(You can listen to the interview at the top of this page.)
Host: Okay, and you’ve stated that you’ve been trying to blow the whistle on Palantir for over a year now, and we are so glad to be able to offer you a platform to do that. Let’s just start by talking nuts and bolts. Palantir’s website contends that they make products for human-driven analysis of real-world data by building platforms for integrating, managing, and securing data, on top of which they layer applications for fully interactive, human-driven, machine-assisted analysis. What does all this jargon mean? What does Palantir actually do, like, functionally?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Yeah, as you can imagine, describing what Palantir does has been one of the greatest difficulties for people who are trying to understand the company. I think some of that is intentional. A lot of the words you just spat out are marketing jargon. What Palantir does — it affects militaries, it affects commercial companies, it affects civil agencies — so there’s different languages to talk about AI and organizations’ data across all those different industries and sectors. So Palantir, I think, sanitizes a lot of what they do through this sort of corporate slash military speak.
But fundamentally what they do is they help integrate large amounts of data, break down silos in an organization, and build applications on top of that data. The roots of those technologies, however, come from Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) technologies. So these are targeting technologies that were originally pioneered by the military, by the Pentagon, by intelligence agencies. These sort of tracking and targeting technologies wield different types of data and investigations of individuals, often involving their personal data, in order to sort of predict their behavior or their location or various different things depending on the context.
But yeah, fundamentally, while Palantir can allow you to wield various different types of data, I think it’s important to remember that it comes from that context of intelligence agencies and militaries using these technologies to target people to kill them or to conduct covert operations. And today we see the same kind of trends. Palantir is helping ICE target people. Palantir is helping the Israeli military target people in Gaza and literally everywhere. It wouldn’t be surprising if they’re involved in Venezuela, in Iran as well. It’s highly likely. So what Palantir does is they take data that other agencies have collected and they synthesize it in a way that can be used for XYZ purpose.
Fundamentally, while Palantir can allow you to wield various different types of data, I think it’s important to remember that it comes from that context of intelligence agencies and militaries using these technologies to target people to kill them or to conduct covert operations. And today we see the same kind of trends. Palantir is helping ICE target people. Palantir is helping the Israeli military target people in Gaza and literally everywhere.
Host: So what Palantir does is they take data that other agencies have collected and they synthesize it in a way that can be used for XYZ purpose.
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Yeah, that’s exactly how it’s been used for the DHS, for example, where medical data is being used to target migrants. So in the enforcement of immigration context in particular, we’re seeing this being Palantir’s primary use, which is to break those silos of data across the government. The problem is we have legal protections, limitations to when the government can do that, how it can properly do that, the notices it has to reveal to the public. And so far, it seems like the conduct of the DHS has been ignoring a lot of these regulations and proceeding with, again, this undemocratic expansion of the surveillance state across multiple different agencies.
Host: Let’s dig a little bit more into their relationship with ICE. What is their relationship with federal immigration enforcement? What are they doing to coordinate or to help out the folks over there in the Fed?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: They’ve pretty much always offered their targeting technologies for immigration enforcement, but the relationship has evolved. When I worked there, they were proud of not being involved in the ERO part of ICE’s operations.
Host: ERO?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations, and it’s kind of the last sort of step that the ICE operation, where somebody’s actually physically removed from their homes, captured, and then potentially funneled into the forced detainment system and the concentration camp system. So Palantir before didn’t actually help with those underground capture operations. Now Palantir is very much actively involved in that part of the job. In fact, Palantir does the full life cycle of operations for ICE, they coordinate the whole operation, that means everything from surveilling to finding targets to gathering the data they need to target track them in their location, and then eventually to capture them, and ship them, as Tom Homan has said, like an Amazon package across the country’s forced detention system.
Host: How far is the Palantir reach as far as data harvesting and collection is concerned?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Again, it’s important to clarify because Palantir will fight you over this. Palantir doesn’t itself collect data. It helps clients collect data. Well, you start there. Look at the clients it helps collect data from. Some of the most sensitive clients, some of the most important data in the world, such as the NHS, the health service in the UK. This data is immensely valuable. And even if Palantir can’t immediately collect it and sell it, it can very likely train its own models using this technology, if not at least develop applications to exploit these data types, and then sell those applications to other clients.
So [Palantir] could learn how to use data in one context, say in a military context, and even though it’s not collecting that data itself, it can then use the same application — not the data but the application — in a commercial context later on. So I think that’s one of the main worries.
The second worry is that Palantir is kind of trying to become this monopoly for access to government contracts for the tech sector. So in order to speed up their government acquisitions and procurement processes, a lot of startups are using Palantir’s tools in order to access high-level restricted government contracts that require accreditation. So Palantir is becoming this weird middleman in which it is kind of coordinating the deployment of a lot of advanced artificial intelligence systems in the government, including Anthropic’s Claude model and Google Gemini [and Grok] And the problem is it has taken advantage of what happened with DOGE, the firing of tens of thousands of federal employees, under the premise of making the government more efficient through artificial intelligence. And now all these tech companies are using Palantir to kind of fill roles and responsibilities that used to be done by humans, humans in the government. That’s one of my biggest concerns. We’re replacing our democratic processes, we’re replacing our policing practices, with software, a tool that escapes the democratic accountability that these kinds of decisions and governance structures deserve from the people.
Host: You can’t hold a software application accountable for its actions.
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Yeah, and that’s a huge reason why the government delegates a lot of its responsibilities to private contractors like Palantir, because they can, for example, help the government source and combine different data sets and conduct operations within the black box of Palantir. But also, yeah, its roots seem to come from way back in the day. There were several projects in the Pentagon that were shelved because of their dangers to constitutional rights, including Total Information Awareness (TIA). And just about the time that these government programs were shelved — these projects to try to collect the data of the world and create a map of everything, to target everything — just around that time, Palantir came into being and subsumed a lot of these functions of secretive Pentagon projects as its own responsibility, in a way that, again, escapes the accountability of the public. But that’s exactly what’s important, right? How can we hold software companies accountable? How can we create the developers of these AI models accountable? And right now, Colorado is the only state trying to pass comprehensive statewide regulations on the development of these AI models and how they discriminate on people.
So this is very much an active debate right now in the state. It’s a very urgent debate. We formed the Colorado People’s Caucus on AI in order to represent the people’s opinion on AI as a bunch of major decisions are being made in the state regarding data centers, regarding AI regulation. The ACLU should be releasing a new bill soon. Denver City Council is working on a mass surveillance ordinance. And we need people to stand up in Colorado because we in Colorado could be the first people in America who wakes up to this problem of the way our data is shared and exploited in unconstitutional ways by the government. And we could be the first ones to actually start regulating this and fighting for this just how we fought for gay marriage and for marijuana legislation in the past. We’ve let in the past, we need to lead again here in regards to AI legislation so we can hold these companies accountable.
Host: What can people do to try to keep themselves off the radar, so to speak? Is there privacy anymore?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: That’s a huge question. For someone like me who’s been kind of involved in all these things for so long, I don’t think there’s much privacy left, honestly. I live my life pretty carefree because if I worried about this stuff, I would go crazy. Among the whistleblowers I’ve talked to, [one’s] lawyer started thinking their microwave was talking to them because they were so paranoid about this stuff. But eventually the government has technologies that are so advanced and nation state actors have software that is so powerful that it’s very difficult to promise anyone that their constitutional rights are being protected right now when it comes to data.
But, you know, there are people who are trying to make a difference. For example, I really admire [Meredith] Whittaker from Signal, which is an app that I recommend everybody download here, an encrypted messaging service that just about every activist and even the government uses, because even they understand how much data is being exploited and shared. ICE recently closed a contract with Paragon Solutions, which is an Israeli spyware company, which allows basically the DHS to access anybody’s phones directly and see what’s in them. So really advanced tools are emerging in the arsenal of the Department of Homeland Security, really advanced warfare tools. And right now, unless people stand up and fight for their privacy, they’re just going to have to accept this as sort of the new status quo. And this is the reason why I’m speaking out so much: it’s because I don’t want my grandchildren to live in this world where everything they do will be surveilled, tracked, and analyzed to ensure their best behavior, as Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, says.
I don’t think that matches with the values of our state. I don’t think that matches with the values of our country. I think we’ve just created this world where, you know, billionaires can fool everyone into believing in technologies by crafting this almost like apocalyptic narrative about them, granting them carte blanche to spend recklessly, invest recklessly, and push their software recklessly across the government. Without us even having seen if these things are effective or not. Like, we just saw a bunch of drone systems target a party balloon across the border this week. And they [originally] shut down airspace for 10 days. The FAA had issues with the DoD and border enforcement because they were kind of using these technologies in a reckless way. These very new technologies that promised to be the end-all of warfare conflict or border enforcement, but in reality, they cause mishaps like this, which caused immense disruptions.
In reality, using database lists, simulations, and artificial intelligence to target people leads to massive civilian casualties, leads to reckless violence like what we’ve seen in Gaza and in Ukraine, and also creates also a bunch of martyrs that you have to deal with. When you kill people in a foreign land without abandon, you’re going to see the results of that sort of slaughter in your foreign policy 10 years, 20 years down the road. And I don’t think we’ve settled anything in Gaza or in Palestine using these technologies. In fact, we’ve only reinforced one of the greatest truths about data technologies: that they help a lot with projects of mass resettlement and genocide. IBM, at the birth of these technologies, was helping Nazi Germany through its subsidiaries to track census information of Jews in order to ship them and kill them.
This is a huge problem: when Palantir not only is used to enforce the ideology of the administration on the ground to punish immigrants, but also to enforce the ideology of the administration in its governance functions, in its allocation of resources. So in this way, it’s like a double assault on the ground in the neighborhoods, but it’s also an assault on our governance structures.
Host: Listeners, if you’re just joining us, you are listening to It’s the Economy on your community radio station, KGNU. We’re having a conversation with former Palantir employee and whistleblower Juan Sebastian Pinto. Juan Sebastian is now a writer and a community organizer. Let’s jump back into our conversation.
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Something that really scares me is we haven’t really dealt with the consequences of what it means to use a company whose primary technology is targeting individuals to do work across different sectors of the government. Palantir right now is working for the IRS. It’s working for the Department of Education. It’s working for Health and Human Services. It’s helping a lot of departments, and it’s helping the Trump administration not only potentially target migrants and sort of these political enemies for deportation, but also any other political enemies. So we have seen Palantir’s tools, for example, used by the federal government to cut grants for anything involving diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’ve seen Palantir software used to enforce administrative orders on gender ideology, meaning thousands of roles eliminated from the government that were not only regarding DEI, but actually doing research incentives around gender equity or diversity, as well as the defunding of a bunch of science and research programs that were related to these themes.
This is a huge problem: when Palantir not only is used to enforce the ideology of the administration on the ground to punish immigrants, but also to enforce the ideology of the administration in its governance functions, in its allocation of resources. So in this way, it’s like a double assault on the ground in the neighborhoods, but it’s also an assault on our governance structures.
The problem is if you want to design an AI application that actually cares for people or accounts for the reality of the world, you need to take into consideration things like gender, equity… all these things. And to imagine that you can just ignore these things while creating a platform really shows that Palantir is ready to use its tools to for whoever wants to pay the highest price and to use the Nuremberg defense: my boss made me do it. To continue exploiting, deporting, killing people today with artificial intelligence technologies.
Host: In your opinion, is Palantir breaking the law is what they’re doing unconstitutional?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: There’s two sides of it. There’s the constitutional rights in which I am 100 percent sure Palantir’s conduct has been immensely illegal. This kind of surveillance just by existing violates our First Amendment rights, our ability to congregate with others or speak freely — just because so much surveillance being there limits who we think we can meet, what we think we can say. But it also violates especially the Fourth Amendment , our freedom from having our data collected without a warrant. The Ninth and the 14th Amendment as well.
A bigger problem for me is sort of the corruption that I see emerging from Palantir’s dealings with the government. And we see a lot of that in the UK with a lot of weird revolving doors between Ministry of Defense officials and Palantir employees. Similar things are happening in the United States right now and journalists aren’t really keeping tabs. Palantir receives a lot of single source contracts. A lot of people in the government are invested in Palantir. There’s a lot of insider information. There’s a lot of Palantir and ex-Palantir employees in the government right now in senior functions. There’s a lot of former interns from Palantir and DOGE that are now continuing to carry on their project in different ways. So to me, this represents a bigger problem of corruption and perhaps a kind of collusion within a bigger network, which is the ecosystem of VC companies that are run around Peter Thiel, which also aim to take various different parts of governance functions and privatize them. We have crypto companies trying to turn our finances into technology [assets]. We also have nuclear companies that are emerging from the tech world which are trying to take over the energy sector. We have satellite companies taking over functions that we used to leave for space agencies.
What Palantir has done to the left is actually incredible. It has made so many different activists from different parts of the left, whether they care about the environment or immigration or queer rights or labor or education. They’re all coming together and realizing: this is a company that is actually harming all of us with its technologies and is actually undermining the very democracy that we stand upon.
Host: You talked about investment in Palantir. You mentioned when you came into the studio that some news came out today about Palantir stock. What’s going on with that whole deal?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Yeah, so Michael Burry, who’s better known as the real-life basis of the movie Big Short, is well-known for having predicted the 2008 financial crisis. He has taken a really negative position on Palantir’s business performance and believes the stock is highly, highly overvalued. This is not my sector of expertise, finance, but the revelations that he’s shocking the finance world with are helping undo a lot of the fantasy of what Palantir does. Michael Burry’s claims are that Palantir doesn’t actually own a lot of its technology: that it’s more of a UI wrapper around other people’s technologies. This means it’s just kind of a dashboard built around other tools. And he thinks it’s way overvalued for what it can actually offer the world in terms of actual new novel technology in comparison to other players in the AI field — and susceptible to political windfalls based on what administration’s in charge. Anyway, his bet is very much that the Palantir stock will be decimated by the end of this year. So far it’s proving an interesting challenge for Palantir.
Host: Tell us about the resistance to the AI movement here locally.
Juan Sebastian Pinto: It’s stemming from many different places. What I really appreciate about Palantir is that it really exposes the exploitative nature of all technology companies. When you really try to dissect and understand what the problem is with Palantir, you realize what the problem is with all tech companies, technological infrastructure, with our internet, with the way data is shared and exploited itself. So what Palantir has done to the left is actually incredible. It brought together so many different activists from different parts of the left, whether they care about the environment or immigration or queer rights or labor or education. They’re all coming together and realizing: this is a company that is actually harming all of us with its technologies and is actually undermining the very democracy that we stand upon.
So it’s given a lot of activists a new opportunity to reconnect, to do actions together, to work together. And so we have amazing groups here, Denver Anti-War Action, we have General Strike, we have PSL, all putting together a strategy to bring unions and everyday people in Denver and in Colorado together to realize we are unique here in this state. We actually can do something against one of the biggest problems in America right now. That’s not me saying that. Steve Bannon and Roger Stone on the right, they say Palantir is the biggest problem facing America. So really, we have a historic chance for a coalition that crosses party lines, that crosses issues.
We also have representatives here in Colorado that are trying to make a difference. There are people like Brianna Titone in the state senate who basically pushed for AI regulations despite being opposed by her own party. She had to filibuster her party at midnight to preserve these regulations. We have people at the ACLU presenting a bill here to support AI regulations. We have people like David Seligman, who’s running for AG at the moment. He’s doing a world historic case against Equilibrium AI, suing the company for discrimination using the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which is a world first. So Colorado is really becoming a zone for resistance. There’s people who care about the environment and the data centers. And that’s proven a real way to get people into the fight. When they see a data center coming up in their neighborhood, when they see a floor camera getting put up right around the street, then the problem becomes too hard to ignore.
Host: For our listeners that would like to get involved in the fight, what would you recommend?
Juan Sebastian Pinto: Yeah, if you want to get involved, there’s so many ways to get involved. We at Against Machines are curating a bunch of different events and town halls around this topic. So we’re going to have one on Sunday at 7 to 9 p.m. at Lin Cafetzin, which is a beautiful coffee shop that just opened in Aurora. It’s a radical reading space as well. We are hosting a bunch of events throughout the month, and you can follow that at against.machines on Instagram.
Host: Thank you so much for joining us here on It’s the Economy tonight. We really appreciate your time.
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