The Trump administration tapped a surveillance giant with a record of attacking the press to advise the State Department on free speech.
Among the partners for the State Department’s new “Freedom Tech Excellence Program” is Palantir, the AI and data integration firm started by right-wing powerbroker Peter Thiel. Under the program, company employees will go on temporary assignments to advise the government on “digital freedom and freedom of expression,” including counter-surveillance and dealing with First Amendment issues.
“FTEP brings private sector talent to the Department for limited-term assignments to advance diplomatic efforts on key issues including online freedom of expression, privacy-enhancing technologies, countering digital surveillance, and responsible AI governance,” according to the State Department’s website.
“Neither this State Department, nor the partners they have announced so far, are trustworthy leaders in what they identify as online freedom of expression.”
Palantir is best known for building large-scale data analysis platforms. In addition to corporate contracts, the company’s massive government tenders include database, surveillance, and tracking tools for police and federal authorities. Among its government clients are the military, the State Department itself, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Palantir and its key personnel have also been involved in multiple lawsuits against journalistic outlets.
The firm’s history has raised criticisms of its role in the new State Department initiative, especially given the Trump administration own’s dubious track record on First Amendment issues.
“To some extent, this announcement and this program sound like doublespeak,” said Carrie DeCell, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Certainly neither this State Department, nor the partners they have announced so far, are trustworthy leaders in what they identify as online freedom of expression or countering digital surveillance.”
The new initiative is planned to run through the beginning of 2029, according to the State Department’s press office. While participants could be placed anywhere in the agency and may require security clearances, the Freedom Tech Excellent Program “is not geared towards bolstering the Department’s internal application or operational use of AI technologies,” the department said in a statement to The Intercept.
Anduril, a military tech firm with links to Palantir and Thiel, was also listed as a partner in the State Department initiative. Anduril’s executive chair Trae Stephens is a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund, which has invested about $2.6 billion in Anduril. Besides a mutual appreciation of “The Lord of the Rings,” Thiel shares similar politics with Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and has backed Luckey’s new bank, Erebor.
Neither Anduril nor Palantir responded to requests for comment.
Palantir and the Feds
Palantir’s work has brought it notoriety across the globe, though at times defining what it does can be complex. It has repeatedly eschewed its label as a surveillance firm. Palantir CEO Alex Karp denied on a podcast last year that the company engages in unconstitutional surveillance work.
And, in an unsigned blog post last year, Palantir wrote, “Contrary to some media reports, we are not a surveillance company.”
Palantir, though, enabled U.S. mass surveillance by bolstering the National Security Agency’s global data collection efforts, according to documents provided to The Intercept by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Palantir helped the NSA expand a program that became notorious for its ability to hoover up Americans’ communications along with those from abroad.
More recently, the firm has become a focal point for protests in the U.K. over its massive contract with the National Health Service and its ties to the Israeli military. Just this week, the NHS apologized after admitting it had falsely stated that Palantir did not have access to identifiable patient data.
Stateside, the company had a contract with New York City public hospitals that gave it access to patient information. The contract was allowed to expire after it came under scrutiny in an Intercept report. The Intercept also reported this year that Palantir has access to sensitive federal databases for its contract to aid in Internal Revenue Service investigations.
Palantir’s IRS work led to a letter last year from 10 members of Congress to Karp requesting information about the “mega-database” built off IRS data. In response, the firm again denied that it was engaging in widespread surveillance of Americans and that it was building any such database.
Palantir also has a 15-year relationship with ICE. The Intercept found that its contracts with the agency have aided immigration raids, including ones that led to family separations. And Palantir built bespoke software for ICE that helps track self-deportations and visa overstays.
In April, Reps. Dan Goldman and Nydia Velázquez, both Democrats from New York, sent a list of questions directed to ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, demanding information about how they were leveraging Palantir’s technology to create “a mass surveillance ecosystem.”
Attacks on Free Press
Along with eccentric far-right views and donations to MAGA Republicans, one of Thiel’s most well-known acts was his involvement in the lawsuit that drove the news outlet Gawker into bankruptcy.
Thiel had become upset with Gawker over the media company’s reporting about his personal life. He went on to spend $10 million secretly bankrolling lawsuits against the company, finally scoring with a major judgment in favor of the wrestler Hulk Hogan that caused Gawker to close and sell off its assets.
Journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said that Thiel constituted a “serious threat” to the group’s principles of “freedom of press and independence of media,” particularly in light of the secrecy around his role in the case. His actions were, RSF said, “nothing different to governments using legal or economic leverage to shut down a media that happens to displease them.”
Palantir also recently filed a suit against Swiss online news magazine Republik for reporting on how Palantir repeatedly failed to land contracts with the Swiss government. Palantir claimed that Republik had an obligation to run a list of rebuttals from the firm.
A Swiss court, however, handed Palantir a defeat by siding with the outlet on all but one of the 23 charges and forcing Palantir to pay most of Republik’s legal fees. (In a since-deleted post on Medium responding to the Republik lawsuit, Palantir once again denied that it is a surveillance company.)
David Greene, senior counsel for anti-surveillance nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that positioning Palantir as a bulwark for civil rights undermined the government’s own free speech initiative.
“There’s a big problem right now with the U.S. government and the people outside government who exercise power, in terms of trying to claim free speech as a value when they clearly don’t sincerely hold that value,” Greene said. “It really lowers the esteem of the U.S. in terms of having any moral authority on freedom of expression grounds.”
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