Palantir, the $160 billion (€152 billion) US surveillance company at the centre of the farrago around suspended Social Democrats TD Eoin Hayes, is no stranger to controversy. Mr Hayes had recently sold shares in Palantir, which has links to the Israel Defense Forces.
Founded with investment from PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel in Silicon Valley shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the company has had close links to the murky side of the US security state since its inception.
An early believer in the company’s potential was In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which invests in security technology businesses.
Palantir, which derives its name from a magical, all-seeing crystal orb in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, counted the CIA as its only customer in its early years.
Initially, Thiel – a self-proclaimed libertarian – wanted to create an intelligence contractor that could help security agencies “reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties”.
By 2013, Palantir’s client list included practically every letter in the alphabet soup that makes up the US intelligence “community”, from the National Security Agency (NSA) to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with branches of the military.
For its clients, Palantir built a suite of software programmes that could sift through vast quantities of data and mine it for insights and patterns.
Having allegedly helped the CIA and the US Joint Special Operations Command to track down and kill Osama bin Laden, the mystique around Palantir and its capabilities grew throughout the decade.
The company began to count armies, law enforcement authorities, border security agencies and, increasingly, private companies like Morgan Stanley, among its growing list of global clients.
In September 2020, the company went public in a flotation on the New York Stock Exchange that valued it at $20 billion (€19 billion).
Shortly thereafter, Palantir was awarded a £23 million (€28 million) contract to run the National Health Service’s (NHS) Covid-19 data platform before winning a £480 million NHS contract in 2023 to provide further services.
Given the scope of its activities and the nature of its client base, controversy has stalked Palantir throughout its lifetime.
Most recently, its artificial intelligence tools have reportedly been used in Gaza to identify lists of targets for Israeli drones and air strikes. Its activities in the region, where Israel stands accused of crimes against humanity for its response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7th of last year, have led to condemnation, even in the corporate world.
In October, Storebrand Asset Management, one of the largest investors in the Nordic region, sold its holdings in Palantir over concerns that its work for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could put the asset manager at risk of violating international law.
For his part, Palantir chief executive and co-founder Alex Karp has roundly defended the company’s support for Israel. “There are a lot of people in the industry who are maybe not as pro-Israel as I am,” he said in an interview at Tel Aviv University earlier this year.
“But they think of Israel as a very special place and are generally more understanding of the Israeli position and view Israel’s accomplishments of building a nation from a desert.”
On its home front, Palantir’s activities have been equally controversial. Ahead of its initial public offering in 2020, Amnesty International sent a letter to the company, detailing its concerns over its contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Amnesty said ICE had relied on Palantir technology to arrest parents of unaccompanied children and the US border and helped the authority to organise mass raids, which led to the separation of children from their caregivers.
The human rights organisation said Palantir had failed to conduct human rights due diligence over those contracts, potentially contributing to human rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers.
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