The various contracts Palantir has with the federal government
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What does Palantir do and why is the federal government increasingly relying on it? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Novosafo.

Palantir makes software which looks for patterns in data. Various federal agencies have relied on it for years. But the contracts are growing in number just as the Trump administration is reportedly trying to construct a centralized database combining info from various agencies. That's brought Palantir renewed scrutiny. And Joseph Cox has been following all of this at the tech news site 404 Media.

Palantir is a data analysis company. It doesn't generate data. It doesn't collect any data. It bridges and marries different data sets and pieces of information. So, for example, they've done this in Afghanistan where they had all of this stuff about IEDs. They brought that together. They allowed the military to better understand how to combat that threat.

Here, it's much more about bringing all of this data together, which is ordinarily separated across different government agencies, but now it's going to bring it into one place and recontextualise that data. And that's essentially what Palantir does. It makes these bridges between data that didn't exist there to begin with.

Now, if we are to believe the various reports and also House committee letter from the Oversight Committee that cites whistleblowers, that there's two things going on here. There's an internal effort inside the Trump administration, potentially led by Doge, it looks like, to merge data from various agencies into some kind of collective understanding or way of understanding all this information. And then there's this effort to use Palantir software to aid in that.

Why Palantir software and what is the potential of what this merged database could do? Yeah, it all feels like we have slightly different parts of the puzzle and they overlap in different ways. But I think the way you describe it is accurate. And we're still learning how and when this data can be used. But I think one of the most instructive developments that's come out is this severing of the firewall between IRS,

and ICE, which is, you know, of course, even undocumented people pay plenty of taxes. And traditionally, IRS has not provided data to Immigration Customs Enforcement or even the wider government, right? Now that that has been severed, that is going to be used for that as well. I've also reported that ICE is trying to get access to Department of Labor data, Health and Human Services as well. So bringing together all of these different agencies that were usually entirely separate

It entirely recontextualises how that data is going to be used. You don't pay your taxes or give up health information with the understanding of the expectation that it's then going to be used to target you for deportation, potentially. It has completely changed the context in which people are handing that data and the context in which the government is going to use it as well.

How far along are these efforts to combine databases from various agencies? Do we know? I don't think we've really seen the consequences yet of marrying all of this data. Originally in March or early April, I reported that Palantir was successful.

starting to work more closely with ICE. It takes time to develop these systems. It takes time to marry all these databases together. And I don't think the US government agencies or ICE specifically is really waiting for the results of that. It still takes time. We're still going to see what eventually comes

out of it. But the process, it appears, is ongoing. I've seen there's even been more US procurement records for Palantir systems in the last few days and weeks as well. It is not a static thing. This is continuing to develop, and we're going to see what happens once these systems are fully up and running. We'll be right back. You're listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Novosafo. We're back with Joseph Cox, reporter at the tech news site 404 Media.

ICE has been cited a lot in terms of Palantir's work with the federal government. What would be the work that Palantir software can help accomplish for ICE? What are they trying to do? Yeah, so Palantir has worked with ICE for several years. ICE has a system internally called ICM that contains social security numbers and addresses and other personal information. But according to the leaks I got,

HSI, part of ICE, went to Palantir to look for a more aggressive solution. They entered into an agreement to do a coding sprint and develop this tool, and it was to "target known populations" and basically to track the real-time location of people who've been marked for deportation. The promise

is that it can make this a lot quicker for ICE, it can make it more efficient. And then Palantir's ICE, in its own justification for explaining this work, it thinks it can do this in a more fair, accountable, and transparent manner as well. Of course, we have to see how ICE actually uses that data as well, but that's Palantir's internal justification for building this technology and working with the agency.

We've seen Palantir, former Palantir employees write a open letter to Palantir cautioning against some of this work. We saw one public post on LinkedIn from an employee saying they're quitting because of some of this ICE work. What are we hearing specifically from the employees? What are they telling us publicly?

So publicly, yes, there's the open letter and people, former employees, are very upset with what Palantir is starting to do and what it has become. And I think it's probably useful to explain a little bit about Palantir's goals. When you read the book of Alex Karp, who's the CEO of Palantir, he frames the company as something that is trying to promote and uphold the

western values be that with the military be that law enforcement or really anything else that of course can create some cognitive dissonance when you say you're going to uphold western values while working for an agency that is you know potentially violating court orders or using masked people to take people off the street i've spoken i've

to my Palantir sources about that dissonance. And one said it was, quote, absolutely unhinged. Another said it was classic Palantir doublespeak. It's very hard to square those two things. But I think you can tell that Palantir employees, both current and former, are

I'm outraged and very concerned by this work, both on the public letters and sort of the comments made on LinkedIn as well, but also just the number of leaks that are coming out to journalists. This is a very secretive company, and I don't think journalists would be receiving these leaks if these employees weren't concerned about what's going on.

Publicly, Palantir has pushed back quite hard against some of this reporting, saying it's frankly inaccurate. They say they're a software company. They provide software. They work individually with various agencies. There is no grand master plan of some kind. How do you square away their public comments with what you're hearing privately? Yeah.

I would say that their main criticism was against a New York Times article that was talking about this so-called master database and building information about US citizens. I've shown that statement to my own Palantir sources, and although they didn't get into detail, they did have an issue with Palantir's responses.

What I would say is that this is a sort of response we've seen from all sorts of tech companies, especially those that work in the surveillance space as well, where they'll try to discredit reporting. But I haven't seen any true factual inaccuracies, at least in my own reporting. I haven't had any flag to me either. And of course, I guess we'll just continue to see if more leaks come out and more reporting around Palantir emerges as well.

That's Joseph Cox at 404 Media. In a blog post, Palantir said it has no contract to build any kind of master federal database and said its contracts with various agencies increased under the Biden administration as well. Jesus Alvarado produced this episode. I'm Novosafo, and that's Marketplace Tech. This is APM.

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