Palantir: How to Debunk the Rhetoric of Surveillance

During the week of April 21, Peter Thiel arrived in Buenos Aires. The co-founder of Palantir Technologies met with officials from the Milei government, attended the Superclásico, and was celebrated in media and networks aligned with the ruling party. Rumors circulated about potential contracts for Palantir to manage information from Argentine public agencies, although the actual terms of the negotiations are, of course, not public. The exact reasons for his visit are also unclear. Thiel might be evaluating business opportunities in sectors like agriculture or energy, closely observing the "libertarian" government experiment (the quotes are necessary: Milei's libertarianism leans more towards traditional conservatism than the Anglo-Saxon school that Thiel favors) or simply forging ideological ties with a government he finds sympathetic. Probably all of that at once.

Rumors circulated about potential contracts for Palantir to manage information from Argentine public agencies, although the actual terms of the negotiations are, of course, not public. The exact reasons for his visit are also unclear.

What is publicly known is the context in which he arrives. Days before his visit, Palantir published on X a summary of 22 points from the book by its CEO Alex Karp, The Technological Republic. Its central thesis is that Western democracies must build the most lethal weapons in the world to ensure peace. In May 2024, at the AI Expo in Washington, before intelligence agency directors, former military personnel, and defense contractors, Karp stated bluntly: "if we lose the intellectual debate, they won't be able to deploy any army in the West again." He referred to Columbia students protesting against the genocide in Gaza as part of a "pagan religion" that infects universities. The true pacifists, he claimed, were himself and the intelligence officials who purchased software from him: "peace activists are activists for war. We are the peace activists."

"War is peace" was the slogan of the oppressive and watchful party in Orwell's 1984. The society described there operates under the same logic: inverted language serving control, necessary enemies to justify permanent surveillance and selective information that shapes what can be thought. Karp's conceptual inversion is deliberate and works towards something concrete: justifying a surveillance operation in which we are more involved than we realize. But let's take it step by step. First, a few words about the company that is on everyone's lips.

The data-crunching machine

Palantir primarily operates with two software platforms for data analysis: Gotham, aimed at governments and defense, and Foundry, for businesses. Its central technical logic (which we describe in more detail here) is the fusion of completely different sources (state records, social media, sensors, drones, satellites, financial histories) into a coherent and actionable model in real time. They add a layer of artificial intelligence, "AIP," that allows human operators to work on that model, enhancing their analytical capabilities. In practice, it’s a machine designed to cross-reference everything with everything and infer key information from the mosaic of what already exists.

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Another of its flagship contracts is the Maven Smart System, software that analyzes data to generate attack objectives. In March 2026, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg declared it a "program of record" (i.e., for permanent adoption) and described it as "the cornerstone" of the U.S. military's artificial intelligence strategy. The system has been used in Gaza, Ukraine, and operations against Iran. Palantir also has contracts with the UK's public health service (the NHS), with the ICE immigration agency in the United States, and with the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

This may all seem distant, but Palantir exists at this scale because there is a huge market for surveillance. This market is not only oriented towards war or the management of national bases but has been consolidating in the world and in Latin America for decades. Gradually, city by city, post by post. So much so that it’s very likely you have already been surveilled without realizing it.

This is how things are at home

The expansion of surveillance technologies in Latin America arrived long before Thiel and Palantir. The Consortium Al Sur published a report in 2025 documenting a "silent expansion" of video surveillance systems, facial recognition, network monitoring, and mass data collection in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. The common denominator is that they advance under security and crime-fighting discourses, generally without legal frameworks that guarantee protections against abuses.

The most documented precedent is Pegasus, the spyware that takes control of cell phones developed by NSO Group, an Israeli company. Mexico was its first significant client in 2011. Since then, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has confirmed its use against investigative journalists, lawyers for femicide victims' families, and the human rights coordinator of the government who had promised not to use Pegasus. The software, installed without the user noticing, provides total access to the device: messages, microphone, camera, location. In El Salvador, Citizen Lab and Access Now confirmed in January 2022 226 infections against 35 individuals (22 of whom were journalists from El Faro, the same outlet that documented Bukele's secret negotiations with gangs). One of the most sustained cases of persecution on record. In Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and Chile, Circles operated, another company from the same ecosystem. As can be seen, there is a common thread: these technologies are used against those who challenge the power.

The expansion of surveillance technologies in Latin America arrived long before Thiel and Palantir. (...) The common denominator is that they advance under security and crime-fighting discourses, generally without legal frameworks that guarantee protections against abuses.

In Argentina, state monitoring of networks (the infamous "cyberpatrolling") has been going on for years. We described it in detail at 421.

At this point, one might wonder what the fetish is, this obsession with surveilling everything. And why, politically and socially, we accept the incorporation of these technologies that sooner or later lead to abuses. The reason lies in the narrative, in a story. A promise of security and effectiveness that doesn’t really matter if it reflects reality, but still manages to intimidate us while perfecting its techniques.

Magic words

Palantir took its name from Tolkien's seeing stones: artifacts that allow one to see distant events. The choice of something fantastical and not easily understood is not innocent; it’s almost a high concept. Surveillance tools are systematically presented with a language of omniscience and magic: "they see everything", "they think faster than the enemy", "they predict crime before it happens". This rhetoric is a fundamental part of the sales pitch, of the product description that is being imposed.

And like all magic, it works more through belief than through effects.

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Cambridge Analytica promised to sway elections as if it controlled minds. The evidence that it actually succeeded is much weaker than the scandal it generated. Tim Hwang, in Subprime Attention Crisis (2020), argues that the digital advertising market grows even though the product doesn’t deliver what it promises: opacity sustains the illusion of effectiveness. But if we read this situation through the lens of political economy, things become a bit clearer: the Cambridge Analytica scandal was, among other things, the best possible advertising for Facebook's political ad business. It demonstrated to the entire world that this supposed power existed, giving it importance and stock market value even though the empirical evidence was ambiguous. But there’s an even greater effect. Even if the psychometric model didn’t do what it promised, digital electoral consulting became a global industry. Campaigns in dozens of countries hired companies that sold exactly the same promise, with the same terms, without ever undergoing an independent audit.

Facial recognition in Buenos Aires mistakenly detained at least eight people in 2019. As indicated by the Argentine Observatory of Information Technology Law (ODIA) and the Vía Libre Foundation, the system was purchased without the government knowing how it functioned internally, without understanding the training data, and was tendered in less than a week. Everything is always more lumpen than it seems. But beyond incompetence and failed technologies, surveillance remains economically and politically profitable because it doesn’t need to be effective to produce its worst effects.

The journalist who knows that Pegasus can compromise his phone keeps a low profile even if he hasn’t been spied on yet. The person who knows their tweets are being monitored self-censors even if the cyber patrol is applied sporadically. The chilling effect (the self-censorship caused by the mere possibility of surveillance) is documented as a direct consequence of these programs. PEN America surveyed nearly 800 writers in 50 countries in 2015 and found that 75% of those living in liberal democracies were as concerned about surveillance as those living in authoritarian regimes; one in three self-censored when choosing topics, sources, or conversations. What’s remarkable is that the effect operates without the average citizen knowing exactly what is being surveilled or how. It’s enough to know that the apparatus exists. And these tools are refined while they are sold: closed code prevents us from knowing how well they actually work, while we give them confidential data with every use to improve them and public officials become dependent before understanding what we bought. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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What we should be asking, then, is not just whether these technologies work as their sellers advertise, but who buys them, with what public funds, under what justification, and against whom they are used. And what intentions are pursued in their implementation. The magic unravels when someone points out the trick, and the deception is best highlighted in the language of those who suffer it.

A lesson from Paraguay

In 2015, the Paraguayan government attempted to pass a law that would require telecommunications companies to retain the metadata of all their users for twelve months: who you talked to, when, from where. The organization TEDIC, along with a network of digital rights organizations, launched the #Pyrawebs campaign. The name combined "web" with pyragüé: the term used for informants during Stroessner's dictatorship. On December 22, 1992, three tons of documents about the Paraguayan dictatorship were found: the so-called Archive of Terror (files with names, addresses, political affiliations, and personal relationships, used during 35 years of dictatorship to detain, torture, and disappear people). The 2015 data retention law did not propose to surveil suspects, but to archive the communications of everyone. That had already happened; there was no need to explain anything further.

There lies the key. The campaign didn't try to convince anyone about what metadata is or why retention protocols matter. It translated the issue into the only register where technical gambits or political theory can’t play a role: memory. Not the abstract kind, but the embodied one—the memory of the neighbor who disappeared, the family member who was spied on, the fear that still carried that name in Guaraní. When surveillance stops being a technical or philosophical debate and becomes something recognizable, people don’t need to be told why they should oppose it. They know.

The law was rejected in both chambers in June 2015. The campaign was a success.

Calling war peace, slavery freedom. When that language goes unchallenged, it wins without a fight. Karp calls military contractors pacifists. (...) Governments buy "modernization" when they are actually implementing surveillance and control.

This matters to us today because the debate about Palantir, Karp's manifestos, or Thiel's intentions in Buenos Aires is legitimate and interesting (and necessary to understand who builds the ideology behind these tools, who benefits, and what political horizon they aim for). But there's a risk in stopping there: that the big discussion overshadows the everyday battles, which is where victories or defeats are made. The mayor who buys a facial recognition system tendered in less than a week doesn’t need to have read Thiel. The ministry that creates an artificial intelligence unit by internal resolution, without parliamentary debate, doesn’t either. These actors answer to more accessible entities than a Silicon Valley megacorporation: to a judge, to a legislative chamber, to the vote and the protest.

In 1984, what sustained the regime was not just surveillance. It was language. Calling war peace, slavery freedom. When that language goes unchallenged, it wins without a fight. Karp calls military contractors pacifists. Electoral consultancies sell "data science" when often it’s just empty promises. Governments buy "modernization" when they are actually implementing surveillance and control. In the face of this, digital rights activists and citizens have already shown one way to confront the advance against our fundamental freedoms: giving things back their name.

Surveillance advances little by little, decree by decree, tender by tender. It is halted in the same way: with relentless scrutiny, revealing the trick, lifting the veil, becoming ungovernable.