Palantir was supposed to be the good guys. Or at least, that’s what employees told themselves when they signed up to work for the data analytics company founded with CIA seed funding in the post-9/11 era. The mission was clear: use cutting-edge technology to make America safer while protecting civil liberties. For two decades, workers endured the awkward conversations about working for a company named after Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing ring. They made peace with the external criticism. But something shifted in the last year, and now even Palantir’s own employees are asking uncomfortable questions about what they’re actually building.
According to reporting from WIRED, current and former employees began sounding alarms last fall when Palantir’s software became the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery. The company provided tools that identified, tracked, and helped deport immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security. One former employee described greeting another with a single question: “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?”
That wasn’t hyperbole. That was despair.
The Breaking Points Keep Coming
Internal tensions simmered throughout late 2024 and into early 2025, but they reached a boiling point in January after federal agents killed Alex Pretti, a nurse shot during protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis. Employees flooded a Slack channel dedicated to the news, demanding answers from leadership about Palantir’s relationship with ICE. One worker wrote: “Our involvement with ice has been internally swept under the rug under Trump2 too much. We need an understanding of our involvement here.”
The company’s response was telling. Rather than engage transparently, Palantir started automatically deleting Slack messages after seven days in the channel where most internal debate happens. When a worker asked why the company was removing “relevant internal discourse on current events,” a member of the cybersecurity team explained it was due to leaks.
Then came February 28. A Tomahawk missile struck an Iranian elementary school, killing more than 120 children on the first full day of Trump’s term. Investigations concluded the US was responsible and that Palantir’s Maven surveillance system had been used during those strikes. For employees already reeling over ICE involvement, possible complicity in the deaths of children felt like a line had been crossed.
“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 posted to the company Slack channel, according to WIRED’s reporting.
When Your CEO Stops Pretending
CEO Alex Karp has never been subtle about his political views, but his recent moves have abandoned even the pretense of neutrality. In March, Karp gave a CNBC interview suggesting that AI could undermine the power of “humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters” while increasing the power of working-class male voters. Employees responded with a Slack question that cut to the heart of their discomfort: “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?”
Things escalated this week when Palantir posted a company manifesto on Saturday afternoon, reducing Karp’s book “The Technological Republic” to 22 points. The manifesto, which critics called fascist, went so far as to suggest the US should consider reinstating the draft. It also contained sweeping statements about how Silicon Valley could better serve US national interests.
Palantir posted this under its official company account. Not Karp’s personal account. Not a private forum. The company account.
On Monday morning, employees were in an uproar. One frustrated worker asked: “I’m curious why this had to be posted. Especially on the company account. On the practical level every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the US (for sure in the current political climate).” That message received more than 50 “+1” emoji reactions. Another employee wrote: “Whether we acknowledge it or not, this impacts us all personally. I’ve already had multiple friends reach out and ask what the hell did we post.”
The Philosophical Spiral
Here’s what’s fascinating about Palantir’s internal culture right now: the company used to pride itself on debate. Management appeared open to criticism. Employees felt they could raise concerns. But over the last year, that feedback has increasingly been met with what one current employee described as “philosophical soliloquies and redirection.”
When employees tried to engage seriously during internal forums, they discovered uncomfortable truths. A member of Palantir’s privacy and civil liberties team revealed during one AMA that “a sufficiently malicious customer is, like, basically impossible to prevent at the moment.” The only safeguard? Auditing to prove what happened, then legal action after the fact if the customer breached the contract. In other words, after the damage was done.
Another employee tried to level with the group, explaining that Karp wanted the ICE work to continue and that it would almost certainly keep expanding. The company’s role was “trying to give him suggestions and trying to redirect him, but it was largely unsuccessful,” they said. This wasn’t leadership hearing concerns and changing course. This was leadership making decisions and employees scrambling to make sense of them.
When employees pushed for clarity during a prerecorded interview between Karp and the head of the privacy team, Karp refused to engage directly on the ICE contract. Instead, he suggested that interested employees sign nondisclosure agreements before receiving detailed information. Translation: you want answers? First, agree not to talk about this publicly.
The Culture Shift
The old Palantir narrative was that 9/11 created a national consensus around the need for security, and the company worried that pursuit might trample civil liberties. “We were supposed to be the ones who were preventing a lot of these abuses,” one former employee told WIRED. “Now we’re not preventing them. We seem to be enabling them.”
For some workers, this feels less like drift and more like deliberate strategy. “Maybe it’s gotten to a place where encouraging independent thought and questioning leads to some bad conclusions,” a former worker speculated. Karp himself has been remarkably consistent on this point. In March 2024, he told a CNBC reporter: “If you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it’s not a position.” Translation: disagreement has consequences.
The company’s official response has been defensive. A Palantir spokesperson told WIRED: “Palantir is no monolith of belief, nor should we be. We all pride ourselves on a culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement.” But fierce internal dialogue assumes the person in charge is actually listening. The track record suggests otherwise.
What Happens When the Mission Becomes the Problem?
Palantir exists in a strange place right now. It’s a business built on the assumption that surveillance tools in the right hands protect people. But what happens when the “right hands” start making decisions that employees find morally indefensible? You can’t solve that problem with Slack channels or AMAs or philosophical interviews.
Some employees are staying and trying to change things from within. Others have left. But for the ones remaining, there’s a creeping realization that the company they joined to prevent abuse might actually be enabling it. And their CEO has made clear he’s not particularly interested in their concerns.
The real question isn’t whether Palantir will face external pressure over its contracts with ICE or its possible involvement in military operations abroad. It will, and it already has. The question is whether a company founded on the promise of preventing abuse can survive when its own employees no longer believe in that promise.
