Lately, we have been witnessing both the Woke Right and the Woke Left piling on Palantir and its key figures on the grounds that the company enables what they describe as “mass surveillance.” That may not always be the precise wording used, but the accusation is broadly consistent across these camps. In substance, these attacks closely resemble one another despite originating from opposite extremes of the political spectrum.
Consider comedian Tim Dillon, who on The Joe Rogan Experience raised a series of dystopian fantasy scenarios about Palantir’s supposed ability to collect data and enable what he called a “digital prison.” The logic is familiar: if a company works with national security and military institutions and has developed technological leverage over large quantities of data, then it must be inherently “bad.” Dillon then abruptly pivoted to Peter Thiel’s lectures on the Antichrist, implying that Thiel’s involvement makes Palantir a precursor to a “social credit score” system and an emerging “police state.” Theo Von has made similar claims, suggesting “they will know everything” and speculating that such data could be weaponized against citizens, while also referencing alleged “AI targeting” in Gaza.
What these critics consistently miss is a basic fact: Palantir neither collects data nor conducts intelligence operations on behalf of governments. The company provides infrastructure for data integration—tools that allow institutions to work with data they already lawfully possess. These tools can then be used to identify and track the worst offenders, from terrorists to serious criminals of all kinds. In fact, Palantir’s founding philosophy was explicitly aimed at avoiding the use of brute-force measures in addressing national security threats.
Historically, governments using traditional analytical tools tended to collect every conceivable piece of data on everyone, with little regard for whether that data was useful, relevant, or even lawful. Palantir’s approach is fundamentally different. It relies on advanced mathematical methods—such as graph theory and Bayesian inference—to construct structured maps, often referred to as ontologies, that surface meaningful relationships and actionable insights rather than indiscriminately amassing vast quantities of irrelevant information. If anything, this represents a pro–civil liberties technology, deployed in service of law-abiding citizens who are better protected from intrusive law enforcement practices precisely because investigations become more targeted and precise.
Moreover, the United States and its allies operate under robust legal and institutional frameworks that strictly prohibit the weaponization of personal data against citizens. Any misuse of such systems would therefore not be the fault of Palantir as a provider of technical infrastructure, but rather a failure of governance and oversight—a clear violation of existing law.
Palantir has also developed an extensive ethical governance framework that is deeply embedded within its platforms. This framework enables the identification of unlawful behavior more effectively than many rival systems, particularly those developed outside the Western democratic context. This distinction matters. Palantir has no true domestic analogues or comparable competitors within the United States. The only plausible alternatives—technologically inferior by most measures—are emerging from adversarial states such as China, and to a lesser extent Russia and Iran. This disparity is not due to a lack of willingness on the part of those regimes, but rather their lack of institutional, technical, and epistemic capacity to build systems of comparable sophistication.
Palantir’s implementation workflows define security boundaries from the outset, with jurisdictional georestrictions embedded directly into the system to ensure compliance with local laws. The platforms are also capable of tracing data and workflow lineage, allowing operators to track data sources, transformations, and downstream decision-making processes.
Beyond its technology, Palantir has explicitly branded itself as an anti-woke corporation—an island of sanity in a sea of madness—particularly given the overwhelming dominance of woke ideology in Silicon Valley. This positioning should not come as a surprise. Alex Karp, together with Nicholas Zamiska, coauthored The Technological Republic, a book detailing how Silicon Valley lost its moral seriousness by abandoning national responsibility.
When Israel launched its operation in Gaza to free hostages and dismantle terrorist military capabilities, Palantir was one of the few companies that demonstrated moral seriousness by standing openly with Israel despite inevitable backlash. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Karp was among the very few—if not the only—major tech CEOs to visit Kyiv and meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Palantir has also played an instrumental role in deepening cooperation along NATO’s eastern flank, including the opening of a strategic hub in Vilnius, Lithuania.
In late October, Karp visited Warsaw and signed a letter of intent with Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, to develop cooperation in AI, information technology, and cyber defense. This agreement signals deep and durable future cooperation between Palantir and Poland, a country committed to spending more than 6 percent of its GDP on military expenditures. Traditionally, European bureaucracies have treated Palantir with suspicion and avoided large-scale commitments. This partnership with Poland, however, could serve as an icebreaker, paving the way for broader European engagement. Crucially, this cooperation is not with just any European state, but with the most significant strategic actor on NATO’s eastern flank—one that increasingly serves as the first line of defense for the West against assertive adversaries.
Both the Woke Left and the Woke Right display something unusual for their respective traditions: nihilism. This condition goes far beyond healthy skepticism and manifests as a complete absence of faith in institutions, achievements, or motives, such that success itself is treated as evidence of corruption. Building Palantir was genuinely difficult, requiring decades of sustained effort to achieve its current level of operational success and institutional integrity.
Wokism—whether left-wing or right-wing—has become emblematic of a low-trust and profoundly dysfunctional worldview. It assumes the rules of the game are inherently rigged, that nothing of lasting value can be built honestly, and that any success must result from large-scale fraud benefiting insiders alone. This worldview maps directly onto epistemic nihilism, which erodes trust in epistemic authority and should not be confused with legitimate skepticism.
When an epistemic crisis takes hold, reason is displaced by vibes, anecdotes, intuition, and morally charged suspicion. Falsifiability disappears, and disagreement itself becomes proof of bad faith. Nuance collapses, as error, incompetence, and bias are fused into an undifferentiated mass of alleged malice and conspiracy. Another reason both the Woke Left and the Woke Right oppose Palantir so intensely lies in civic nihilism: a reflexive hostility toward anything Western, American, or Israeli. Meanwhile, far more authoritarian non-Western regimes—where human life carries far less intrinsic value—often receive a moral free pass.
Ultimately, the attacks on Palantir are driven not by principled commitments, but by tribalism and identity politics. Palantir, by contrast, stands for articulated values and operational principles—qualities that have become increasingly rare in an age defined by tribalism and institutional cowardice.
Ziya H. is a Contributor for Liberty Affair. Based in Warsaw, Poland, he writes about geopolitics, culture, and technology. Follow his latest insights on X: @hsnlizi.
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