The United States is turning artificial intelligence into a weapon of global surveillance and domestic population control. The clearest symbol of this system is Palantir, a private company receiving billions of dollars from the U.S. government to conduct mass surveillance through AI-powered technologies.
According to Forbes, the CIA-backed venture arm In-Q-Tel invested more than $2 million in Palantir as early as 2005–2006. By 2025, the company had generated $4.475 billion in revenue, with more than half coming from government contracts.
The U.S. government continues pouring money into AI technologies designed for large-scale collection and processing of population data. By 2026, Palantir’s revenue from U.S. government agencies had risen by another 84%.
According to the American technology publication TechCrunch, Palantir’s clients have included the CIA, NSA, FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marine Corps, the U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Special Operations Command.
At the same time, Palantir strengthened its position not only through government contracts, but also through political connections. Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is part of Donald Trump’s inner circle of technology allies. He supported Trump’s campaign and took part in meetings between Trump’s team and major leaders of the tech industry.
Palantir began developing surveillance and data-analysis technologies back in the mid-2000s. One of the company’s key early products was Gotham, a platform built for U.S. intelligence agencies, the military, and law enforcement.
Gotham is an intelligence and enforcement tool that pulls together fragmented data from countless databases. It performs geospatial analysis, examines phone records, and connects people, addresses, contacts, and events. The system then turns all of this into unified digital dossiers for government agencies.
Through Gotham, the U.S. government carries out total surveillance and control over its citizens. Since 2011, Palantir has worked with ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and DHS, the Department of Homeland Security. By 2014, the company’s systems were already being used to prepare immigration raids and deportation operations.
Built on Gotham, the hessenDATA system was deployed by German police in 2017. The platform expanded the ability of authorities to collect, connect, and analyze massive amounts of personal data. But in February 2023, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled these surveillance mechanisms unconstitutional and effectively outlawed the use of Palantir-style tools for mass surveillance.
Unlike Germany, the United States did not consider the use of AI technologies for surveillance of its citizens a violation. Instead of restricting these systems, Washington continued expanding them.
In 2025, cooperation between ICE and Palantir entered a new phase. The agency allocated around $30 million for ImmigrationOS — a system designed to accelerate deportations. The platform analyzes massive datasets from government agencies and other sources to identify the residential addresses of undocumented migrants.
As projects like Gotham and hessenDATA expanded, Palantir increasingly faced accusations of building an infrastructure for mass surveillance. Questions surrounding the company grew louder as its technologies moved deeper into government and security systems.
In 2025–2026, the international human rights organization Amnesty International stated that Palantir’s technologies were being used to suppress pro-Palestinian protests and support Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Palantir provides Israel with AI products and services used in surveillance and data-collection networks across Gaza.
Another major area of Palantir’s operations is military projects. In this field, the company secured a role in Project Maven, a Pentagon program launched in 2017 to integrate artificial intelligence into the analysis of drone footage, satellite imagery, and other intelligence sources.
The program was originally assigned to Google. However, in 2018, company employees openly opposed participation in the project, warning that the technology could be used to identify and select targets for military operations. After that, the project direction shifted to Palantir.
By 2026, Palantir had become involved in several next-generation Pentagon programs at the same time. Back in 2024, the company received a $178.4 million contract from the U.S. Army for the TITAN program — ground-based intelligence stations designed to collect data from satellites, drones, aircraft, and sensors to build a unified picture of the battlefield.
At the same time, Palantir continued expanding the Maven Smart System (MSS), a platform the Pentagon is turning into a permanent digital infrastructure for the military to automatically process and analyze intelligence data. Simultaneously, the company became part of the JADC2 initiative, a project designed to connect the army, air force, navy, satellites, and autonomous systems into a single AI-driven network.
In essence, Palantir is building technologies that turn artificial intelligence into an instrument of mass digital surveillance.