Searching for God # 149

 From the American Friends Service Committee, (afsc.org) website, in a piece entitled, What is Palantir? And why is this corporation so dangerous? By Kenny Morris, February 11, 2026, we read: 

Palantir is the most dangerous tech company you may not have heard of. It uses artificial intelligence to weaponize our data against us. Built with CIA funding to support the US. ‘war on terror,’ Palantir is a weapons company disguised as a software start-up. Now it helps Israel plan its military operations and powers ICE’s deportation machine. And it is everywhere. Palantir is use by militaries, police forces, banks, hospitals, and even your local pharmacy or favorite fast-food place. This technology is designed to help governments track and target individuals. It is killing people abroad and can be weaponized against everyone. That’s why it must be stopped. 

What does Palantir actually do? 

Palantir vacuums up massive amounts of data collected by governments and corporations. Palantir’s AI algorithm then combines all this data into a single gigantic dataset and looks for patterns that are hard to see. For example, it might find the location of someone who overstayed their visa f0r ICE. Immigration enforcement uses Palantir to centralize data, which can include our known addresses, phone numbers, driving records, credit history, immigration history, health data, and social media presence all in one place. Palantir’s tools have fueled some of the largest raids on immigrant communities in ICE’s history. 

Hoe does Palantir support genocide and war? 

The Israeli government began using Palantir software in 2014 and significantly scaled up its partnership during its genocide on Gaa, which began in 2023. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has said, I am proud that we are supporting Israel in every way that we can.’ The Israeli military has used Palantir technology to plan attacks in Lebanon and Gaza. Palantir also works closely with the U.S. military. According to the CEO, ‘Our weapons software is in every combat situation I am aware of.’ Palantir executive Shyaj Sankar has said that Palantir’s work for the Pentagon is ‘this generation’s Manhattan Project,’ referring to the World War II program that developed the tomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Who is Peter Thiel? 

Peter Thiel is a central co-founder of Palantir. He is a billionaire venture capitalist, conservative libertarian, and an early investor in Facebook who made much of his money from founding PayPal. According to Thiel, ‘I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.’ 

From the Investigative Journalism Foundation website, (theijf.org) in a piece entitled, ‘Canadian government spent tens of millions of secret Palantir contract,’ by Zak Vescera, June 1, 2026, we read: 

The Canadian government quietly approved tern of millions of dollars in extra spending for a contract it held with the controversial American tech company Palantir. Records from the IJF’s Open By Default database reveal the federal government made over a dozen amendments to a secret contract it held with Palantir’s Canadian subsidiary to provide services to an elite unit of the Canadian military......The Department of National Defence told the IJF that as of last month they had spent $46.8 million on the contract..... 

In a subsequent July 13, 2026 piece also by Zak Vescera on theijf.org website, entitled,  Defence department to buy Palantir software for $7.4 million each year, we read: 

The Department of National Defence (DND) confirmed to the IJF that it intends to buy two Palantir software licences at a total cost of $7.4 million each year.... 

Some Canadian tech observers argue the government shouldn’t be working with Palantir at all. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have raised concerns about the company’s work for military and law enforcement agencies, including American Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who are engaged in a controversial deportation drive..... ‘When you get Palantir, you buy into the ideology,’ said Renee Sieber, an associate professor of geography at McGill university who focuses on information technology and civil engagement. Sieber said the company’s close ties to the United States administration should be a dealbreaker, especially given the Prime Minister Mark Carney’s talk of Canadian data sovereignty. ‘Give our fractious relationship with the United States and these claims that we should be the 51st state, that’s highly problematic,’ Sieber said. She is not alone in that view. 

The profound intricate, complex and deeply disturbing “web” of technological incest that grows by the hour, arguably bringing with it some useful tools, for example in ‘search and rescue,’ is nevertheless ideologically magnetized primarily into the work of the military, national security and cyber-intelligence. Driven by the profit motive, however, there is no doubt that, given Palantir has already secured contracts with several American hospitals, they will continue aggressively to pursue similar contracts within Canadian hospitals. 

So, ironically, in a series that began as an attempt to advocate for refugees, migrants, asylum-seekers and IDPs, we have veered into the ‘machine’ behind much of the deplorable, detestable and reprehensible work of ICE in the United States, all of it ‘brain-worked’ in and through the Palantir algorithms. The threat to the privacy of ordinary citizens is directly threatened by this technology and the thin wedge of the ‘spear’ of intervention into the Canadian military, to be followed rapidly and into ideologically compatible Canadian law enforcement agencies, raises multiple questions about the courage, strength, conviction determination of Canadian leadership, at both federal and provincial levels to ‘draw a line in the sand’ as a first step to protecting ordinary Canadian citizens. 

While not providing identical data to Palantir, there are other companies doing similar work. 

In Europe, DataWalk (Poland) is one of the most direct competitors to Palantir Gotham.  

In Germany, Helsing, is a sovereign defense-AI company building software centric military capabilities.  

In France, ChapsVision offers Argonos platform tailored as sovereign data and AI alternative to Palantir for government national security. 

Also in France, Thales Group is a massive defense giant tapped by the French government to build domestic alternatives to Palantir’s intelligence software (such as the Artemis project) to maintain digital sovereignty. 

In the United Kingdom,  Quantexa provides a data-driven ‘decision intelligence’ platform that specializes in entity resolution and network generation to spot financial crime and corporate risk. 

A question facing western governments may be not only which technology is most trust-worthy in terms of protecting personal privacy and restricting its use, but also which country of origin is more trustworthy to engage with. A similar question faces the Canadian government over the issue of the purchase of fighter jets, whether to continue to purchase the F-35 from the U.S, or to purchase the Grippen from Saab in Sweden. Readers in this space will already be aware that we support the Grippen option. 

The world faces not only a tsunami of new and revolutionary technology but also a different tidal wave of billionaires many of whom own much of the new stock in the new technologies. Separating the technology from its ownership, and its government-relationships will be a subtle and nuanced task for procurement officials in all countries. 

From Forbes.com, in a piece entitled Geoffrey Hinton Warns AI May Outsmart Humans as Agents Escape Tests, by Tim Bajarin, August 7, 2026, in the summary we read: 

AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel laureate, warns that advanced AI systems could soon surpass human intelligence, making them impossible to outsmart. This serious warning follows recent incidents where AI agents from Meta, Open AI, and Anthropic ‘escaped’ testing environments. These breaches highlight a structural safety problem with ‘agentic AI’ that can act independently. Current control mechanisms are inadequate for these sophisticated systems. Enterprises deploying agentic AI ust urgently develop new governance, sandboxing, and human-in-the-loop controls. Hinton emphasizes recognizing this evolving challenge, not halting AI development, as the safety infrastructure lags behind AI capabilities. 

Some of us have heard Prime Minister Carney of Canada, and the U.S. president, when asked about the need to slow-walk AI, both leaders rejecting that option. Given that the American president is obsessed with competing with China in order to be “first with AI” in the world, we can all bet on a massive US administration commitment in billions through loans, contracts and even in lenient borrowing rates by the AI companies. 

From yahoo.com, in their Yahoo Finance section, under the headline, ‘AI Companies’ Debt Now Equals 68% of New Long-term Treasure Borrowing this Year, JP Morgan Finds,’ by AJ Tiarsmith, September 10, 2026, we read: 

Six AI giants including Oracle and Microsoft issued -$320B in debt this year, absorbing 68% of new long-duration U.S. Treasure borrowing. Goldman Sachs projects $340B in 2027 hyperscaler* insurance, warning that Alphabet and Meta will crowd Treasuries for the same bond investors.  

*hyperscaler: is a business operating massive global fleets of data centers with millions of physical and virtual servers. Cloud is the service you rent, while hyperscaler is the massive size and operating model behind it. 

Oracles’ $55.7B capex dwarfs its $32B operating cash flow, leaving it projected to run negative free cash flow through 2028. 

The AI infrastructure boom has a scale problem the bond market cannot ignore. Michael Cembalest, chairman or market and investment strategy at JP Morgan, estimates the five major hypescalers plus Nividia have issued roughly $320 billion of debt so far in 2026, including special purpose vehicles where the companies ultimately stand behind data center lease obligations. In 10-year-equivalent terms, Cembalest puts the long-duration component at roughly at $303 billion. That is equivalent to around 68% of new long-duration Treasure borrowing this year. 

Anyone anywhere who thinks that the world is going to escape as-yet-unopened dangers, threats, and also the undisclosed severity of those threats, in this mad, frenetic, international, corporatist, capitalist, nationalist, cyber-snake of a behemoth, owned and operated by insensate, cold, detached, and obsessively ambitious cyber-narcs (narc here is short for narcissist) all of them in bed with the American government, is asleep under a rock. 

We are all, without our choosing and without our permission, now world citizens! And in that  capacity, we have a moral obligation to protect, preserve, defend, uphold and assure the freedom, dignity, honour and respect and human rights of all other world citizens, irrespective of their cash-vaults or their conviction that ‘freedom and democracy at no longer compatible!’ Indeed, those whose wealth and political connections underscore such a venomous, heinous, despicable and unsustainable perception and attitude are the very enemies, not only of all migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and IDPs but all of the rest of us ordinary folk.