The American data processing giant Palantir has just published a manifesto. It questions pluralism, advocates compulsory military service and proposes an arms race driven by artificial intelligence. It is the hallmark of a company that has placed itself at the center of the American military-industrial complex and that now acts without any type of control.

First modification: 04/24/2026 - 23:35

Palantir Technologies, a leading company in military data processing and analysis in the United States, published on Saturday, April 18, a commercial brochure that also functions as a 22-point manifesto, in which it urges Silicon Valley to surrender to the service of the American military-industrial complex.

“Silicon Valley's technical elite has a duty to participate in the defense of the nation,” Palantir declared in a text advocating the emergence of a “Technological Republic,” written by CEO Alex Karp and a close collaborator, Nicholas Zamiska.

“The question is not whether AI-based weapons will be made; it is about who will make them and for what purpose,” the company explains in X.

"An era of deterrence, the atomic age, is coming to an end. A new era of AI-based deterrence is about to begin," the manifesto further predicts.

Beyond the usual search for new defense contracts, the message even goes so far as to propose the introduction of compulsory military service in the United States, and calls for an end to the “impotence” of the Japanese and German armies that was decreed after the defeat of the Axis in 1945.

The manifesto also suggests tech companies take a more forceful role in the fight against “violent crime.”

He criticizes “elite intolerance toward religious beliefs,” and urges the United States to reject “empty and meaningless pluralism.”

"Some cultures, and even some subcultures... have produced wonders. Others have turned out to be mediocre, or even worse, regressive and harmful," the document states, without specifying which cultures it is about.

Identify targets Washington must eliminate

Founded by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, Palantir takes its name from the artifacts imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, author of 'The Lord of the Rings'. These magical stones allow, among other things, the people of Middle-earth to spy on their enemies from a distance.

An echo of the real world, where Palantir provides its clients with data processing software that allows them to collect information dispersed across different platforms and formats. In this way, analysts can identify complex patterns that would otherwise be lost in the vast amount of data.

And the main client of Peter Thiel's company is none other than the US government, its armed forces, its intelligence services and its police forces.

Palantir's services have been widely used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry out mass and often violent expulsions of undocumented migrants.

Last April, the Department of Homeland Security awarded it a nearly $30 million contract to develop an AI-based system to track people who should be detained and deported.

Palantir also provided the Israeli military with artificial intelligence-based analysis tools during its offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health — and confirmed by the UN and the Jewish-majority state — and reduced much of the territory to rubble.

In 2024, the company signed a strategic alliance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to bolster the country's "war effort." The latter is accused by the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

And Palantir does not hide its militaristic inclination. Shyam Sankar, its technical director, recently appointed lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve, told the 'New York Times' that the company was “well known” for its location of targets that the US army had to eliminate.

"Help the West to be fierce"

According to William Hartung, senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the closeness between Palantir and Washington dates back to the beginnings of the “war on terrorism.”

Its mission, after September 11, 2001, is to avoid failures in the exchange of information between the different US agencies, which had made the attacks possible.

This bet turned out to be extremely lucrative. The Pentagon asked Congress for additional funding of $2.3 billion to develop the 'Maven Smart System', an artificial intelligence-based targeting platform designed by Palantir for the US military.

The contract had initially been awarded to Google, which was eventually forced to abandon the project due to the rebellion of its employees.

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Diederick van Wijk, a researcher at the Dutch think tank 'Clingendael Institute', believes that Palantir managers see their company as an entity that proudly assumes a responsibility that others have rejected.

"What they think - particularly Alex Karp and Peter Thiel - is that Silicon Valley has moved away from its founding principle, that is, the relationship between the military and industry, and is completely oriented towards consumer technologies. And they find it problematic that companies that have so much power, data and technologies are not more patriotic," says van Wijk.

It is true that Peter Thiel and Alex Karp seem to disagree on the precise contours of their belief systems. The latter, for example, supported the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. But both have long professed an attachment to an idealized vision of Western civilization, analyzes Diederick van Wijk.

"From the beginning, they had a very normative vision of what this company should be, limited to working for the United States, then Europe, but always refusing to work with Russia and China. There was always the idea that this company could really help the West to be fierce, to 'protect it at all costs,' in a terminology that Alex Karp often uses."

This call to refocus on military power to defend a supposedly declining West clearly echoes the speeches of some influential figures from Trump's second term, most notably Vice President J.D. Vance.

The national security strategy published last year by the Trump administration emphasized what it described as the risk of “civilizational erasure” that Western Europe would face after decades of mass migration.

For his part, Peter Thiel even declared that he considered democracy incompatible with freedom.

“Acting without being accountable to anyone”

A lucrative ideology in the Trump era. The mere announcement of the billionaire's re-election caused the company's market capitalization to skyrocket by $23 billion, as investors rushed to buy shares in the company.

And the lines between Palantir staff and the US state are increasingly porous: Upon his return to business, Donald Trump appointed several Palantir executives to key government positions, while the company in turn hired former lawmakers and officials.

"Palantir greatly exceeds its scope of action. It should settle for being a supplier, offering useful technology for the implementation of policies determined by the democratic process," says William Hartung. “They have knowledge about certain types of technologies, but they are not philosopher-kings.”

“At some point, this technology would have emerged anyway,” says Diederick van Wijk. “We are focusing on this enterprise, when we should be focusing on the underlying technology, which allows us to completely change the dynamics of law enforcement and war.”

But Peter Thiel draws attention with a speech that is "anti-democratic, anti-government and anti-liberal society. He is a very frank libertarian with very particular ideas," continues the researcher.

"That's where the discomfort comes from. The company has a conspiratorial side that makes it an obvious culprit, but that hides a much broader trend: that of technology companies so powerful, so poorly regulated, that they are capable of innovating and acting where they consider it necessary. Without being accountable to anyone."

Article adapted from its original English version

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