Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp neatly embody the zeitgeist of 2025 with Palantir’s use of AI for ICE and the IDF, their Trump affiliations, and their outspoken views on the Antichrist and “Western Civilization.”
Bare Capitalism has coated Palantir from a number of angles in current months, let’s contact on the highlights of these items so readers can make amends for the dialog and shortly grasp the stakes.
The main target of this piece is Palantir 2025’s use of AI as a part of a hype marketing campaign, their crony capitalism in Israel, the U.S. and the U.Okay., and the way Thiel’s seemingly bizarre obsession with the Antichrist, performs into it.
Thomas Neuburger on Palantir Revisited: Who’s Us in Us vs. Them?“Alex Karp’s admonition — to ensure “our” enemies “get up scared and go to mattress scared” — places Individuals, us within the extra superior West, inside dealing with out — safe and guarded, not simply from “our enemies,” however from the evils we ship to them. To place it in cruder phrases, we’re additionally secure as a result of we’re pissing, not pissed upon.
“And that is how we’re supposed to treat the muscular state, the closely armed, punishing state, as guardians of ‘us’, as outward-facing armies guarding the gates. The state can mistreat ‘them’ as a result of ‘they’ aren’t ‘us’.
“However Karp is a billionaire, as is Trump, whom he serves, as are the entire rich class, the overly wealthy. Karp imagines he speaks for a bigger ‘us’, for his class and likewise Individuals generalized.”
Nick Corbishley on Welcome to Peak Palantir“The corporate that ‘is aware of the whole lot about you’ goes from power to power as struggle rises and and the so-called ‘liberal’ West turns right into a dystopian novel. …
“Palantir’s star is rising quickly below Trump 2.0 whereas its shares hit file highs on an virtually day by day foundation. The agency’s co-founder and chair of the board, Peter Thiel, was one among comparatively few Silicon Valley moguls to bankroll Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign, and now it appears like he’s cashing in. Thiel can be a former employer-cum-mentor of Vice President JD Vance, whose senate run in Ohio Thiel virtually single handedly funded with a file breaking $15 million donation. In different phrases Thiel’s affect would in all probability be higher in a Vance administration.
“Palantir is concerned in a brand new Pentagon initiative geared toward spurring innovation throughout the US military, titled Detachment 201. As Protection Information reviews, Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief know-how officer, was one among 4 Silicon Valley tech execs invited to hitch the US Military Reserve as lieutenant colonel, to assist inject their velocity and experience into the military’s navy innovation. The opposite three Military Reserve lieutenant colonels had been from Meta, Open AI and Pondering Machines Lab.”
Curro Jimenez on Palantir’s AI Justified Israel’s Assault on Iran — Will Tech Take Us Again to Irrational Beliefs?“’In the event you don’t have AI, there’s nothing happening.’ These are Peter Thiel’s phrases in an interview with Ross Douthat for the podcast Fascinating Occasions. To place it into context, Thiel is referring to one thing he calls the ‘stagnation speculation.’ …
“The argument is that with out a breakthrough to propel a brand new wave of financial progress, the social cloth as we all know it—within the West—will start to break down. To keep away from that, we have to search progress by means of varied means, together with exploring new types of authorities, ventures into radical biology—akin to transhumanism—or missions to Mars.”
Haig Hovaness on The Two Faces of Palantir“Palantir’s know-how is inherently Janus-faced. The identical software program that enables governments to defend in opposition to terrorism or reply to pandemics may also be deployed to observe political opponents, quash dissent, and entrench authoritarian management. On this sense, Palantir represents a broader dilemma of the digital age: the dual-use character of superior info infrastructure. Rising controversy surrounds Palantir, because the dangerous potential of its work turns into more and more evident. …
“Palantir’s know-how can act as a nationwide safety protect, defending in opposition to exterior threats and crises. However with out authorized safeguards, it may possibly simply as simply develop into a cage, controlling home political life by means of refined technique of surveillance. The query will not be whether or not Palantir has constructed highly effective instruments. The query is whether or not the US and different nations can be certain that such instruments stay solely instruments of protection in opposition to overseas threats, and never develop into devices of home repression.”
Curro Jimenez on The Alliance Amongst Washington, Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley
“…the Army Industrial Advanced, which Eisenhower warned about, has expanded to incorporate the governments of the U.S. and Israel, in addition to main Silicon Valley tech firms. If Eisenhower might draw a line between the MIC and the federal government, at this time that’s now not potential.
“This new alliance, known as the ‘military-digital advanced,’ is characterised by the blurred traces between the private and non-private sectors, with firms enjoying a vital and sometimes unaccountable function in geopolitical affairs and navy operations. Out of this, a brand new energy system is rising. …
“Thiel outlined ‘the foundations of the brand new world energy structure. He based mostly this on the premise that ‘the brute info of September 11 demand a re-examination of the foundations of contemporary politics,’ on condition that ‘Western political philosophy can now not deal with our world of world violence’.
“(Thiel) states that this new world energy structure ‘referred to as for a brand new compromise, and this new compromise inexorably demanded extra safety on the expense of much less freedom’.”
Silicon Valley Ideologies as a Lens for Viewing Present EventsEmile P. Torres: “Thiel holds a specific interpretation of pro-extinctionism in accordance with which we must always develop into a brand new posthuman species, however this posthuman species shouldn’t be fully digital. We should always retain our organic substrates, albeit in a radically remodeled state. As such, this contrasts with most different views mentioned right here. These different views are clear cases of digital eugenics, whereas Thiel advocates a model of pro-extinctionism that’s extra historically eugenicist — particularly, it’s a pro-biology variant of transhumanism (a type of eugenics).”
Now that my colleagues have set the scene and defined the stakes, let’s get into Palantir’s use of AI in its advertising, their involvement with the worst excesses of the Israeli and American regimes, and what Thiel and Karp have been saying recently concerning the Antichrist and Western Civilization.
Palantir 2025, AI Hype & Influencers
This piece is a praise to my on-going collection on the varied firms main the headlong cost into giant language fashions branded as AI.
Palantir, has loved a dramatic share value run up within the AI period:
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
The corporate is taken into account by some analysts to be a “prime 15 AI firm,” however it needs to be considered as a intermediary, re-selling AI tech to governments (and big authorities contractors) relatively than a tech pioneer per se.
Wired’s Caroline Haskins grappled with what it’s precisely that Palantir 2025 does:
(Juan Sebastián Pinto, former Palantir Content material Strategiest) believes that the corporate, which not too long ago started utilizing the tagline “software program that dominates,” has cultivated its mysterious public picture on function. Not like consumer-facing startups that want to obviously clarify their merchandise to on a regular basis customers, Palantir’s predominant viewers is sprawling authorities companies and Fortune 500 firms.
What it’s in the end promoting them is not only software program, however the thought of a seamless, virtually magical resolution to advanced issues. To try this, Palantir usually makes use of the language and aesthetics of warfare, portray itself as a robust, quasi-military intelligence associate.
In one other piece, Haskins referred to as Palantir 2025 a “life-style model”:
…what does it imply for Palantir—an organization that, within the phrases of 1 former worker, basically sells digital “submitting cupboards” to prospects like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US Division of Protection, Heineken beer, and Normal Mills—to be a life-style model?
…Palantir bros aren’t laborious to come across on-line: There are a number of Palantir-focused subreddits, the most important of which has 109,000 members. Some folks on X have been in a position to amass enormous followings by posting solely concerning the firm all through the day.…Palantir’s fan base progressively expanded through the years that contractors for immigration enforcement and the navy had been least common in Silicon Valley. For followers, Palantir was a contrarian darkish horse that stood by its rules, although others detested them.
…below the second Trump administration, the tech world is starting to overtly embrace aligning with the navy—each transactionally, and symbolically. In June, the Military commissioned an elite group of tech executives to be “lieutenant colonels.” Palantir chief know-how officer Shyam Sankar was joined by Meta chief know-how officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, and present Pondering Machines Lab adviser and former OpenAI chief analysis officer Bob McGrew, who additionally labored at Palantir.
Palantir 2025 additionally cultivates influencers:
pic.twitter.com/JY5NaxWkL4
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
And one among their co-founders, Joe Lonsdale, has a mid-sized YouTube channel the place he platforms Palantir execs like CEO Alex Karp:
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
Karp’s opening assertion on the present is a inform as to what he desires Palantir 2025 buyers to be targeted on:
Joe Lonsdale: How a lot of AI proper now’s innovation in theater? What’s actual and what’s hype?
Alex Karp: Properly, the massive factor that we’ve got to keep away from in in in our nation, however is much less of an issue for us than in different international locations, is there’s an try and dampen AI and its utilization by individuals who don’t have a product. That could be a large deal inside and outdoors of presidency. Now, fortunately for us, on this nation (U.S.), it’s a a lot smaller deal than say in Europe.
Wouldn’t need any resolution makers within the Pentagon to seek out out that AI is generally hype, now would we? There’s cash to be made in spite of everything.
Karp additionally has his finger on the heart beat of Gen Z, and like an excellent physician he has some recommendation:
pic.twitter.com/BjasfEFjfg
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
The New York Occasions pitches in with a life-style profile of the charming Alex Karp:
In truth, Mr. Karp, a co-founder and the C.E.O. of Palantir Applied sciences, the mysterious and highly effective information analytics agency, doesn’t belief himself to drive. Or experience a motorbike. Or ski downhill.
“I’m a dreamer,” he stated. “I’ll begin dreaming after which I fall over. I began doing tai chi to stop that. It’s actually, actually helped with specializing in one factor at a time. In the event you had met me 15 years in the past, two-thirds of the dialog, I’d simply be dreaming.”
What would he dream about?
“Actually, it might be a stroll I did 5 years in the past,” he stated. “It might be some dialog I had in grad faculty. Might be my member of the family aggravated me. One thing a colleague stated, like: ‘Why did they are saying this? What does it really imply?’”
Mr. Karp is a lean, extraordinarily match billionaire with unruly salt-and-pepper curls. He’s introvert-charming (one thing I aspire to myself). He has A.D.H.D. and may’t disguise it if he’s not thinking about what somebody is saying. After a hyper spurt of speaking, he loses vitality and has to recharge on the stationary bike or by studying. Though he thinks of himself as totally different, he appears to love being totally different. He enjoys being a provocateur onstage and in interviews.
Actually sterling journalism from the Paper of File’s legendary columnist Maureen Dowd.
I ponder if the identical Palantir 2025 flacks that feed Dowd such horny bits additionally deal with outreach to this plucky grifter:
pic.twitter.com/D3PiBE2WMF
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
The Palantir 2025 hype might present some innocent enjoyable for us, however its function is to set company behemoths and Western governments up for the kill.
Palantir because the Eyes and Ears of Homicide, Inc.
This Marketwatch piece illustrates how Palantir’s branding and use of AI hype helps them land large contracts with the U.S. and U.Okay. governments:
Financial institution of America analysts see Palantir’s ahead deployed engineers, or FDEs, as a part of the corporate’s “secret sauce.” These are engineers who embed with prospects to offer companies and encourage the usage of Palantir’s know-how, the analysts famous. Now that Palantir is including agentic synthetic intelligence “to increase this idiosyncratic skillset to extra use instances,” Financial institution of America expects the AI FDEs to speed up the corporate’s industrial enterprise.…In its authorities enterprise, Palantir’s new strategic partnership with the U.Okay.’s Ministry of Protection, which goals to speculate as much as £750 million, or greater than $1 billion, into AI-enabled protection know-how over the following 5 years, “builds on Palantir’s momentum as the worldwide digital battle-management system,” the analysts stated.…Palantir’s take care of the U.Okay.’s Ministry of Protection, which marks its first exterior of the U.S. price $1 billion, not solely builds on its rising publicity to the nation, but additionally on worldwide demand for its know-how, the analysts stated. They famous that adoption of Palantir’s Maven Sensible System within the U.S. has grown eightfold since early 2024 and that it’s now being utilized by NATO.
“We anticipate different international locations to more and more think about Maven as their world digital battle-management system, because it gives each interoperability with the U.S. and allies in addition to governance on their very own information,” the Financial institution of America crew stated.
Fascinating to notice the distinction between what the Palantir workers quoted within the Wired piece above assume the corporate does with what Financial institution of America analysts name the corporate’s “secret sauce.”
Appears like a modified McKinsey mannequin to me, planting engineers as an alternative of consultants inside large orgs.
Right here’s what they’re doing for ICE, per Enterprise Insider:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed a $30 million take care of Palantir for software program add-ons to trace self-deportations and immigrants who’ve overstayed their visas, authorities information present.
A contract reviewed by Enterprise Insider stated the Immigration Lifecycle Working System — or ImmigrationOS — will reduce “time and useful resource expenditure” for choosing and apprehending immigrants based mostly on ICE enforcement priorities.
Together with “violent criminals” and “associates of identified transnational felony organizations,” the contract additionally cited visa overstays as a deportation precedence.
ImmigrationOS will broaden ICE’s case administration system to incorporate “close to real-time visibility into cases of self-deportation.” The contract stated the brand new ImmigrationOS will streamline “finish to finish immigration lifecycle from identification to removing.”
The company is awarding Palantir $29.8 million for a prototype to be delivered by September 25.…The software program collates info from a variety of presidency databases and permits DHS brokers to maintain detailed information on potential immigration violators for future enforcement actions. It consists of “information sharing with Customs and Border Safety for lookout and seizure monitoring.”…“Palantir has developed deep institutional information of ICE operations over greater than a decade of help,” ICE wrote within the paperwork. “Their methods have been tailor-made to fulfill strict DHS safety and privateness requirements.”
The group Simply Futures Regulation used a Freedom of Info Act request to seek out out extra about Palantir’s work with ICE, by way of The Guardian:
The paperwork…largely cowl Palantir’s contract with Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of Ice that’s accountable for stopping the “unlawful motion of individuals, items, cash, contraband, weapons and delicate know-how”.…The paperwork reveal how deeply embedded Palantir’s instruments had been in HSI’s day-to-day operations, serving to its brokers to research and arrest folks utilizing a searchable super-network of presidency and personal databases.
They present the HSI crew used Palantir platforms and apps to trace air journey, analyze info like driver’s license scans and monitor folks’s areas utilizing cellular phone information.
In an instance that highlights the vastness of the info Ice has entry to: one March 2020 coaching doc detailed how Palantir software program allowed Ice brokers to go looking throughout information from the Scholar and Change Customer Info System (Sevis), which on the time contained 4.9 million information “of non-immigrant college students, trade guests and their dependents” courting again to 2016. One other advised Ice brokers they may improve their investigations through the use of telephone numbers or names extracted from telephones the brokers unlocked utilizing know-how from Cellebrite, an Israeli forensic software program firm that has had a contract with Ice since 2019.
The precise nature of Palantir’s work for Israel is barely more durable to parse.
The Nation’s James Bamford took a have a look at Palantir’s function within the Gaza genocide final yr:
the big quantity of superior concentrating on AI {hardware} and software program offered to the Israeli miliary and spy companies—a few of it by one American firm particularly: Palantir Applied sciences.…As one of many world’s most superior data-mining firms, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s “work” was supplying Israel’s navy and intelligence companies with superior and highly effective concentrating on capabilities—the exact capabilities that allowed Israel to put three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked assist automobiles.
“I’m fairly inspired about expertise right here and that we’re getting one of the best folks,” Alex Karp, cofounder and CEO of the corporate, advised a bunch quickly after arriving in Tel Aviv final January.
…
Instantly after the discuss, Karp traveled to a navy headquarters the place he signed an upgraded settlement with Israel’s Ministry of Protection. …
The undertaking concerned promoting the ministry an Synthetic Intelligence Platform that makes use of reams of categorized intelligence reviews to make life-or-death determinations about which targets to assault. In an understatement a number of years in the past, Karp admitted, “Our product is used once in a while to kill folks,” the morality of which even he himself often questions. “I’ve requested myself, ‘If I had been youthful in school, would I be protesting me?’” …
Palantir’s AI machines want information for gasoline—information within the type of intelligence reviews on Palestinians within the occupied territories. And for many years a key and extremely secret supply of that information for Israel has been the US Nationwide Safety Company, in accordance with paperwork launched by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Bloomberg checked out Palantir’s Synthetic Intelligence Platform in 2023 which reveals extra concerning the firm’s pivot to AI-focused advertising than the tech itself:
AIP stands for Synthetic Intelligence Platform. In response to the corporate’s website, the device can be utilized by militaries to faucet the sorts of AI fashions that energy ChatGPT to assist in battlefield intelligence and decision-making. A demo video reveals how the platform can show and analyze intel on enemy targets, determine probably hostile conditions, suggest battle plans and ship these plans to commanding officers for execution.The video emphasizes that the platform is secure and safe, permitting a consumer to resolve what information the fashions can see and what they “can and may’t do on behalf of people.”
“In the event you wheel these applied sciences appropriately, safely, and securely,” Palantir Chief Govt Officer Alex Karp stated throughout Monday’s name, “you could have a weapon that may assist you to win, that may scare your rivals and adversaries.”
Karp described the increase in giant language fashions as a revolution “that may increase ships and sink ships.” Demand for AIP is like “nothing I’ve ever seen in 20 years of being concerned in Palantir,” he stated. “We’re reorganizing our efforts aggressively to capitalize.”
By no means concern, Palantir has loads of candy AI tech for the US Military too, per CNBC in March of this yr:
Palantir is rolling out its first two synthetic intelligence-enabled methods to the U.S. Military, the corporate stated Friday.
The Tactical Intelligence Concentrating on Entry Node methods, or TITAN, act as a cellular floor station that harness AI to gather information from house sensors to help troopers with warfare technique and enhance strike concentrating on and accuracy, in accordance with Palantir.…Palantir received the $178 million contract final March, beating out competitor and protection big RTX Company. It marked a key milestone for the corporate identified for its information evaluation and software program companies, in addition to the primary time a software program firm has labored as a major contractor for a major {hardware} program.…The settlement features a whole of 10 TITAN methods. Every system consists of a sophisticated system with two bigger vehicles and a primary system with two automobiles delivered over 5 supply orders, Jain defined. The methods enable troopers to make intelligence choices with out requiring the cloud, placing “all that energy behind a truck,” he added.
Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Epstein Acquaintance, and The Antichrist
Now that we’ve seemed a bit of extra at what Palantir is definitely promoting, to whom, and the way, let’s tie them again into the 2025 zeitgeist.
For instance, Thiel even has a weird enterprise reference to the brand new head of the CDC, one thing about man-made islands past nationwide borders.
Now on to the intercourse scandal and loopy spiritual stuff: Jeffrey Epstein and the Antichrist.
The previous will not be one thing Palantir desires to be related to in 2025, however they wouldn’t be embodying the zeitgeist in the event that they stayed out of that mess would they?
The Antichrist, then again is one thing Thiel very a lot desires to be related to.
I mentioned his notorious interview on the subject with the NY Occasions’ Ross Douthat in a earlier piece.
Let’s have a look at what and why.
Purpose.com received the products on the Epstein-Thiel-Israel hyperlink:
After his first arrest for intercourse crimes, Jeffrey Epstein tried to get into a brand new line of labor: surveillance. In 2015, he partnered with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to spend money on a safety tech startup referred to as Reporty Homeland Safety, now referred to as Carbyne. Leaked emails present that Epstein was utilizing Barak to hunt out alternatives within the surveillance trade and construct connections with highly effective figures across the globe, together with American businessman Peter Thiel, the previous director of Israeli indicators intelligence, and two folks in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s circle.…Epstein invited (former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Barak to return to a gathering with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in Might 2014. Though Barak couldn’t make that assembly, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend actual time with peter thiel [sic]” and supplied to arrange a dinner the next month.
Barak wrote to a distinct enterprise affiliate a number of days later, with out mentioning Epstein’s function, that he and Thiel would have a “first date” and “in all probability spend it speaking simply geopolitics” with an unnamed third particular person. In that e mail, Barak added that he had met Thiel as soon as earlier than in Davos, Switzerland, however speculated that Thiel “in all probability doesn’t even recollect it.”…It’s not clear precisely what occurred in that assembly. In February 2016, nonetheless, Epstein pitched Reporty to Valar Ventures, a fund co-founded by Thiel and two shut companions. “We’d love to listen to extra about Reporty, are you in NYC within the close to time period or would a telephone name make extra sense? Thanks for pondering of us Jeffrey,” Valar Ventures basic associate Andrew McCormack wrote again.
Appears just like the Epstein, Israel, Thiel connection is perhaps extra smoke than fireplace, however the identical might be stated for Thiel’s antichrist obsession.
Mike Brock linked Thiel’s pondering on the Antichrist together with his mental mentor at Stanford and defined Thiel’s function:
Thiel is publicly, explicitly a follower of René Girard—his Stanford professor and mental mentor whose insights about human social psychology Thiel has weaponized as political methodology.
Consider it this manner: as an alternative of society dissolving into everybody combating everybody, folks unite in opposition to a delegated villain. That’s Girard’s scapegoat concept—and it’s the lever Thiel pulls. Consider conspiracy theories blaming George Soros, or anti-woke crusades concentrating on universities. In each instances, actual frustrations get channeled towards a scapegoat that distracts from the oligarchic seize really shaping outcomes.
As I explored in “Concepts With out Love,” Thiel approaches civilization itself as a thought experiment relatively than lived actuality—he loves concepts greater than folks. However he’s systematically utilized Girard’s insights to redirect common anger away from oligarchic seize towards the establishments that might present democratic resistance.
Émile P. Torres dives a bit of deeper at Realtime Techpocalypse Publication:
In the event you can persuade those who the tip is nigh, that one is combating the Antichrist, and that Armageddon — an final battle between Good and Evil — is at hand, you possibly can persuade them to do absolutely anything. In spite of everything, what hangs within the stability is everlasting life, good happiness, perpetual peace, and cosmic justice. With the stakes that prime, what precisely is off the desk? What act is morally impermissible?.…My guess is that Peter Thiel understands this dynamic, a minimum of to some extent, and that’s partly why he retains speaking concerning the Antichrist.…So far as I can inform, the actual interpretation of biblical prophecy that Thiel is peddling goes like this: we face two foes — the Antichrist and Armageddon. The previous is a world authorities with — I child you not — excessive taxes, an concept that’s “curiously in keeping with different apocalypticists who’ve claimed that the Antichrist will acquire energy by means of supranational organizations just like the European Union or United Nations.”
Thiel sees Greta Thunberg as an agent of the Antichrist exactly as a result of she advocates for world laws concentrating on carbon emissions. If applied, this might take us yet one more misstep down the slippery slope of regulatory regimes that intervene with different areas of trade, a few of which Thiel has a vested curiosity in.
Right here’s the technique of Antichristic brokers, in accordance with Thiel: they use the specter of Armageddon — a global-scale disaster, or an existential catastrophe — as a pretext for establishing a world authorities. If you wish to keep away from annihilation or collapse, they are saying, we should sacrifice the “freedom” of firms to proceed polluting, exploiting, extracting, and doing no matter they see as crucial to maximise their income. Thiel responds that aligning with the Antichrist to keep away from Armageddon is not any resolution in any respect. Somewhat, our eschatological process in these perilous instances is to stroll the slender path between Armageddon and the Antichrist: to keep away from an precise disaster whereas resisting the urge to perform this by means of world governance.…If Thunberg is simply an annoying local weather activist, she will be safely ignored. But when she’s an agent of the Antichrist, then she have to be stopped instantly and in any respect prices. If these advocating for AI regulation are engaged within the work of the Satan, then they, too, have to be handled in a fashion proportionate to the superior stakes of the battle. That is an apocalyptic showdown to guard, protect, and produce about paradise, which Thiel imagines occurring by means of the unregulated growth of superior applied sciences.
It doesn’t get extra 2025 than conflating Greta Thunberg with the Antichrist. I ponder if Palantir’s tech was used within the newest assault on the flotilla headed for Israel with Ms. Thunberg on board.
