Your Palantir Primer
With the controversial US data company’s growing footprint into Australia, now is the time to look closer at who they are and what they do.
These are some resources I’ve pulled together to support our Live Town Hall on Palantir, convened with Digital Rights Watch and GetUp! for 6pm Monday – you can still register here
Who are the people behind Palantir?
Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, regarded as one of the most influential liberations in Silicon Valley.
A co-founder of PayPal with Elon Musk, an early investor in Facebook and this profile by University of Queensland research fellow Luke Munn, published in The Conversation is a good place to start.
This piece (paywalled in the Atlantic) from 2023 looks at his political activity and successful bid to shit down the Gawker website.
Thiel also has plans for building ‘private cities’ outside the domain of governments:
Many of us were introduced to the joys of his partner and co-founder Alex Karp with the jaw-dropping performance at the New York times ‘Deal Book Summit’ with Andrew Ross Sorkin from December 2025
Since then his interventions and assertion of deploying violence in the name of US hegemony have grown louder as this story in The Guardian illustrates .
A key moment was in April, when he published his ‘Manifesto’ on X asserting the supremacy of American culture
It’s also worth noting that US Vice President JD Vance has deep ties with the company including having received $15 million donation from his former employer Peter Thiel before running for the Senate in 2022 .
So What Does Palantir Actually Do?
Basically they are a data and software company which takes complex information and allows its clients to view them on bespoke dashboards. This sounds boring but its applications are not.
Palantir platforms like Gotham, Foundry and AIP are the foundational operating systems for western military and intelligence agencies, including the Israeli military and has been implicated in the bombing of the girl’s school in Iran.
It has also been used by government services including the NHS in UK where there is a growing backlash to the collaboration as outlined here in The Conversation.
This is a really good overview of Palantir’s model from the ABC ‘s Matt Bevan
And this piece from ‘More Perfect union’ with a former Palantir employee shows internal concerns for how the company uses data.
Palantir and the Australian Government
We know the federal Government has awarded Palantir contracts worth nearly $80 million, including Department of Defence, AUSTRAC and ACIS. Details of some of thee contacts have emerged under Senate questioning from Senator David Shoebridge. Here are some smash hits
Estimates Questions to Home Affairs if Palantir will get Australians Biometric data
Questions about how connected Australian contracts are with products used in Gaza and Iran
Exploring links between Pauline Hanson and Palantir
Palantir and Coles
GetUp has been campaign to raise awareness of the impact of the contract between Australia’s largest supermarket and the company -
They have worked with Honest Government Ad to release this video which has clocked up more than 250,000 views in the past week.
Want to Do More?
Join the GetUp! campaign here
Join Digital Rights Watch here: https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/
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