The Surveillance State under the Trump Administration Is Growing More Powerful with the Consolidation of Data through Palantir

One issue that should be headline news in the United States but has hardly been mentioned is the fact that the Donald Trump administration, which signed an executive order in March to eliminate inefficiency and bureaucratic redundancy, has tasked technology and data analysis firm Palantir Technologies Inc. to consolidate information sharing across federal agencies, and this has the potential to include all of Americans’ personal data that is stored in government servers (including bank accounts, disability and medical claims, immigration status, and debt). Palantir, which has already spent $113 million in government contracts since President Trump took office and has a lock on an additional $795 million with the Department of Defense, is intertwined with or seeking agreements with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Social Security Administration (SSA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Education, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), United States Marines, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (having the CDC track everyone’s vaccine status is a lovely concept), and the Internal Revenue Service (having the IRS compile our data to ensure compliance on federal taxes is what every American wants to see). In particular, President Trump’s plan to consolidate data between agencies (including DHS and HHS) utilizes the program Foundry.

I know, I know, this is just a bunch of boring technological concepts, and the government already has our data, so who cares about how the government stores it, right? Well, the problem is that the federal government may be able to more easily access “bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status” to manipulate Americans and target protesters and dissidents. Palantir, which is named after the Palantiri seeing stones (tracking devices) from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, has already provided the Israeli government with the ability to spy on and blackmail Palestinians by gathering and collecting their personal information, and if it is being done by the Benjamin Netanyahu regime, what would make you naive enough to believe that the American intelligence community would not do the same against us, even if it is done long after President Trump leaves office and a new leader (perhaps a Democrat) emerges? These new tools will help the surveillance state, which formed shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, become just a little bit more efficient at spying on us and collecting our data, which is a huge threat to our privacy and ability to be free from unwarranted searches and seizures. It also threatens our free speech, as the government may be interested in tracking and monitoring citizens who criticize the administration (for example, liberals in power censored the speech of those challenging the COVID-19 narrative, and conservatives like to target pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli perspectives).

Of course, liberals and progressives are freaking out over the consolidation of data by Palantir, saying that the current administration will use this consolidated database to confirm people’s legal status and to make its immigration policies more efficient, as well as steal our data through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (of which some of the members had ties to Palantir). After all, ICE has already been awarded a $30 million contract to “track migrant movements in real time,” and if you think that you are free because you are an American citizen, think again. Average people will inevitably get swept up in the monitoring, even if by accident, and given the direction of things in the last several years, it is only a matter of time before this technology is utilized by the powers that be to track every single person in the United States (and perhaps the world). And with all data being consolidated across agencies, if you are “wanted” or monitored by one agency for some crime or flagged issue, it will be much easier for the government to track you by utilizing another agency’s database.

I have heard a few liberal content creators say that we are now in a police state, but why did these people not care when Presidents Joe Biden or Barack Obama, or even George W. Bush, were spying on Americans? Why is it just when Donald Trump expands the surveillance state that they finally take this topic seriously? With old tools, such as the Patriot Act, and new tools, such as the REAL ID Act, what is currently happening is the consolidation of power and our information to ensure compliance with government policy, from the federal to the local level (with the REAL ID Act, the federal government will have access to state data, for example).

This tyranny is able to happen now because most conservatives (not all) refuse to criticize Donald Trump for anything (mindlessly believing everything that he says), but you can guarantee that when a Democratic president regains power, liberals and progressives will go back to cheerleading the surveillance state, and Republicans will then return to opposing government intervention into their lives. This endless cycle of power is what keeps Americans divided (neither party has any true principles), and meanwhile, the power of the state grows with every administration. President Trump is not putting the brakes on the ability of the government to monitor citizens. Rather, he is embracing the concept by providing corporate welfare to Palantir and allowing this BlackRock- and Vanguard-controlled company to merge with government (corporatism is not free market capitalism, by the way).

If Palantir is going to take a leading role in the technology infrastructure that powers the surveillance state, we need to understand its rise to power. Even before Palantir was created in 2004, its co-founder, Peter Thiel, worked on Confinity (to transfer payments between Palm Pilots), which then merged with Elon Musk’s X.com to produce PayPal. After he sold PayPal to eBay (PayPal later became independent), Thiel was able to free up money to invest in Facebook, which was just getting established, and other startup companies, and he created Clarium Capital Management and Founders Fund (with investments in Airbnb, Lyft, and SpaceX). Palantir, under co-founder and current CEO Alex Karp, has become a giant in data analytics, and with an increasing number of government contracts, it has become ingrained into the intelligence-industrial complex (similar to the military-industrial complex, which helps enable imperialistic policies around the world) to form a spy network.

In addition to supporting President Trump, Thiel was also a mentor to current Vice President JD Vance, who became a partner at Mithril Capital (a project co-founded by Thiel). Later, Vance established his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, with Thiel’s support (as well as that from billionaire Marc Andreessen and Google CEO Eric Schmidt). Thiel contributed heavily to Vance’s Senate campaign, and the Palantir co-founder was actually the one who helped mend the relations between Trump and Vance, who had been very critical of the former president. It is almost like Thiel hand-picked Vance to become the next vice president so that he could yield power in the upcoming Trump administration. Trump has either naively fallen for the trap, or he has never really been on the people’s side and has been faking it to condition the population into further compliance with the technocratic state that is ever expanding.

But, why would you say that technocrats are not on the side of the people? Even if you were not convinced that large corporations partnering with governments to spy on and control Americans was moving us down the road to tyranny, consider that Palantir had initial financial support (to the tune of over $2 million) from In-Q-Tel, which, of course, is the venture firm directly out of the CIA (the company also received support from other counterterrorism and military agencies). The CIA not only helped get Palantir off of the ground, but it also was involved in the initial steps of testing its programs and perfecting them for surveillance use. The company was then able to get the New York Police Department (NYPD) and JPMorgan as clients, before exploding onto the scene to become one of the largest technology firms.

The company started by Thiel and Karp has expanded its role significantly, getting involved in everything from tracking the license plates of every vehicle that moves throughout San Leandro, California (capturing photographs of innocent people and children who happen to be within view) to partnering with government-sponsored entity (GSE) Federal National Mortgage Association (commonly called Fannie Mae) to detect mortgage fraud through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which brings up the question of how AI could be used by sinister or corrupt government entities to frame people for crimes that they did not commit (plus, does anyone actually stop to think that the two largest mortgage firms in the United States are partially run by the government, so when people say that the United States is a capitalist country, clearly that word has become distorted to where it is not synonymous with a free market).

As mentioned earlier, Palantir is actively collaborating with the Israeli government to kill and target tens of thousands of Palestinians and a few well-marked World Central Kitchen aid vehicles, as well as to fuel Unit 8200 and Israel’s sophisticated intelligence network through the use of AI (if Israel wanted to avoid civilian casualties, it could, as these AI systems are known for having the ability for pinpoint accuracy, so there really is no excuse other than the fact that Israel wants to push Palestinians out of their homes and destroy Gaza’s infrastructure). The company has also taken the technological lead in Ukraine’s efforts to hit Russian targets (moving us closer to World War III), and its new Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) system, which was developed for the United States Army, has the ability to collect data in outer space and high altitudes from the ground (you never know when an extraterrestrial ship may need to be spied on).

As federal, state, and local governments become more reliant on AI technology and enact more draconian laws to control the population (even something as simple as monitoring people for speeding by using sophisticated cameras), we the people become more and more under threat of losing our rights. Loss of speech and privacy may not come in an instant, but the gradual erosion of these essential aspects of a free society is tyranny, nonetheless (we just do not notice it because we are conditioned to live our lives under these situations, and the boa only constricts one slow policy after another). If the use of AI by government entities and government-partnered corporations is not controlled or restricted, there is no end to what atrocities can be committed. Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, and King George III would be proud of the surveillance state that has been established without much of a peep from the citizenry, and they might be jealous of how the political elites in the United States can use technology to paint the picture that Americans are free when they are constantly being monitored on a daily basis. This illusion of freedom is what empowers the ruling class, and as Palantir collaborates more closely with the Trump administration over the next few years, remember that we the people still maintain ultimate power, if we choose to take back what is rightfully ours.

Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.