The Washington Post - 23.08.2019

A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 , 2019

had chilled the Internet giant’s
relationships with some govern-
ment leaders who accused it of
betraying American interests.
Karp refused to budge. He re-
newed an ICE contract worth up
to $42 million and defended the
program at a company town hall
meeting, the people said. In me-
dia interviews and an online ad
campaign this year, Karp bashed
Google for backing out of its
government contract and sug-
gested Palantir wouldn’t do the
same.
“Silicon Valley is telling the
average American ‘I will not sup-
port your defense needs,’ ” Karp
told an interviewer in January, a
quote the company repeated in a
recent ad on Twitter. Peter Thiel,
Palantir’s billionaire co-founder,
echoed that message at a confer-
ence last month, when he called
Google’s actions “treasonous.”
The controversy around ICE
highlights a tension at the center
of Palantir’s business, which re-
lies on the U.S. government for
contracts and on Silicon Valley
for talent. As Trump’s policies
divide tech workers in the largely
liberal Bay Area, Palantir must
balance keeping workers happy
and preserving the trust of its
No. 1 customer.
Palantir’s predicament illus-
trates the tightrope walk many
businesses must perform in an
age of rising political activism,
particularly in Silicon Valley,
where tech workers have staged
walkouts and circulated petitions
to protest collaborations with the
Trump administration. In their
responses to worker uprisings,
the leaders of Amazon, Google,
Microsoft and Salesforce have
tried to grapple with the ethical
concerns posed by their employ-
ees — Microsoft, for example, told
employees they don’t have to
work on military projects if they
don’t want to — while making it
clear they want to keep doing
business with the U.S. govern-
ment.
So far, Palantir has stood firm
in its support of the government,
even as employees and activist
groups say there is growing evi-
dence that Palantir lends support
to agents whose work violates the
civil liberties of undocumented
immigrants. A workplace raid re-
sulting in the arrest of 680 mi-
grant workers in Mississippi on
Aug. 7 was carried out by the unit
of ICE that uses Palantir software
to investigate potential targets
and compile evidence against
them.
In another employee petition
this month, more than 60 Palan-
tir workers asked management to
redirect the profits from ICE con-
tracts to a nonprofit charity, the
people said. The company re-
newed a second ICE contract on
Monday.
In an interview with Bloom-
berg News this week, Karp said
the government should be re-
sponsible for answering difficult
questions about how technol-
ogies may be used to surveil citi-
zens.
“I do not believe that these
questions should be decided in
Silicon Valley by a number of
engineers at large platform com-
panies,” Karp said in the inter-
view.
A spokeswoman for Palantir
declined to comment for this sto-
ry or make Karp available for an
interview. Thiel’s spokesman de-
clined to make him available for
an interview.
Founded in the patriotic fervor
that followed the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, with $2 million
in seed money from a CIA incuba-
tor, Palantir has always promoted
a mission to defend American
interests. Federal authorities rely
on its data platform to track down
terrorists, insurgents, drug smug-
glers and insider traders, records
show.
Palantir’s business has flour-
ished since Trump took office,
with revenue from U.S. govern-

PALANTIR FROM A1 ment contracts under his first
2½ years in office surpassing its
total under President Barack
Obama’s entire second term. The
Army contract, awarded in March
and potentially worth more than
$800 million, marked the first
time a Silicon Valley company
had been chosen to lead a defense
program of record, a type of con-
tract with a dedicated line of
funding from Congress.
Many of Palantir’s 2,500 em-
ployees have debated the ICE
contracts in town hall meetings,
office hallways, Slack channels
and email threads, according to
current and former employees,
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because the company
bound them to confidentiality
agreements. Palantir employees,
called “Palantirians,” have taken
both sides of the issue: Immi-
grant employees have written
heartfelt letters sharing why they
are opposed to the ICE contracts,
while at least one former ICE
official who now works at Palan-
tir has defended them, according
to an engineer at the company.
Employees who support the
ICE partnership say Palantir has
helped the agency do more good
than bad, including supporting
missions to apprehend danger-
ous criminals, according to two
current employees. But others
have felt deflated by what they see
as management’s lack of receptiv-
ity to their concerns, two former
employees said. A company with
a mission to “work for the com-
mon good,” according to recent
job listings, increasingly feels to
some workers like a tool for
Trump’s political agenda.
“There’s a version of the story
where they are the good guys,”
one former employee said. “Ev-
eryone wants to protect service
members from IEDs. Everyone
wants to prevent human traffick-
ing. Not everyone can get behind
working for ICE to help deport
immigrants.”

An image change

For years, Palantir was viewed

skeptically by Washington insid-

ers, who saw the Palo Alto,

Calif.-based company as a ragtag

team of tech programmers who

wore hoodies and flip-flops to

work. They were “a bunch of

Silicon Valley kids,” said a former

government official who awarded

Palantir a contract in 2009.

That image began to change as

service members deployed in Af-

ghanistan grew impressed with

Palantir’s ability to quickly assim-

ilate troves of data into maps and

charts, showing the movements,

for example, of insurgents across

a landscape and the likely posi-

tions of improvised explosive de-

vices. After trial runs with the

Navy, Army and Special Forces,

several top Pentagon officials saw

Palantir’s platform as more pow-

erful and reliable than competing

tools supplied by longtime gov-

ernment contractors such as Ray-

theon. The company still strug-

gled to win defense business be-

cause of a contract procurement

process that heavily favored in-

cumbents.

The $800 million Army con-

tract, in which Palantir will build

the nerve center of a vast intelli-

gence gathering network, was

possible only because Palantir

successfully argued in court that

the government was required by

law to consider purchasing com-

mercial products, instead of only

custom ones made by contracting

firms. It won the court case in

2016, under the Obama adminis-

tration, and won the contract this

past March, amid a blitz of lobby-

ing and relationship-building

with the Trump administration.

Palantir’s most visible tie to the

White House is Thiel, the compa-

ny’s outspoken co-founder, chief

backer and executive chairman.

An avowed libertarian who has

railed against the tech industry’s

predominantly liberal politics,

Thiel frequently embraces con-

troversy. He gained notice for

bankrolling a successful lawsuit

against the news site Gawker,

leading to its bankruptcy in 2016.

Thiel donated $1.2 million to

Trump’s 2016 campaign and

stumped for him at the Republi-

can National Convention, argu-

ing he was the leader with the

most potential to rebuild the

American economy. He was

awarded a spot on Trump’s transi-

tion team and helped organize

the president’s initial outreach to

tech industry leaders. At a Trump

Tower summit for tech CEOs on

the eve of Trump’s presidency,

Karp was invited to represent

Palantir. Flanked by titans of

Amazon, Microsoft and Google,

his was the smallest company by

market value represented at the

meeting.

Thiel, who now lives in Los

Angeles, makes rare appearances

in Washington but remains in

favor with the president, accord-

ing to a person close to him. The

investor joined Trump and Oracle

CEO Safra Catz for a private din-

ner at the White House earlier

this year, according to two people

briefed on the meeting. The trio

discussed tech companies includ-

ing Google and Amazon, and the

$10 billion cloud-computing con-

tract for which Amazon is com-

peting with Oracle, one of the

people said. (Amazon founder

and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The

Washington Post.)

Several Thiel associates have

worked in the administration, in-

cluding on the transition teams at

the Pentagon and the Commerce

Department. Both agencies sub-

sequently awarded contracts to

Palantir.

The data-mining firm paid lob-

byists $1.7 million in 2018 to push

for laws that would help open the

government procurement proc-

ess to commercial technology

providers.

The business of war

Google’s withdrawal from the

Defense Department program

called Project Maven in summer

2018 ignited a debate about how

U.S. tech giants should balance

the ethical concerns of rank-and-

file workers and the security in-

terests of the nation. Thousands

of Google employees signed a

petition arguing that the compa-

ny “should not be in the business

of war,” but ending the artificial-

intelligence partnership may

have risked American lives, for-

mer deputy defense secretary Bob

Work said at the time.

With Google pulling out of a

Pentagon partnership, Palantir

saw an opportunity to tell govern-

ment customers they wouldn’t do

the same, said Kara Frederick, an

associate fellow at the Center for

a New American Security.

“They see that there is a gap in

the market for a company that is

willing to stand up and say, ‘Yes,

we are going to help the U.S.

government achieve its ends,’ ”

said Frederick.

Palantir’s leaders joined the

criticism of Google. In a CNBC

interview in January, Karp said

Silicon Valley companies that re-

fuse to work with the U.S. govern-

ment are “borderline craven” and

added that he’s happy Palantir is

“not on that side of the debate.” In

a speech to the National Con-

servatism Conference in July,

Thiel claimed, without evidence,

that Google has been “infiltrated

by Chinese intelligence.”

Thiel didn’t mention his own

ties to a company that benefited

from Google’s decision to pull out

of the Pentagon deal. Anduril, a

defense start-up backed by Thiel’s

investment firm, Founders Fund,

was recently awarded a contract

on Project Maven.

In a tweet this month, Trump

responded to Thiel’s allegations

against Google, calling the inves-

tor “a great and brilliant guy who

knows this subject better than

anyone.”

In a statement, a Google

spokeswoman said the company

continues to work with the De-

fense Department in areas such

as cybersecurity and health care,

and does not work with the Chi-

nese military.

Raids and deportations

Now, Palantir is in the

crosshairs of activists.

Protesters from civil rights

groups, including Mijente and

Jews for Racial and Economic

Justice, have gathered outside

Palantir’s Manhattan offices in

recent weeks to call for an end to

the company’s work with ICE. As

employees filed into work in the

morning, volunteers handed out

fliers explaining how Palantir’s

software has been used by ICE

agents targeting migrant work-

ers.

Palantir began working with

the Department of Homeland Se-

curity, the agency that oversees

ICE, in 2011. The company was

involved in an effort called “Oper-

ation Fallen Hero,” which hunted

down members of the Los Zetas

drug-trafficking ring believed to

have murdered an ICE special

agent. Palantir’s software was

used to assimilate data from the

Drug Enforcement Administra-

tion, FBI and DHS — including

surveillance images, smuggling

routes and electronic communi-

cations — to quickly find leads,

records show. The operation led

to 782 arrests for criminal viola-

tions and 634 “noncriminal im-

migration arrests,” according to

an ICE official’s testimony.

In 2014, Palantir won a con-

tract to build a central digital

repository of records, called an

Investigative Case Management,

or ICM, system. The ICM system

lets agents access digital profiles

of people suspected of violating

immigration laws and organize

records about them in one place,

according to DHS documents.

These records may include inves-

tigative evidence such as emails,

phone records, text messages and

data from automatic license plate

cameras, according to DHS.

ICE agents relied on Palantir’s

ICM system during a 2017 opera-

tion that targeted families of mi-

grant children, according to an

ICE document published in May

by Mijente and the Intercept. As

part of the mission, ICE agents

were instructed to use ICM to

document any interaction they

have with unaccompanied chil-

dren trying to cross the border. If

the agency determined their par-

ents or other family members

facilitated smuggling them

across the border, the family

members could be arrested and

prosecuted for deportation, the

ICE document said.

Mijente has argued that by

supporting this operation, Palan-

tir was complicit in Trump’s pol-

icy of separating families of un-

documented immigrants and

placing people in border deten-

tion centers with questionable

conditions. Privacy rights groups

including the Electronic Privacy

Information Center have raised

concerns that ICM and FALCON,

another Palantir tool used by ICE,

may violate the privacy of the

people tracked by these databas-

es.

Palantir has a contract with the

division of ICE called Homeland

Security Investigations, or HSI. It

does not have a contract with

another ICE division called En-

forcement and Removal Opera-

tions, or ERO, the unit that histor-

ically has taken the lead on raids

and deportations of undocu-

mented immigrants. Karp has

frequently brought up this dis-

tinction when defending the

company’s work with ICE, ac-

cording to former employees.

However, this month, authori-

ties confirmed that the raids in

Mississippi were carried out by

HSI, the division that uses Palan-

tir. It’s not clear to what extent

Palantir’s products have been

used to plan or execute workplace

raids. During preparations for an

ICE raid of 7-Eleven stores across

the country last year, an ICE

supervisor instructed agents to

use Palantir’s FALCON mobile

app “to share info with the com-

mand center about the subjects

encountered in the stores as well

as team locations,” according to

emails published by WNYC last

month.

Saudi Arabian work

Karp, a Democrat, has long

been aware that the nature of

Palantir’s data-mining work

would expose the company to

ethical concerns. Early on, he

created a privacy and civil liber-

ties team to review ethical issues

in government contracts. This

group’s key tenet, according to its

public statement of principles, is

to hold the company accountable

for answering one question: “Do I

want to live in the kind of world

that the technology we’re build-

ing would enable?”

When Palantir explored work

with the Saudi Arabian govern-

ment in 2013, workers raised con-

cerns about the country’s human

rights record, according to two

former employees. The company

performed trials of a counterter-

rorism program with the Saudi

government in 2013 and 2014 but

declined to pursue further work

with the country after that, a

person familiar with the compa-

ny said.

At one of the recent protests

outside Palantir’s New York of-

fice, Izzy Finkelstein, a volunteer

with Jews for Racial and Eco-

nomic Justice, attempted to talk

to more than 75 Palantir employ-

ees who passed by her over the

course of two hours. Many ig-

nored her, but she estimates more

than a dozen employees stopped

to talk to her about the ICE

program. A few, she said, seemed

genuinely concerned.

“I saw a lot of folks who I

thought were trying to reckon

with this dilemma of, ‘This is my

job, and I need a job, but I also

don’t want to be working at a

company that’s profiting off sepa-

rating families and mistreating

people,’ ” Finkelstein said of the

employees she met.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Josh Dawsey, Dan Keating and Shane

Harris contributed to this report.

Palantir’s contracts with ICE have put the company at war with its employees

ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Palantir CEO Alex Karp listens during a Bloomberg TV interview in Washington. Karp said the

government should answer difficult questions about how technologies may be used to surveil citizens.

Source: USAspending.gov THE WASHINGTON POST

Maximum value of new government contracts, by year

Palantir’s U.S. government contracts

The data-mining company’s business with the United States was boosted by an

Army intelligence contract potentially worth more than $800 million. Palantir

launched the contract in 2018 and was declared the sole winner in 2019.

0

$200m

$400m

$600m

$800m

$1B

2009 2018

$800 million

Army contract

Defense Other

BY LIZ SLY

beirut — The Syrian military on
Thursday captured a strategic
northern town held by rebels for
the past five years, marking an-
other milestone in the govern-
ment’s long war to stamp out the
insurgency against President
Bashar al-Assad and producing
new misery for the people forced
to flee.
The seizure of Khan Sheikhoun
in embattled Idlib province also
cut off a garrison of Turkish sol-
diers at an observation post in the
town of Morek to the south, along
with a cluster of largely depopu-
lated villages still held by the
rebels. Idlib is the country’s last
significant area controlled by the
opposition.
Videos posted by pro-govern-

ment and Russian news sites

showed Syrian soldiers moving

into the abandoned streets of the

town, past scorched buildings,

blown-out storefronts and

rubble-strewn streets. “A small

tour of Khan Sheikhoun with our

friends; it’s cute,” said a grinning

Russian man, wearing military

uniform but apparently working

as a journalist, as he toured the

town in a military vehicle.

Khan Sheikhoun straddles a

major north-south highway and

has stood on the front line of the

conflict throughout the eight-

year revolt against Assad. The

town changed hands three times

before the rebels finally secured

control in 2014, each battle bring-

ing more destruction. In 2017, it

was the site of one of the worst

sarin gas attacks by the Syrian

government, prompting Presi-

dent Trump to order the first of

two U.S. strikes against Syrian

chemical weapons facilities.

The government breakthrough

came after a four-month offen-

sive and at enormous cost in

civilian lives. More than 500 peo-

ple, including many children, had

been killed as of Aug. 8, according

to figures from the United Na-

tions, most of the casualties oc-

curring in Syrian and Russian

airstrikes targeting towns and

villages far from the front line.

More than half a million people

have been displaced from their

homes, 76,000 of them in the past

week, fleeing incessant bombard-

ments for the relative safety of

areas closer to the Turkish border,

according to the United Nations.

Families are camping out along

roads without tents or shelter

from the scorching summer heat,

said Abdul-Karim Omar, a mem-

ber of the Idlib provincial council

who visited the area.

“The situation is catastrophic,”

he said. “People left without their

clothes. I saw children without

shoes or food begging for a mat-

tress to lie down. They have noth-

ing over their heads. They are

sleeping under open skies.”

Throughout most of the offen-

sive, the front lines barely moved,

with loyalist forces appearing un-

able to advance against stiff resis-

tance from the opposition, com-

posed of a variety of rebel groups

including the powerful extremist

group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham —

formerly known Jabhat al-Nusra

and linked to al-Qaeda.

Over the past week, the tide

turned, and the Syrian army

broke through rebel lines, buoyed

by an injection of fresh troops and

Russian advisers, according to

military analyst Kamal Alam,

who monitors the Syrian army.

The bloodshed of recent weeks

comes as a reminder that the war

in Syria is far from over, even

though the outcome is no longer

in doubt. Assad has secured his

survival in the capital, Damascus,

but most of the province of Idlib

and small slices of three adjoin-

ing provinces remain outside his

grasp. An estimated 3 million to

4 million people live there, at

least half of them refugees from

battles elsewhere in the country

who fled rather than submit to

the restoration of government

rule.

An agreement reached be-

tween Russian President Vladi-

mir Putin and Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year

sought to impose a cease-fire in-

tended to allow time for the nego-

tiation of a wider political settle-

ment. The agreement created a

demilitarized zone between the

warring parties, encompassing

Khan Sheikhoun, monitored

from Turkish military observa-

tion posts.

But Turkey proved unable to

persuade either the rebel fighters

or the Islamist militants to com-

ply with the terms of the agree-

ment, including the withdrawal

of heavy weapons from the demil-

itarized zone. Russia has grown

increasingly frustrated with Tur-

key’s failure to achieve compli-

ance with the agreement.

[email protected]

Syrian military seizes strategic northern town from rebels as civilians flee

“Silicon Valley is telling

the average American

‘I will not support your

defense needs.’ ”

Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, in an

interview in January, a quote the

company repeated in a recent ad on

Twitter