Palantir’s Big, Beautiful Day

The federal government is collabing with an edgy tech lord to create an all-knowing, omniscient database that will centralize every American’s sensitive information altogether, in one place, for “smarter law enforcement” and “more efficient” policing. What could possibly go wrong?

The idea is being passed off as another attempt to save tax dollars and improve government efficiency. It will combine data from the Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. All of our information will be dumped into this database, so the government will have it at its fingertips. A profile for every American, listing our tax history, driving and arrest records, immigration status, employment history, and more, compiled into a profile — like Facebook, or Instagram, only a lot less cute, and just for the government to use against us.

And the real kicker: Who is Trump tapping to design this surveillance colossus? The only Tolkien nerd sinister enough for the job, the great Sauroman wannabe, Peter Thiel and his company Palantir. 

If those names don’t ring a bell, you definitely aren’t wearing enough tin foil on your head right now, and are probably a lot cooler than Peter Thiel was in high school. Thiel is a dark geek, a Silicon Valley tech bro, PayPal Mafia member, and bespoke CIA app developer. And Palantir is his company — named after the pearlescent orb Sauroman used in The Lord of the Rings to spy on his enemies. Palantir is one of the most sophisticated (and powerful) surveillance analytics companies in the world. The government is already pouring hundreds of millions of tax dollars into it every single year. Now, Palantir’s got a new contract, and it’s a big one. 

Let’s play the devil’s advocate for a moment, though. Because, it seems logical that the government would want to compile all of that info from across different agencies in one place. The information they’re assembling is data these bureaus already have — just separately, spread out across their disparate departments and areas of influence. Creating a single database would be more efficient, wouldn’t it? Which would save tax dollars … right?

Anyone keen enough to pick this magazine up in the first place can recognize several bright flashing red flags. 1) The government is handing all of our information over to a private company — on good faith that it won’t take advantage of the obvious opportunity to exploit and extort Americans. 2) The only “benefit” The People get out of this is the promise of some undetermined amount of tax dollars being saved some time in the future. Aside from that, there’s no way this database ever gets used for common good. It will literally be an all-seeing eye, with a limitless memory, used for law enforcement and policing. 

Which brings me to the real nut of this theory. Organizing such a database is the first step toward creating what they call a “social credit system.” Like a financial credit system, every citizen will have a social credit score tied to their name (or number). China’s been developing such a system for years. Facial recognition cameras catalog every time you jay walk, shoplift, cut someone off in traffic, break a rule or cross a line, and factors it all into your social credit score. The higher your score, the more rights you have, and the more privileges you have access to. But if your credit score is low, you can’t travel, access certain government benefits, or even work certain jobs. 

That same kind of system is coming to the U.S. Our social credit score will be tied to a digital driver’s license (which has already rolled out in Colorado), a digital passport, and digital wallet. And eventually, the government will have the ability to toggle your rights based on how pristine—or sordid—your Palantir citizen’s profile is. It could turn off your right to drive, or travel out of the country. It could even cut off access to the funds in your bank accounts, as happened in Canada in 2020 to the truckers who protested COVID lockdowns.