In a latest dialog, Vice President JD Vance requested Roger Stone, President Donald Trump’s longtime confidant, for his largest concern going through the nation. Stone later recalled on his radio present that his reply was a know-how firm Vance now hears about with growing frequency: Palantir.
For years, Democrats have zeroed in on Vance’s relationship with Palantir’s co-founder Peter Thiel, the iconoclastic tech titan who gave Vance certainly one of his first jobs and later put $15 million behind his profitable 2022 Ohio Senate bid.
But the strain on Vance is now coming from inside Trump’s coalition. As the administration steers billions of {dollars} of recent work to Palantir, outstanding voices have expressed fears that the agency’s highly effective information analytics instruments may give the federal government sweeping, nearly futuristic surveillance capabilities. MAGA architect Steve Bannon has likened Palantir to a sci-fi villain whereas comic Joe Rogan referred to as the corporate “creepy” on his top-ranked podcast.
The rising unease has put Vance on the defensive. At an October gathering of younger conservatives on the University of Mississippi, he bristled at “this internet meme out there that somehow I am super in bed with Palantir” when the corporate’s title surfaced.
“Palantir is a private company,” Vance added. “They sometimes do a useful service, and sometimes they’re going to do things that we don’t like.”
Since rising to the nationwide scene, Vance has served as a bridge between the GOP’s populist wing and the tech world he as soon as occupied as a enterprise capitalist and biotech govt. He joined the Republican ticket final 12 months with the backing of Bannon and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, but in addition with the expectation he may persuade his Silicon Valley allies to open their wallets for the marketing campaign.
Palantir’s emergence as an unlikely flashpoint comes amid a rising divide inside the get together over Trump’s alliance with billionaire know-how entrepreneurs. The tensions underscore the problem forward for Vance as he takes a main function in serving to to carry collectively Trump’s motion — a activity with clear implications for his personal political ambitions.
Vance’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark. A spokesperson for Palantir pointed NCS to a lengthy statement the company published in June, which seeks to rebut what it describes as “recurrent misconceptions” about its operations.
“We are not a surveillance company,” the assertion reads. “We do not sell personal data of any kind. We don’t provide data-mining as a service.”
Founded 20 years in the past with a funding enhance from American intelligence companies, Palantir has turn into a go-to contractor for governments and companies confronting huge and sophisticated information issues. Federal companies, local police departments and foreign militaries more and more depend on its software program and AI fashions, however so do aerospace companies, hospitals and the makers of a pickleball paddle.
Palantir’s authorities portfolio grew throughout Trump’s first time period and expanded additional below President Joe Biden. CEO Alex Karp backed Democrat Kamala Harris for president, however like a lot of his tech friends, he shortly pivoted after Trump gained.
A month after the election, Karp contributed $1 million to the main pro-Trump tremendous PAC. Around the identical time, Palantir advertisements appeared over Trump and Vance’s field on the Army-Navy soccer recreation, and the corporate is among the many donors to Trump’s new White House ballroom. Jacob Helberg, a former adviser to Karp, is now a top official in the State Department.
Skeptical MAGA activists observed. Far-right influencer Laura Loomer accused the firm final 12 months of attempting to “infiltrate” the incoming administration to safe protection contracts.
Nearly each week, one other US company assigns profitable new work to Palantir. In latest months, the corporate has been employed by the Department of Homeland Security to vet “wedding-based schemes,” by the Department of Veteran Affairs to trace statistics, by the Internal Revenue Service to assist minimize prices and by the State Department to determine threats to Americans and US diplomats abroad, in line with federal contracting information. Palantir’s instruments have supported a few of Trump’s most contentious priorities, together with DOGE’s push to downsize authorities and the administration’s immigration crackdown.
The dozens of contracts awarded to Palantir since Trump took workplace could be measured in billions of {dollars} — including a decade-long deal with the US Army worth up to $10 billion. Palantir’s inventory value has practically tripled since Trump was elected.
But the increasing footprint inside the federal government has fueled fears that Palantir’s superior instruments — coupled with leading edge breakthroughs, like synthetic intelligence, facial recognition software program and predictive algorithms — may result in high-tech mass surveillance. A key supply of concern for critics on each the precise and left is an executive order Trump signed in March commanding companies to share information with one another, although it doesn’t point out surveillance or Palantir.
“I don’t like the stated plans of Palantir,” Stone advised Vance, he later recalled to his listeners. “I don’t want Big Brother knowing everything about me.”
Palantir has pushed again aggressively in opposition to the rising narrative surrounding its authorities work. In a recent media blitz, Karp has defensively described Palantir as patriotic. He told Fortune magazine its software program is a software “to make America so strong we never fight.” He has additionally insisted Palantir packages can’t be used to abuse civil rights, whereas additionally dismissing fears about governments monitoring their residents.
“The primary evidence for a surveillance state in the West is not government on consumer; it’s a company knowing every single action you have at all times,” he stated in an interview with Axios’ Mike Allen.
But that hasn’t stopped issues from reaching Vance. On his present “This Past Weekend,” comic Theo Von pressed Vance this summer season on Palantir and Thiel’s affect, calling the corporate’s capabilities “really scary.”
Vance downplayed Palantir’s function as “just connecting information” between companies. Like Karp, he contended the relentless assortment of information on Americans by personal corporations within the title of commerce is a better menace than Palantir’s authorities work, whereas additionally acknowledging that trendy know-how is “crazy and weird and it affects our privacy.”
“The only real protection that we have against that is that we’ve got to elect the right people,” Vance stated.
Von, a key voice in serving to Trump join with younger males final 12 months, later referred to as Vance’s response a “political answer.”
Vance has lengthy tried to sq. his professed skepticism of Big Tech along with his deep ties to a number of the trade’s most influential figures.
He once wrote that listening to Thiel communicate at Yale was the “most significant moment” of his regulation college years and later joined Thiel’s enterprise capital agency. When Vance started his own fund in 2020, Thiel joined former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and billionaire investor Marc Andreessen as backers.
But throughout his Ohio Senate marketing campaign, regardless of Thiel’s beneficiant monetary backing, Vance routinely attacked Facebook — the place Thiel was an early investor and longtime board member — in addition to Google.
Probed about Palantir on the Ole Miss occasion, Vance acknowledged issues about synthetic intelligence facilitating “large-scale surveillance.” He argued he has fought in opposition to intrusive information assortment practices since he first ran for Senate.
“Whether it’s Palantir or any other technology company,” he stated. (Palantir insists it doesn’t acquire or promote information on people.)
A Vance spokesperson didn’t reply to questions on how he has pushed the administration on privateness points. None of the 213 govt orders Trump has signed since taking workplace have emphasised information protections for customers, and this week, Trump publicly threw his assist for blocking state rules on AI corporations.
Conservative issues about Big Tech prolong past Palantir. Bannon has publicly sparred with Elon Musk and questioned Trump’s embrace of Silicon Valley. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has warned concerning the vitality calls for of information facilities. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, has led congressional investigations into the harms chatbots may cause children.
But whilst skepticism on the precise grows, Vance’s standing in Silicon Valley stays an asset — and a supply of hypothesis. Asked just lately by Axios’ Mike Allen whom he hoped would change Trump, Karp didn’t title Vance however described a determine who carefully resembled the “Hillbilly Elegy” creator: somebody who may maintain the border sealed, uphold conservative cultural norms and “credibly fight for workers.”
Allen replied: “That sounds like the current Vice President.”