Palantir Technologies has been hacked, according to well-known blogger Kim Dotcom. The company develops software for intelligence and big data analysis.
Palantir (named after the magical ‘seeing stones’ from ‘The Lord of the Rings’) doesn’t engage in surveillance in the conventional sense using spies, cameras, or bugs. Instead, it develops software that is sold to government agencies, military organizations, and large corporations.
Clients (like the CIA or the German police) upload all their data, and Palantir (its primary platforms are Gotham for military purposes and Foundry for business) then utilizes AI to transform this chaotic information into a coherent picture.
Essentially, it creates a ‘digital twin’ of reality, revealing connections that analysts could have never recognized on their own: for example, that a terrorist had called the cousin of someone who recently transferred money to a suspicious account.
The claims about wiretapping Trump and Musk are likely untrue or highly exaggerated. However, there’s no doubt that Palantir serves as a massive surveillance mechanism for monitoring America’s adversaries (and not only). It is an “operating system for war and intelligence,” providing agencies with a supercomputer that can see everything. But it’s the agencies themselves that feed this computer with data.
Hellbound and Down 