It’s no secret that working in Silicon Valley often comes with a unique set of ethical dilemmas, but for those inside Palantir, these questions have recently reached a boiling point. Over the last year, employees have been grappling with the company’s deepening involvement in government contracts, specifically regarding immigration enforcement and military operations.
It’s a massive shift for a company that was founded with initial venture capital investment from the CIA and built on the premise of protecting civil liberties in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Now, it seems like the people building the software are the ones sounding the alarm.
The atmosphere inside the company has shifted dramatically since the start of the second term for President Donald Trump, Wired reported. Last fall, as Palantir began acting as a technological backbone for immigration enforcement, tracking and helping deport immigrants for the Department of Homeland Security, the internal mood turned sour. Two former employees even reconnected by phone with a jarring greeting. One asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?” The other noted that it wasn’t just about the work being difficult or unpopular, but rather, “This feels wrong.”
For two decades, Palantir employees have managed to navigate the awkward conversations with friends and family about working for a company named after a corrupting all-seeing orb from J. R. R. Tolkien’s work
However, the current reality feels different. One former employee put it bluntly, stating, “The broad story of Palantir as told to itself and to employees was that coming out of 9/11 we knew that there was going to be this big push for safety, and we were worried that that safety might infringe on civil liberties. And now the threat’s coming from within. I think there’s a bit of an identity crisis and a bit of a challenge. We were supposed to be the ones who were preventing a lot of these abuses. Now we’re not preventing them. We seem to be enabling them.”
Management has attempted to keep the peace, but their methods haven’t exactly calmed the waters. In January, after the killing of Alex Pretti, a nurse shot by federal agents during protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the tension in internal Slack channels exploded. Employees demanded clarity on the company’s relationship with ICE.
Shortly after, the company began wiping conversations in the #palantir-in-the-news channel after seven days. While a member of the cybersecurity team cited concerns over leaks as the reason, it didn’t stop employees from questioning why the company was scrubbing “relevant internal discourse on current events.”
The frustration only intensified following a deadly February 28 missile strike on an Iranian elementary school. Investigations concluded the US was responsible and that surveillance tools like Palantir’s Maven system were used during the operation, which claimed the lives of more than 120 children. For many workers, this was a breaking point. One employee asked in a Slack channel, “I guess the root of what I’m asking is … were we involved, and are doing anything to stop a repeat if we were.”
Even when management tries to address these concerns, the results often fall short. During a February AMA, a member of the privacy and civil liberties team admitted that “a sufficiently malicious customer is, like, basically impossible to prevent at the moment.” They further explained that they were essentially trying to redirect CEO Alex Karp, but that it was “largely unsuccessful” and the company was on a “very sharp path of continuing to expand this workflow.”
The recent public-facing actions by leadership haven’t helped either. After the company posted a manifesto summarizing Karp’s recent book, The Technological Republic, and suggesting the US should consider reinstating the draft, employees were once again left to deal with the fallout. One worker noted that “every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the US,” while another added that they’ve had multiple friends reach out asking what the company posted. The manifesto, which some critics labeled fascist, resulted in dozens of employees reacting with “+1” emojis to express their frustration.
Despite this, a Palantir spokesperson maintained that the company is “proud” to support the US military “across Democratic and Republican administrations” and that it is not a “monolith of belief.” Karp himself seems unbothered by the internal dissent. He previously stated that “if you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it’s not a position.”
Published: Apr 24, 2026 05:30 pm