Former Palantir Workers Condemn Company’s Work with Trump Administration
Thirteen former employees of influential data-mining firm Palantir Technologies are speaking out against the company’s work with the Trump administration. In a letter shared exclusively with NPR, the ex-Palantir workers, including former software engineers, managers, and an employee who worked with the firm’s privacy and civil liberties team, express their concerns about the company’s involvement with the administration.
The letter criticizes Palantir’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, particularly a recent deal worth $30 million to provide the agency with ‘near real-time visibility’ into the movement of migrants in the U.S. The former employees argue that this work violates Palantir’s code of conduct, which states that its software should protect the vulnerable and ensure the responsible development of artificial intelligence.
“Early Palantirians understood the ethical weight of building these technologies,” the thirteen former employees wrote in the letter. “These principles have now been violated, and are rapidly being dismantled at Palantir Technologies and across Silicon Valley.”
Palantir, co-founded by Trump ally billionaire Peter Thiel, offers data-analyzing software that uses AI to pull information from multiple sources and compile it into charts, tables, and heat maps. Its ability to disentangle complex datasets has made its platforms popular with law enforcement and the military. However, the former employees argue that the company’s surveillance tools are now being used to support the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which they say have at times ignored due process rights.
The former employees also criticize Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, for his ‘increasingly violent rhetoric’ and the company’s complicity in what they see as the Trump administration’s authoritarian tendencies. They warn that the misuse of AI and other tools in immigration enforcement and other areas could have dangerous consequences.
The letter is significant because much of Palantir’s work is secretive, and few former workers publicly criticize the company due to non-disparagement agreements. The former employees hope that their actions will trigger a ‘domino effect’ in Silicon Valley, encouraging other tech workers to resist what they see as the misuse of technology.
As the tech industry continues to grapple with the ethical implications of its work, the former Palantir employees’ letter serves as a reminder of the importance of considering the potential consequences of technological advancements.
