Denverites Deserve To Know.
Palantir is using AI technology to innovate for the war machine.
Since 2020, a burgeoning force in the realm of tech and AI development has made its home in the heart of Denver.
Join us at Sculpture Park on Saturday, April 12 at 3 pm to protest against Palantir’s presence in our community!
About Palantir
Palantir is a tech company founded by Peter Theil, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Joe Lonsdale that specializes in the development of software platforms for big data analytics. The company is known for their controversial data-mining and has contracts throughout the highest levels of the federal government,. Their products are weaponized against people here at home as well as overseas, with countless Gazans having been murdered by their reckless technology.
Palantir was uprooted from its original headquarters in Silicon Valley by force; the company was heavily protested by the local community and by tech workers who refused to be complicit in the company’s debauchery.
Palantir has its hands deep in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. It has also facilitated one of the largest immigration crackdowns in the US.
Though Palantir is less than transparent about their crimes in Gaza, AI systems designed to track and target Palestinian people used by Israel are easily traceable to the company – especially since Peter Thiel says the Palantir “defers to Israel” in speaking about their partnership, and Alex Karp admits that “Our product is used on occasion to kill people”. Even Karp questions the ethics of Palantir, reporting that “I have asked myself, ‘If I were younger at college, would I be protesting me?’” Around the time he stated this, a number of Karp employees resigned in order to avoid taking part in the genocide in Gaza.
Protest is certainly in order. Israel’s implementation of AI systems is nothing short of nightmarish. According to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Palantir is one of dozens of companies “profiting from the Gaza genocide”. In some circles, Palantir is being dubbed the “scariest” of America’s tech giants and “the AI arms dealer of the 21st century”.
How does Palantir kill Palestinians?
Palantir has sold Israel an artificial intelligence platform that uses reams of classified intelligence reports to make life-or-death determinations about which targets to attack. This takes the form of Project Lavender. According to six Israeli intelligence officers who have served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip, Lavender has played a central role in the efficient bombing of Palestinians. These officials even claim that the outputs of the AI program were treated almost as if they were human decisions – with little to no questioning of its selected targets before bombing. The Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected Palestinian militants, adding them to a list to be targeted by the Israeli military; however, the technology often makes errors, frequently costing the lives of noncombatants. One in ten people that the system targets is misidentified (this is according to statistics posted by Israel; in reality, this ratio is likely far higher). Although Palantir is not mentioned by name, the AI systems discussed by the journalists damningly appear to fit into the same category.
Palantir-SlidesHistory Of Palantir – Protest and Relocation
After backlash from the community and an upsurge of tech workers rallying against Palantir’s “Project Maven” – a Pentagon AI operation which sought to develop potentially deadly technology for the U.S. Department Of Defense – Google withdrew from involvement with Palantir in 2018 and it became clear that work in Silicon Valley was untenable for Palantir. CEO Alex Karp railed against what he called Silicon Valley’s “progressive monoculture” and criticized Google employees for being “super-woke engineers”.
Palantir believed the political climate of Colorado to be more amenable to its agenda, and the local government, especially our governor Jared Polis, welcomed them with open arms. They did this despite significant condemnation from many Coloradans, whose voices are clearly going unheard.
Palantir and ICE – A Nightmarish Partnership
Local law enforcement departments use the same Palantir-created data systems as ICE. That means that every time local law enforcement uses their systems, they are, in effect, feeding information that ICE can use to conduct raids. Both Palantir’s Integrated Case Management (ICM) and FALCON Search and Analysis (FALCON-SA) systems ensure these capabilities, allowing for more pinpointed enforcement actions. Local police can easily access federal data on particular individuals and help build national profiles of individuals that are then used by ICE. Federal immigration agents can even access local police information, like license plate data, through shared systems even when local jurisdictions have chosen not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
Palantir’s ICM and FALCON-SA systems work in tandem. ICM is a repository for personally identifiable information from other ICE and CBP systems, commercial data sources, and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which interfaces with federal, state, and local law enforcement. Meanwhile, FALCON-SA is an analytical tool that helps agents analyze all ingested data, identify connections, and produce intelligence reports and visuals.
This integrated web of data on individuals who may be subject to deportation by ICE is weaponized to cast a broad net to arrest as many individuals as possible. This has led to the largest immigration raids in US history, such as the 2017 Operation Omega, 2018 7-Eleven Raids, and the 2019 raids of Mississippi chicken processing plants. AI-driven data has historically, and continues to be, highly inaccurate and racist in its findings. This has led to countless US citizens and other legal residents being arrested in raids, and being held for indefinite periods of time without legal representation. Not only has this technology led to unfathomable trauma for undocumented people and their families, but it is not even an effective technology for its stated goals.
Current Landscape of Palantir & How We Fight Back
Under the current administration, Palantir’s influence is set to expand exponentially. Peter Thiel, the primary force driving Palantir’s crimes, has incredibly deep ties to the Trump/Vance administration. Thiel’s ties to Trump date back to 2015, when he was one of the people who bankrolled Trump’s campaign when many others refused. In return, Trump appointed Thiel to his advisory board and transition team, where Thiel held so much power that his employees referred to him as the “shadow president”. Regarding JD Vance, there would not be a Vance in the political world without Thiel. Thiel took Vance under his wing in 2011, when Vance was still in college. Seeing Vance as the perfect pawn for his political goals, Thiel began the process of molding Vance’s ideology in his own image. This process was finalized in 2022, when Thiel bought Vance’s Senate seat in Ohio with $15 million, a record-breaking campaign contribution.
People are fighting back against the Trump administration over a vast array of issues, and this needs to be one of the issues at the forefront. Palantir has driven genocide in Gaza, mass deportation at our southern border, meddled in our healthcare, and given our government the tools to spy on our citizens in a way that makes the Patriot Act seem insignificant.
Now Palantir occupies the 15th floor of the Tabor Center in Downtown Denver. This is the time to fight back for the people of Denver, and the world.
If you condemn the development and use of AI weapons in your city, now is the time to make your voice heard. Join up with Denver Anti-War Action in our work against Palantir!
No AI Weapons in our backyard!
Denver Condemns Militarized Artificial Intelligence!