Then came the deadly February 28 missile strike on an Iranian elementary school on the first full day of the Trump administration and Israel’s war in Iran. The US is the only known country in the conflict to use that specific type of missile. More than 120 children were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the school, kicking off a series of investigations that concluded that the US was responsible and that surveillance tools like Palantir’s Maven system had been used during that day’s strikes. For a company full of employees already reeling over its work with ICE, possible involvement in the death of children was a breaking point.
“I guess the root of what I’m asking is … were we involved, and are doing anything to stop a repeat if we were,” one employee asked in the Palantir news Slack channel. Some employees posed similar questions in the thread, while others criticized them for discussing what could be considered classified information in a Slack channel open to the entire company. The investigation is ongoing.
The Palantir spokesperson said the company was “proud” to support the US military “across Democratic and Republican administrations.”
In March, Karp gave an interview to CNBC claiming that AI could undermine the power of “humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters” and increase the power of working-class male voters. While critics reacted to the piece, calling the statements concerning, so did employees internally: “Is it true that AI disruption is going to disproportionately negatively affect women and people who vote Democrat? and if it is, why are we cool with that?” one worker asked on Slack in a channel dedicated to news about Palantir.
Point of order, Public Relations for most evil corps are soulless automatons whose words mean less than nothing.