This blog was written by Maya Layish. Read more about Maya here.
Even a simple Google search for ‘Palantir’ makes one thing about the company immediately clear: it is no stranger to widespread media attention and public controversy. Co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel and led by CEO Alexander Karp, the Trump-aligned US spy tech company has consistently maintained against all criticism that it is ‘just a software company’. According to Palantir, it develops software for companies and government agencies to analyse vast amounts of data, all while remaining true to its founding purpose of ‘enabling institutions to better act on their data, without needing to trade off rights to privacy and other civil liberties’.
Taken at face value, this suggests the company plays a neutral and largely benign role: a provider of digital tools that helps governments improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public institutions. So why has Palantir been described by many as the scariest company in the world?
The answer is complex. Whilst Palantir has formally “committed to protecting privacy”, this sits uneasily alongside the company’s business model. Palantir’s origins – and much of its growth – lie not in everyday government administration but in military and intelligence operations. Defence agencies have deployed its platforms and software to aggregate, integrate and analyse vast data sets to support modern warfare. This raises the question of whether its rhetoric represents a genuine commitment to civil liberties or a sophisticated form of privacy washing.
Examining the ideological commitments of Palantir and its leadership casts its public commitment to privacy in a different light. The danger of Palantir does not lie solely in the use of its products, but in a fundamentally systemic concern: the political worldview the company promotes and the institutions it seeks to shape.
In April this year, Palantir published a manifesto on X championing American power and arguing that ‘some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive’. Visitors to Palantir’s website are greeted with an equally informative declaration: ‘We built Palantir to ensure the future of the West, not to tinker at the margins’. Whatever the company may call itself, these are not the words of a politically neutral software vendor. It exposes a company that sees itself not merely as building technology, but as advancing a particular imagination of the direction of civilisation and the future.
The political ambition behind the software
The personal philosophies of Palantir’s founders underpin the company’s broader vision. Few books have shaped Silicon Valley’s political imagination as intensely as The Sovereign Individual (originally published in 1997), and Palantir’s leadership is no exception. Thiel, who wrote the foreword to its 2020 edition, describes it as a guide for understanding and preparing for the future. This unofficial manifesto for the tech billionaire class argues that technological and economic forces, rather than democratic politics, are the true drivers of history. Reflected in Palantir’s own rhetoric, this worldview places extraordinary faith in technological elites while diminishing the role of democratic governance. Those with sufficient wealth and foresight, it contends, should progressively distance themselves from traditional institutions and position themselves to shape the future.
In recent years, this worldview has taken on a particularly theological dimension. Most notable is Thiel’s attachment to the figure of the Antichrist: the political category through which he believes centralised power and the future of governance should be understood. He has argued that the Antichrist may not arrive as a single individual, but as a form of global government – a one-world state. This government consolidates power by promising protection from existential threats such as artificial intelligence, climate change, engineered pandemics, and nuclear war. In Thiel’s account, international bodies like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court hasten the coming of this Armageddon.
Thiel has not confined this theory to private reflection. Over four sold-out sessions hosted at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club between September and October 2025, he delivered an off-the-record lecture series warning that Armageddon is coming and philosophising about who the Antichrist could be. No recordings or transcripts were made public. According to the Guardian, the talks drew on recent history and philosophy, were littered with biblical references and occasionally veered into conspiratorial theory.
These views should not be dismissed as the eccentric reflections of a Silicon Valley billionaire. When the co-founder of a company whose software is increasingly embedded within the infrastructure of democratic states views politics through the lens of existential conflict and openly questions the capacity of democratic institutions, this is no longer a private ‘eccentricity’. Clearly, Palantir develops software with a purpose: a vision of technological elites shaping the future.
From Silicon Valley to the state
This is not simply an abstract philosophy. Palantir has already established a significant foothold within the governing infrastructure of democracies around the world.
Take Australia. State and federal contracts with Palantir are worth almost $80m, while federal investment in the company reportedly exceeds $160m. According to Crikey, Federal agencies including AUSTRAC and the Department of Defence have spent an estimated $60m in contracts with Palantir. Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, also holds more than $100m worth of shares in Palantir. This reach extends well beyond government. Supermarket giant Coles has also partnered with Palantir, where their tools have access to ‘10 billion rows of data’ across more than 840 supermarkets. What the company has not disclosed is whether Palantir has direct or indirect access to systems containing customer data, employee data, or in-store surveillance and electronic tracking feeds such as Bluetooth tracking.
The United Kingdom sees a similar pattern of integration. Although Palantir has recently been blocked from securing a £50 million Metropolitan Police contract over concerns about the company’s ‘values and ethics’, one decision should not obscure the extent of its existing influence. Palantir has also secured contracts across numerous public institutions, including the Financial Conduct Authority, the Atomic Weapons Establishment, and the Ministry of Defence. Last year, the Ministry signed a strategic partnership with Karp, committing up to £750 million to Palantir’s defence technology over the next five years. Most controversially, Palantir was awarded a £330 million contract to manage the NHS Federated Data Platform, further strengthening its role at the heart of Britain’s public infrastructure.
Whilst this may sound like a Silicon Valley success story of a technology company winning lucrative government contracts, it poses a great concern for national sovereignty. The integration of Palantir software into governance systems means states risk regulatory capture: becoming dependent on a private foreign corporation to deliver essential public services and manage critical infrastructure. Such dependence weakens democratic accountability and limits state capacity to pursue policy free from the influence of private corporate interests.
The risk of corporate influence grows as vendor lock-in continues to become entrenched. NHS data analysts have warned that much of their work conducted within the Federated Data Platform would effectively be lost if access to Palantir’s software were withdrawn, making it ever more difficult and expensive to switch providers. Similar concerns have emerged within the Ministry of Defence, which has acknowledged becoming increasingly dependent on Palantir’s technology. Two parliamentary select committees have since urged the government to exercise a break clause when the NHS contract comes up for renewal next year.
When governments integrate Palantir software, a company that has openly defended a political future which undermines the values of democracy, they do not only risk a loss of technological capacity. They risk the loss of democracy itself by allowing private interests to shape the very institutions intended to serve the public.
A different digital future?
Yet alternative models are emerging. Growing geopolitical tensions have encouraged Europe to pursue digital sovereignty – reducing dependence on foreign-owned technological infrastructure and developing alternatives to US big tech. Legislation such as the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, and AI Act seeks to establish greater accountability, transparency, and oversight on powerful technology companies. This represents a competing approach to the digital future: one that treats technology as a matter of public concern requiring democratic oversight, rather than infrastructure controlled primarily by private US corporations.
Even so, challenging US technological dominance is an immense task. More than 80 percent of Europe’s digital technologies and infrastructure are imported, with around 70 percent of foundational AI models originating in the US. As Martin Hullin, Director of the Network for Technological Resilience and Sovereignty at German non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung, put it: ‘Europe is caught up in a US–China rivalry and the dependence on non-European tech, be it cloud services, AI models, semiconductors, makes us vulnerable to geopolitical pressure’.
That vulnerability has only sharpened. The US administration has threatened foreign tariffs against Europe, casting its technology regulation as ‘foreign censorship’ and ‘taxes on American firms’. When Washington’s response to a trading partner’s regulatory proposals is to threaten retaliation, the case for political autonomy is ever clearer. Pushing back against US technological hegemony remains a great challenge – but building accountable, democratically governed digital infrastructure is a necessary step towards ensuring technology serves society, rather than reshapes it.
What happens next?
Ultimately, the question is not whether Palantir builds effective software that can aid governments, but who is granted the power to shape the institutions that govern our lives. As governments grow more dependent on privately owned digital infrastructure, they risk surrendering more than technological autonomy: they risk their capacity to exercise democratic decision-making free from corporate interference.
This concern extends well beyond any single company. The largest technology firms now possess forms of power once associated primarily with states: they set the rules, shape labour markets, influence public discourse, and adjudicate disputes. The harms this produces are rarely immediate. Disinformation, labour displacement, surveillance, and market concentration accumulate gradually, which is precisely what makes them so difficult for democratic institutions to confront.
This is why Palantir’s ambitions matter. The danger posed by the company lies not only in its algorithms, but in the political future those algorithms are built to serve. Palantir has told us, plainly, what future it wants. Democracies that want to survive should take it at its word and uplift their political defences.
Image credit: Unsplash/Salvador Rios