One of the world's most powerful and controversial tech companies is Palantir. Palantir, created by Peter Thiel and Alexander Karp, has grown from a PayPal spin-off to a 300 billion data giant with strong connections to the US government, law enforcement, and corporations. In this video, Dr. Jon Padfield explores Palantir's rise, its contracts with agencies like ICE and the Department of Defense, and its role in projects like Project Maven, integrating AI into drone targeting systems. We’ll look at why Palantir’s very name (from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) carries ominous symbolism, what Peter Thiel has said about democracy, and how Gotham — Palantir’s “operating system for global decision-making” — became part of modern surveillance.
