Palantir, going beyond the nation state?

After 9/11, the US government looked for different avenues to strengthen its defence in the name of homeland security. Palantir, a privatise software intelligence agency, provided a solution to this problem by offering its AI as the controller of big data. The rise of the company was slow, yet nowadays, with the advent of big data, digital platforms, AI, and algorithms, Palantir is at the forefront of these arenas.

Profile

Palantir was founded in 2003 by most notably Peter Thiel and Alex Karp. It received state funding from In-Q-Tel (CIA’s venture arm) to combat data stratification (Gregg and MacMillan, 2020). With Karp acting as the CEO of the company. Palantir is a digital platform that develops data integration and platform analytics for a multitude of, primarily violence-related purposes. It offers multiple models, most notably Gotham, which is used by the United States Department of Defence (Palantir, n.d.).

Palantir’s largest shareholders are Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street, which together own 23.45% of the company (Yahoo finance, n.d.). Palantir, while not directly funded by the US government, pays no taxes at all thanks to Trump’s big beautiful bill. This is not surprising since Peter Thiel is a big donor to Trump and J.D. Vance (Gardner, 2026). This web of financial capitalism (BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street) and the Trump administration shows that Palantir does not have the people’s interests in mind, but those of big capital.

Technofeudalism

What makes Palantir problematic is its ability to gather large amounts of data for its own purposes,. with select individuals holding immense power. And for Palantir, which is a company that profits immensely from war, this can spell danger. Pieter Thiel, with a background in philosophy, is mainly influenced by philosopher Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin, in seeing the failure of Western liberal democracy, argues that society should revert to a modern feudalism, one with the technological innovations of capitalism (ECPS, n.d.).

Against this, we can place Yanis Varoufakis’s theory on technofeudalism (2024) as the main framework in analysing Palantir in the political economy. Varoufakis explains technofeudalism as going beyond capitalism. An overview of the concepts is outlined, with Figure 1 showcasing the technofeudalisit economy as an addition.

Cloud capital = big data, software, AI. What distinguishes this from normal capital is that it engages in behaviour modification, such as surveillance, social media addiction, and the manipulation of people’s desires, like overconsumption of clothes and other items.

Cloud serf = The user of the cloud capital, people who use digital platforms and feed the alogrithms so that the cloud capital can do more accurate behaviour modification.

Cloud fief = The digital space the digital platforms occupy; this space is not physical but digital. To occupy space means to occupy people’s minds and the time they spend on digital platforms. These are heavily centralised trading sites, by the algorithm, where the vassal capitalist can share their products with the user (cloud serf).

Cloud rent & Vassal Capitalist = Vassal capitalists are capitalists that simply use the cloud fief to offer their products. To gain access to the cloud fief they need to use cloud rent. Cloud rent is the subscription fee you pay to use the digital platform.

Cloudalist = The owners of the digital platforms (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos) for it to be technofeudalism, the digital platforms need to be heavily monopolised.

The technofeudalist economy:

Palantir is a monopoly, as it plays a central role in centralising big data on the US populace. As a digital platform used on a subscription basis it collects cloud rent from a majority of actors, such as vassal capitalists like Boeing and BlackRock, who have no other choice but to use Palantir’s software. The company also extracts cloud capital from cloud serfs precisely because it is multi-use. Examples are European care sectors and infrastructure. Not only does Palantir make deals with vassal capitalists, it is also contracted by large government bodies such as the US state, the Dutch intelligence agency and the European Union. This multi-usage model enables it to generate more cloud capital and thus generate more profit. This amount of power makes Palantir function as a quasi-state actor (Jeleweska, 2026).

According to Varoufakis, owners of these digital platforms, ‘cloudalists’, are the new emerging ruling class and can thus wield their newly acquired capital to influence power. This is evident in the large political influence Palantir holds within the US state. Pieter Thiel was one of the first cloudalists to fund Donald Trump’s campaign all the way back in 2016, at a time when Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (all owners of digital platforms) were against him (Nayak, 2016). It is no coincidence that J.D. Vance (Pieter Thiel’s apprentice) is the vice-president of the United States. As a private defence contractor, Palantir is therefore an intelligence agency not bound to a state, unlike the CIA and the Mossad.

Palantir and the state

Palantir has been used many times by the US state apparatus. Sarah Brayne (2020) did research on US policing in Los Angeles and how the usage of AI algorithms is biased towards minorities, justifying racist policing. AI having a racist bias has been reported in other instances as well, discriminating against Asian applicants (Levin, 2017). Furthermore, Palantir has been linked to ICE for years. Palantir’s AI is used to track the movement of migrants (Hubbard, 2025) through an app called ELITE, which determines who and where to raid purely based on unverifiable data (Verhagen, 2026). Herein, ICE is being controlled by the algorithm in choosing who to arrest, illustrating the nature of behaviour control by cloud capital. In this sense, the state acts like a vassal.

Palantir’s influence is not only bound to the United States, it also has close ties with Israel. Palantir powers AI systems such as ‘Lavender’ and ‘where’s daddy’, that make real-time kill lists of Palestinians (Abraham, 2024), making Palestine a testing ground for these systems to operate. It also has stakes in the conflict with Iran, where the United States uses Palantir’s software to monitor whether Iran has nuclear weapons. The company spoke out in favour of the US attacks on the country, as one of the founders of Palantir stated that he could not wait to ‘invest in Iran’ (Ahmed, 2026). War provides a way for Palantir to test their algorithms, but also an opportunity to further enclose the digital commons, thus making the cloud fief bigger. This way, Palantir can gain more cloud capital while also strengthening its nature of behaviour control.

Furthermore, Palantir has contracts with the Norwegian police (Gundhus & Wathne, 2023), the Danish police (Galis & Karlsson, 2024), and the Dutch police (NU.nl, 2025). The company is not only expanding its influence in the European security sector but also in the care sector, in particular in the UK (Booth, 2025). And recently it announced a partnership with the Dutch care sector (Kepinski, 2026). It has been revealed that former prime minister Dick Schoof as then head of the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD struck a deal with Palantir as far back as 2011. This was part of a project called ‘the raffinaderij’, which is a database of all the Dutch citizens, in an attempt to counter terrorism (BNNVARA, 2025).

Further militarisation serves Palantir’s interests, as evidenced by NATO’s 2025 purchase of its MSS NATO system (SHAPE Public Affairs Office, 2025). Because these weapons become further entangled in Palantir’s sphere, the question arises whether the Dutch military or any military can act independently from its interests (which are tied to US interests for now) at all. The Dutch military is forced to keep using this software because the costs of switching to a different system become too high. The logic of the sunk-cost fallacy dictates that these vassals, paying cloud rent to Palantir, will embrace Palantir’s software in many more facets of society.

Conclusion

Palantir does not act alone. There are multiple cloudalists, each owning a different role in the cloud fief. Zuckerberg dominates the fief where we socialise (Meta), Bezos dominates the fief where we shop (Amazon), and Musk dominates the fief of outer space and communication (Starlink). It also has to be noted that multiple cloudalists can occupy a fief at once; there are multiple social media apps, e-commerce and streaming services.

Palantir’s acquisition of cloud capital works like a loop, amassing more power and influence; it is hard to imagine where its influence will end and to what extent the US government can stop this. Whereas in Varoufakis’s model, cloudalists extract cloud rent from vassal capitalists and cloudserfs. What makes Palantir different from the other cloudalists is that Palantir goes beyond and extracts cloud rent from whole states. Leading states to become more reliant on Palantir’s software, thereby tightening its grip and ultimately making it inescapable. Palantir owns the most important fief, ‘the high fief’, the fief of governance.

The point of contention is the extent to which Palantir influences the United States government and vice versa. The company received funding from the CIA to get started. This makes sense, as Thiel and Karp serve the American empire; if not, the CIA would fund another tech giant. Yet, as seen with Thiel being able to influence the US government with the appointment of J.D. Vance and supporting Trump, Palantir does have an influence on what decisions get made at the top (Klaidman, 2024). As of now, it is clear that the US government and Palantir have the same interests. The question then is to what extent the US government can stop Palantir when their interests do not align, and whether it is too late.

To escape the hands of the cloudalists, cloud rent should be made a common good and thus be a digital commons for the interest of the majority, according to Varoufakis. States should free themselves from being vassals. Although this goes beyond the scope of this paper, there is no clear blueprint for achieving this; it is therefore up to the people’s imagination to identify disruptive processes that challenge the technofeudalists.

Lucas Zuidema

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