Palantir Technologies was founded in 2003 in Palo Alto by a group including Peter Thiel, who named the company after the palantíri, the seeing stones from J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium. In Tolkien’s world these stones enable distant surveillance and communication, but they also corrupt and mislead their users, which many critics see as an eerie metaphor for a surveillance-focused data company embedded deep in state power. The firm’s culture has long drawn on Lord of the Rings references, from office nicknames like “The Shire” and “Rivendell” to Thiel’s well documented fascination with Tolkien, but observers increasingly argue that Palantir has chosen something closer to the dark side of that universe than the heroic one.

Palantir’s core products are two software platforms: Gotham and Foundry. Gotham is marketed as an “operating system for decision-making” and is primarily aimed at intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies that need to fuse huge streams of structured and unstructured data, map networks, and surface potential threats in real time. Foundry plays a similar role for commercial and civilian customers, integrating data from ERP systems, IoT devices, and databases and turning it into dashboards and workflows for sectors like finance, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, and logistics. In practice the distinction is blurry, and both platforms increasingly incorporate machine learning and AI to support forecasting, anomaly detection, and complex scenario planning for public and private clients.

Over the past decade Palantir has woven itself into the infrastructure of numerous governments. In the United States its tools have been used by agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Internal Revenue Service, and local police departments like the NYPD to connect disparate databases and guide investigations. The company has become a key contractor for the US national security apparatus, supporting military and intelligence operations across NATO, immigration enforcement, and foreign policy theaters. This has created a subtle but powerful dependency: once a government agency standardizes its investigations, targeting priorities, and reporting on a proprietary data platform, it becomes difficult to unwind that relationship or independently audit how decisions are being shaped.

Outside the US, Palantir has secured major contracts in the United Kingdom, where it serves the Ministry of Defence, GCHQ, the National Health Service, and multiple civilian departments. The UK has committed hundreds of millions of pounds to Palantir systems since the mid‑2010s and has effectively made the company a central partner in building the NHS Federated Data Platform, which is meant to unify patient and operational data across the health service. Palantir has also announced plans to make the UK its European defense hub and to invest heavily in UK-based defense AI projects, further entrenching its presence in both military and civilian sectors.

Palantir’s footprint now spans a broad list of countries. Public reporting and recent investigations point to its tools being used in Israel, Ukraine, Lithuania, Spain, and several German federal states, particularly in defense, security, and crisis management roles. At the same time, various UN-related bodies and NGOs, including the World Food Programme and humanitarian organizations, have turned to Palantir to help manage complex logistics and disaster response. On the commercial side, clients have included large banks, pharmaceutical firms, aerospace companies, energy utilities, and car manufacturers that rely on Foundry for risk management, supply chain optimization, and regulatory compliance. While the exact list of government users is opaque, the pattern is clear: Palantir has embedded itself across defense, intelligence, law enforcement, health, finance, transportation, and humanitarian sectors in multiple countries at once.

All of this scale and secrecy has made Palantir a lightning rod for controversy. Civil liberties advocates worry that its tools make “total information awareness” much more technically feasible, enabling governments and police to correlate travel records, financial transactions, social media, communications metadata, and public records into detailed dossiers on individuals. Because the company operates mostly behind the scenes and the inner workings of Gotham and Foundry are proprietary, it is often impossible for affected people to know they have been flagged by an algorithm, to challenge how they were profiled, or to scrutinize how biases in data and models may have influenced life-changing decisions. These concerns are amplified when Palantir works with immigration agencies, counterterrorism units, or military commands that can detain, deport, or target individuals based on intelligence that outsiders cannot see.

One of the most cited flashpoints is Palantir’s long-running role in supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which uses Palantir systems to track, investigate, and build cases against migrants. Investigative reporting on these contracts led to a wave of protests in the late 2010s and beyond, with demonstrations outside Palantir offices and even at CEO Alex Karp’s home, as activists accused the company of enabling deportations and human rights abuses. Some employees resigned in protest, but the company defended its position and continued to work with ICE, arguing that its tools were also used to pursue serious violent offenders and human traffickers and that law enforcement work is inherently complex. Critics counter that by providing the technical backbone for controversial enforcement strategies, Palantir cannot simply distance itself from the outcomes.​

Similar moral and legal worries have surfaced in the health sector. During the Covid‑19 pandemic, Palantir played a central role in data platforms for public health agencies, including the UK’s NHS, where its systems were used to integrate large volumes of patient and operational data to manage the crisis. Officials promised that data would be anonymized, aggregated, and destroyed when the emergency ended, but groups like Privacy International raised doubts about whether such safeguards would be sufficient and whether contracts with Palantir could in practice be terminated. There were fears that temporary emergency powers might quietly become permanent, with Palantir’s infrastructure locked into national health systems and repurposed for broader surveillance or commercial uses later on.

Because the company thrives on secrecy, keeps a low public profile, and reveals little about its internal operations, journalists have repeatedly described Palantir as one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive or most mysterious companies, the powerful actor that most people have never heard of. Its systems sit behind government dashboards, military targeting tools, and corporate decision platforms without the Palantir brand ever appearing to ordinary citizens, which makes its influence both diffuse and hard to see. That invisibility is part of why some commentators say it is a company you do not know but maybe should fear: it shapes how institutions perceive reality and act on it, yet it is governed by private incentives, not democratic oversight.

From a governance standpoint, Palantir often argues that it merely provides software and that client agencies remain responsible for how they collect and use data. It points to its work with humanitarian organizations and public health bodies as evidence that the same tools can be used for socially beneficial purposes, from tracking missing children to coordinating disaster relief. Supporters claim that in an era of data deluge, platforms like Gotham and Foundry are essential to make sense of complex situations faster and more accurately, potentially saving lives in military and emergency contexts. However, opponents respond that when such tools are deployed without strong legal safeguards, transparency, and effective redress mechanisms, they tilt the balance of power further toward states and large corporations and away from individuals and vulnerable communities.

The moral debate around Palantir is therefore less about whether data analysis itself is good or bad and more about who controls these capabilities, under what rules, and with what accountability. On one hand, Palantir’s platforms can help detect fraud, dismantle trafficking networks, and streamline critical infrastructure. On the other hand, the same capacity to “see everything at once” can underpin intrusive surveillance, discriminatory policing, and militarized border regimes. The company’s Tolkien-inspired branding only sharpens this contrast: like the palantíri in the books, the technology promises extraordinary insight but risks concentrating dangerous power in a few hands, with very limited visibility for the rest of society.

List of Countries Using Palantir and Their Respective Sectors

Country / Entity

Primary Economic & Government Sectors

Key Institutions & Organizations

United States

Defense, Intelligence, Healthcare, Finance, Law Enforcement, Energy

Department of Defense (Army, Navy, Air Force), CIA, FBI, CDC, HHS, SEC, IRS, Walmart, PG&E.

United Kingdom

Public Healthcare, Defense, Intelligence, Energy, Border Security

NHS England (FDP), Ministry of Defence (MoD), GCHQ, Home Office (Border Force), BP, Shell.

Poland

Defense, Cybersecurity, Military Logistics

Ministry of National Defence (MON), Cyberspace Defence Component Command, National Security agencies.

Ukraine

Defense, Digital Transformation, Infrastructure Reconstruction

Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Digital Transformation (Demining & Reconstruction), General Staff of the AFU.

Germany

Law Enforcement, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Telecommunications

State Police (Hessen, NRW, Bavaria), Merck KGaA, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Airbus.

France

Intelligence, Aviation, Energy, Healthcare

DGSI (Domestic Intelligence), Airbus (Skywise), Sanofi, Engie.

Israel

Defense, Intelligence, Strategic Planning

Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Ministry of Defense.

Australia

Mining & Resources, Defense, Finance, Public Health

Rio Tinto, BHP, Department of Defence, Australian Border Force, Westpac, Dept. of Health.

Japan

Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Defense

Sompo Holdings, Fujitsu, Ministry of Defense (trials), Mitsubishi (various branches).

South Korea

Shipbuilding, Heavy Industry, Defense, Telecommunications

HD Hyundai (KSOE), Doosan Infracore, LIG Nex1, Korea Telecom (KT).

Canada

Intelligence, Finance, Natural Resources

CSIS (Intelligence), National Defence, Fidelity Canada, various financial institutions.

Italy

Automotive, Finance, Aerospace

Ferrari (F1 & GT), Fiat Chrysler (Stellantis), UniCredit.

Switzerland

Insurance, Banking (Commercial sector)

Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance, UBS.

Netherlands

Law Enforcement, Energy

National Police (Politie), Shell (Global HQ operations).

Denmark

Law Enforcement

National Police (Rigspolitiet).

Norway

Law Enforcement, Intelligence

National Police (Politiet).

Spain

Finance, Infrastructure

Banco Santander.

Middle East (UAE/KSA)

Smart City Infrastructure, Investment, Security

NEOM, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Regional Security Departments.

NATO

Military Alliances & International Security

Allied Command Operations, Logistics Coordination.

United Nations (WFP)

Humanitarian Aid & Logistics

World Food Programme (Supply chain optimization).