Palantir Colonizes Los Angeles
Palantir Technologies has long contracted with the LAPD to provide software and data analysis capacities that fuel “Pred-Pol”, predictive (some say, predatory) policing, and the widespread use of automated license plate readers that track and identify every vehicle on the streets of Los Angeles. Now Palantir is taking its act into the air above Los Angeles.
Palantir has formed a partnership with Archer Aviation, aimed at introducing A-I-regulated “air taxis” into the skies over LA. Palantir’s AI software, including tools like Foundry and AIP, will be used by Archer make its electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft faster at their Georgia and Silicon Valley factories. Archer’s main plane, called “Midnight,” which climbs straight up like a helicopter but then flies like a plane, is designed for quick, short flights within cities; for example, a small contingent of execs headed for LAX. Palantir and Archer will work on new kinds of A-I software powered for air traffic control, flight planning, and route management, relying on approaches developed in Palantir’s work on military drones. What could go wrong? Replacing human-run air traffic control systems with robotic ones that will assist small vertical-take-off-and-landing airplanes to fly low over cities to get rich people to the airport faster… I guess this is Palantir’s answer to Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which is planning to dig proprietary tunnels for Tesla e-vehicles to avoid traffic.
Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is one of the key tech architects of a “post-democratic” social, economic and political order, the power behind Trump’s VP, JD Vance. CEO Alex Karp says his company defends the West and Western values against “potential adversaries.” That ideological mission translates into profitable business with the US, Israel, the UK, the EU, NATO, and local law enforcement, particularly the LAPD.
Palantir Technologies stock has surged over 2,500% since early 2021. It had over $1 billion in revenue in the last quarter. Over the summer, the US Army consolidated 75 existing contracts into a single 10-year, $10 billion contract with Palantir for A-I and other project management software applications. Palantir is being talked about in the same breath as chip-maker Nvidia as an essential tech company, but on the software end.
Palantir has other contracts, with ICE for managing deportations, with US, Israeli, German and other military bodies, with hospitals, health agencies, and multinational corporations to structure, integrate and analyze massive volumes of data.
Palantir and the LAPD
The LAPD led the way in using Palantir’s “big data” integration and analysis in policing. According to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, LAPD’s “Newton Division’s CID became the first area station in the Department to use Palantir as a tool for analysis and investigations.” The Palantir platform enabled Newton crime analysts, officers, and detectives to search LAPD’s data in a single place and make associations and connections between internal and external sources. Data sources include crime incidents, arrests, field interviews, calls for service, license plate readers, vehicle recovery, and citizen tips, many of which are “raw” and unsubstantiated. When the LAPD’s LASER program first began, it took an hour or more to generate a “chronic offender” bulletin; using Palantir, the time was reduced to about five minutes.
Additionally, Palantir allows cops to search for license plates
when they may only have three numbers or letters. It creates visual work-ups of criminal associations, puts crime incidents on maps, and allows crime analysts and detectives to find suspects, vehicles and locations quickly and easily. It also, of course, systematized and automated pre-existing biases and police expectations of who is deemed suspicious or what areas are considered “hot spots” for potential future crimes. The first rule of computing is “GIGO” — garbage in, garbage out.
Palantir and the US Army
According to a statement by the US Army about its $10 billion contract with Palantir, it will “accelerat[e] delivery of proven commercial software to warfighters while removing … pass-through fees. This … reduces procurement timelines, ensuring … rapid access to cutting-edge data integration, analytics, and AI tools. This contract allows the government flexibility to purchase goods and services as needed …. The agreement establishes volume-based discounts for the contract’s performance period…. The Army and other …Defense agencies have the option to purchase Palantir’s commercial products during that period, not to exceed the $10 billion cap.”
According to Leo Garciga, the Army’s Chief Information Officer, the Enterprise Agreement with Palantir represents a pivotal step in modernizing the Army’s capabilities. “By streamlining our procurement processes and leveraging enterprise-level discounts, we are not only enhancing our operational effectiveness but also maximizing our buying power.” https://www.army.mil/article/287506/u_s_army_awards_enterprise_service_agreement_to_enhance_military_readiness_and_drive_operational_efficiency
Palantir and ICE
As reported recently by the Washington Post, despite claims by Palantir head Alex Karp to be a “progressive,” Palantir’s software is helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement track undocumented immigrants and deport them faster, according to federal procurement filings and interviews with people who have knowledge of the project. They spoke to WaPo on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. They say the Immigration OS software plays a key role in supporting the administration’s mass deportation campaign, which Trump has intensified with such measures as pausing immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.
Palantir and the Public/Private Police State Partnership
Neil Hughes, writing for Cybernews.com, sounded a clear alarm about Palantir’s problematic potential: “Palantir positions itself not as a vendor, but as a partner in national security…. It integrates itself into institutions, building influence in health systems, defense ministries, police forces, and intelligence agencies. If Palantir succeeds at [its intention of] becoming the operating system for the state, it could shape how decisions are made at the highest levels without being subject to the same checks as public institutions.”
Given how weak the vaunted US system of “checks and balances” and “division of powers” has proved itself to be in dealing with Trump’s grandiose and authoritarian ambitions, putting such enormous unchecked power to do harm in the hands of the private plaything of billionaires whose interests are expressly in cultural domination as well as profit, is a recipe for disaster.
Such tendencies are only being driven and accelerated by the upcoming series of “National Security Special Events” here in the Los Angeles in the next three years, the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the 2028 Olympics. [Read the articles in Change Links about alternative approaches to dealing with the Olympics and the other events, here and here You can read more about the harms done by the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles here: https://ara-la.tumblr.com/post/127693474970/counter-insurgency-goes-for-gold-olympics-1984 and about the damage done by the 1996 “Centennial Olympics” in Atlanta (recently attested to during an LA speaking engagement by Kamau Franklin of Stop Cop City) here: https://antiracist.org/stop-the-olympic-police-state/.]