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Palantir: The all-seeing tech giant | The Week

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The company's data-mining tools are used by spies and the military. Are they now being turned on Americans? Named after the mystical seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the secretive tech firm sells software that can crunch colossal troves of data. Depending on the application, that might include GPS data, text messages, social media profiles, legal filings, phone records, and thousands of other information points, which it distills into charts, maps, and other forms of intelligence. Palantir's specialty is detecting connections and patterns: "the finding of hidden things," as CEO Alex Karp puts it. The company was launched in 2003 by Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire and major Trump donor, and Karp, a self-described neo-Marxist with a philosophy Ph.D., and seeded with $2 million from the CIA. The intelligence agency used Palantir's software to track terrorists after 9/11—it is widely believed to have helped the U.S. locate and kill Osama bin Laden—and the firm has helpe

Alex Karp, who has called himself a "progressive warrior," acknowledges that using AI-driven algorithms to aid killing is "morally complex." (Image credit: Getty Images) Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Whatsapp Pinterest Share this article Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter What does Palantir do? Named after the mystical seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings , the secretive tech firm sells software that can crunch colossal troves of data. Depending on the application, that might include GPS data, text

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