Former Palantir employees condemn firm’s work with Trump admin : NPR

13 former workers of influential data-mining agency Palantir are condemning the corporate’s work with the Trump administration weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached a deal to pay Palantir $30 million to offer the company with “close to real-time visibility” into the motion of migrants within the U.S.

In a letter shared solely with NPR, the ex-Palantir employees, former software program engineers, managers and an worker who labored within the agency’s privateness and civil liberties group, say after they joined the highly effective tech firm, they believed in its code of conduct stating that its software program ought to uphold democracy and make sure the accountable improvement of synthetic intelligence.

“Early Palantirians understood the moral weight of constructing these applied sciences,” the 13 former workers wrote in the letter. “These ideas have now been violated, and are quickly being dismantled at Palantir Applied sciences and throughout Silicon Valley.”

Palantir and the White Home didn’t return requests for remark.

Palantir, co-founded by Trump ally billionaire Peter Thiel, affords data-analyzing software program that makes use of AI to drag data from a large number of sources and compiles it into charts, tables and warmth maps. Its merchandise have turn out to be common with giant companies, the navy and legislation enforcement.

Their prospects embody the Israel Protection Forces and the U.S. Division of Protection. Now, its surveillance instruments are being tapped by the Trump administration to assist velocity up the president’s aim of deporting 1 million migrants this yr. Since Trump was elected, Palantir’s share worth has surged greater than 200%.

Though a couple of dozen former employees are only a fraction of an organization using 4,000, the letter continues to be important. A lot of Palantir’s work is secretive and few former employees criticize the corporate after leaving as a consequence of non-disparagement agreements most are requested to signal upon leaving. Many former workers additionally maintain firm inventory. Palantir’s market valuation stands at almost $300 billion – about the identical as Financial institution of America.

Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, speaks on a panel on the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photographs

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Whereas prime brass at Silicon Valley’s largest corporations have been exhibiting help for the Trump administration, research have discovered that rank-and-file tech employees are inclined to oppose Trump and maintain liberal views on a bunch of social points.

Large Tech workers resisted the primary Trump administration’s insurance policies, together with the makes an attempt to limit immigration and journey from international nations, but the previous Palantir workers say the resistance has been muted amongst tech employees in Trump’s second time period.

They wrote: “democracy faces escalating threats: biometric knowledge assortment on immigrant youngsters, journalists being focused, science packages defunded, and key U.S. allies, like Ukraine, sidelined. Trump’s administration has sought to drastically broaden govt powers whereas alluding to monarchy,” including that: “Large Tech, together with Palantir, is more and more complicit, normalizing authoritarianism underneath the guise of a ‘revolution’ led by oligarchs. We should resist this pattern.”

The signees spotlight what they are saying is Palantir’s “more and more violent rhetoric,” a nod to Palantir chief govt Alex Karp, who publicly boasts about how the corporate’s instruments are used to kill enemies. He as soon as jokingly stated that Wall Avenue analysts who “tried to screw” the corporate ought to be sprayed with “mild fentanyl-laced urine.”

The letter additionally zeros in on Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity group, which has employed a lot of former Palantir workers to help in slashing and burning the federal authorities.

The tech employees admonish the White Home for its strikes with DOGE and past to undo variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives, arguing that these ideas “stay important for critiquing energy” and guaranteeing superior AI is deployed ethically.

“As Musk’s DOGE operation dismantles U.S. authorities establishments underneath the guise of exposing corruption, opposition stays silent,” the employees write. Authorities databases are already erasing references to transgender individuals and gender-affirming care. These injustices might be facilitated by the very software program infrastructure we assist construct.”

The previous Palantir employees write that they’re issuing a warning in hopes of triggering a “domino impact” in Silicon Valley.

They are saying that extra tech employees ought to resist what they see because the misuse of AI and different instruments within the Trump administration’s insurance policies, together with its immigration enforcement and deportation insurance policies that courts and critics say have at instances ignored due course of rights.

Their goal, they write is “to talk out whereas we nonetheless can, and to work in opposition to the harmful path within the historical past of expertise we’re at the moment heading down in the direction of.”