.
However, Palantir faced public scrutiny when it provided its platforms to the U.S. ICE for deportation enforcement and immigration tracking. In December 2018, they sent a statement to the New York Times regarding their distinctive role within the two-fold system of ICE. Palantir claimed they only work for the ‘Homeland Security Investigations’ department of the ICE rather than the ‘Enforcement and Removal Operations’ department, which is responsible for the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. They provided a similar response to Amnesty International in October of 2020 as well. In both statements, Palantir cited that they do not own or control data but rather serve the platforms to their customers to analyze their own data. Even with these statements, CEO Karp stated in an interview that Palantir's views on democracy are enforced by a functioning judiciary, further indicating their willingness to continue providing software to ICE.
In July 2025, Amnesty International published another report and inquiry citing Palantir’s platforms being used by the U.S. authorities to spy on pro-Palestine student protestors and to promote the ‘Catch and Revoke’ policy. The same month, Palantir responded, rejecting the claims and outlining its distinctive partnership with ICE.
In 2025, Palantir signed a massive $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army, which included AI analytics tools along with the advanced weapon-targeting systems.
These systems were further incorporated into the ‘Maven’ program and were used to plan strikes across the country during the Iran War. Palantir used Anthropic’s Claude product in Maven, but the partnership stalled as Anthropic rejected the Pentagon's move to use Claude to power fully autonomous weapons and also conduct mass domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens. This rejection further motivated the U.S. government to designate Anthropic as a ‘National Security supply-chain risk,’ prompting all government contractors to ban its tool from federal systems. Due to this, Palantir had to search for viable options.
FIVE EYES FACADE
International governments of the ‘Five Eyes Allies’ also utilized Palantir immensely. In 2013, when Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs, it was revealed that Palantir developed a helper tool for ‘XKEYSCORE’, one of the NSA’s most invasive global mass surveillance programs. XKEYSCORE is, by the NSA’s own admission, its widest-reaching program. The members of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, especially the UK’s GCHQ, evaluated and selected Palantir following its demonstration at the IEEE VisWeek 2008 conference.
The wildest fact was that within two years of the meetup, documents revealed that at least three members of the Five Eyes alliance were employing Palantir to help gather and process data from around the world. They collected pools of enormous amounts of data like emails, chats, browsing histories, and even live phone calls through XKEYSCORE and other tools, amounting to tens of billions of records. Palantir later downplayed their links to the whole program, citing they were never contracted directly with the NSA and the software in question was merely a data aggregator used by the allied agency for data sharing.
Irrespective of this, the U.K’s MoD, Australia’s NSW, Canada’s DoND, and New Zealand’s DF have utilized and still run Gotham. Moreover, various EU members such as Denmark, France, Poland, Sweden, etc., have reportedly utilized the platform, while others such as Germany, Greece, Finland, etc. have shown ‘love-hate’ relations with Palantir. Recently, Switzerland has rejected Palantir’s platforms, citing data sovereignty. From the atmosphere, it's safe to say that Europe is trying as much as it can to limit dependence on Palantir by promoting its own versions, such as ChapsVision, which was recently opted for by Germany instead of Palantir.
THE PROMISED PARTNERSHIP
Palantir holds high-level connections with Israel as well. Just days after the October 7 attacks, Palantir published a full-page advertisement in The New York Times: “Palantir stands with Israel”. This displayed the readiness of Palantir to support Israel, and their willingness came from witnessing the October 7 attacks. In January 2024, Palantir held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv and further agreed to a ‘strategic partnership’ with the Israeli MoD for intelligence analysis, AI assistance, etc.
The platform was used to significantly step up Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
The CEO, Karp, stated how few of their employees exited due to his public support for Israel, and he expects more to exit as well. “If you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it’s not a position,” said Karp when questioned about his stance.
WAR-TIME INTELLIGENCE
Karp was the first executive of a major Western company to visit Kyiv and meet Zelensky after the Russian invasion. Palantir is deeply integrated into the defense infrastructure of Ukraine, providing its platforms and AI tools to analyze battlefield intelligence and quicken targeting cycles. It even partnered to support the digital reconstruction efforts to use AI for the operations of demining.
The head of the US military in the Middle East, Adm. Brad Cooper, has praised Maven for allowing officers to sift through vast amounts of data in seconds, so as to cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react during the Iran War. Even though it has faced scrutiny due to the immense speed at which the system operates, leaving very little time for human verification, Palantir has refuted these claims, citing the ‘Human in the Loop’ narrative and stating that ultimate responsibility will always prevail with the military.
Palantir openly displays how conflicts can bode well for its defense contracts. As tensions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East rise, governments are forced to increase their defense expenditure. This is a perfect opportunity for Palantir to sell more of its platforms to land more governmental contracts and mend its relationship with NATO and the United States.
If this prevails, war will also include clashes between algorithms. Inferior algorithms will fail while superior ones win. War used to be about strength, but now it's going to be about latency. And the world may move towards a struggle to compete with virtual battles, rather than physical control.
ETHICAL DILEMMA
Palantir sits at the center of a profound ethical dilemma: the friction between protecting national security and safeguarding individual civil liberties. Throughout all these years, they've faced several critiques and public scrutiny for providing platforms so powerful to organizations that enable unchecked state power, mass surveillance, and human rights violations. Palantir’s vehement support for the actions of ICE, enthusiastic backing of Israel and its war crimes, and promotion of integrating autonomous systems into warfare have raised several eyebrows across the world. Coupled with Thiel’s closeness to the U.S.
President Trump and Karp’s comic-villain worthy statements in interviews have seriously tarnished the image of Palantir on social media. In an interview, Karp questioned himself whether he would be protesting against Palantir if he were younger in college. However, questions of the public, such as “whether selling platforms of digital surveillance to governments is ethical or not,” are still answered in an ambiguous diplomatic style by the spokesperson of Palantir.
Due to many of these reasons, people view Palantir as a cunning tech company that spies on everyone and their private data. Media outlets always refer to Palantir as the ‘dystopian surveillance tool,’ ‘Big Brother’ from Orwell’s 1984, and of course, the ‘All Seeing Eye.’
But this is simply untrue. Palantir’s business model, according to them, is not based on the monetization of personal data. They do not collect, store, or sell data, unlike the major big techs like Meta and Google.
Palantir also cites the absence of free flow of data between clients until and unless those specific clients enter into an agreement.
It acts as a data processor, not a data controller. Palantir’s software and services are used under the direction of the organization that licenses their products. As in, the organization defines what can and cannot be done with their data, and they control the Palantir accounts in which the analysis is conducted.
To mitigate this issue and interact, they formed the ‘Privacy & Civil Liberties Engineering’ (PCL) team consisting of lawyers, data scientists, social and policy scientists, and philosophers who closely collaborate in the objective of proper development and deployment.
Karp stressed multiple times that they’ve developed some of the most sophisticated privacy protection technology on the market. Its software creates audit trails that showcase who has seen certain information and what they've done with it. Palantir also has a permission system to make sure that workers in agencies using its software can access only the data that their clearance levels allow.
EPILOGUE
Nonetheless, Palantir has grown immensely compared to where it began. Gotham stands as its magnum opus and one that could shift the entire scope of modern intelligence. Governments and organizations that were initially skeptical of allowing a private entity to aggregate their data have all succumbed to the efficiency, expertise, and high magnitude of vision that Palantir provides through its platforms and services.
Its omnipresence doesn't end there; other platforms, such as Foundry, focus on commercial data aggregation, partnering with numerous corporations like Amazon, Walmart, Saudi Aramco, Airbus, etc. India’s Wipro, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, etc., also utilize Palantir’s Foundry for their commercial data analysis. It's safe to say that Palantir’s omnipresence is both a great case study on corporate efficacy and a corporate monopoly, especially in the defense and intelligence sectors. Instead of being under the shadow of identity as a controversial analytics company, Palantir has now emerged as an indispensable tool of global security.
BY MOHAMMED MUSTAFA
TEAM GEOSTRATA