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Michael Anderson@Slothenater · Jul 28, 2025

CIA can't operate without it. Pentagon can't function without it. And Wall Street can't trade without it. Yet most…

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Summary

Palantir is a $300B surveillance company founded by Peter Thiel that tracks phone logs, financial records, and surveillance feeds for the CIA, Pentagon, and major corporations. Originally designed to hunt terrorists post-9/11, it has expanded to monitor employees, predict crimes, and with Trump's 2025 executive order mandating federal data sharing, it's becoming the backbone of an integrated government surveillance database.

Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.

  1. #1

    CIA can't operate without it. Pentagon can't function without it. And Wall Street can't trade without it. Yet most people have no idea what Palantir does behind closed doors. Here’s how the U.S. government allowed a $300B surveillance company to track your every move: 🧵

  2. #2

    Palantir is the most powerful company you’ve never heard of. It’s used to: Hunt terrorists Predict wars Spy on employees Prevent crashes Win F1 races By the end of this thread, you’ll realize it might be watching you too 👇

  3. #3

    It all started after 9/11. Peter Thiel had one mission: Build software that stops terrorists before they strike. VCs thought it was paranoid. Too risky. Too weird. Then the CIA stepped in with $2M in funding. Palantir’s first client was America’s spy agency.

  4. #4

    So what does Palantir actually do? It tracks everything: Phone logs. Content. License plates. Bank records. Surveillance feeds. Then it finds hidden patterns. And predicts what you’ll do before you do it.

  5. #5

    Palantir sells two products. And both are terrifyingly powerful.

  6. #6

    Gotham: for militaries, police, and intelligence agencies. Think of it as Google for spies. It can: Map terrorist networks Track targets in real time Uncover hidden relationships This is the software that helped hunt down Osama bin Laden.

  7. #7

    Foundry: It unifies all your messy internal data. Finance, logistics, HR, supply chain into a single interface. Then it lets companies build apps on top of that data. Airbus uses it to predict failures. Ferrari uses it to win races. Hospitals use it to forecast ICU demand.

  8. #8

    But not all use cases are heroic. In 2012, Palantir partnered with New Orleans police. They crunched arrest records and gang affiliations. Then quietly flagged “high risk” individuals for future crimes. No oversight. No consent.

  9. #9

    JPMorgan used Palantir to spy on employees. Emails, web browsing, badge swipes, phone calls Even executives were tracked without authorization. Nothing inside the building was private. Palantir isn’t just surveillance for governments. It’s surveillance for everyone.

  10. #10

    Here’s the wild part: Palantir wasn’t profitable for 17 years. But now? It’s worth $300 billion. As much as Bank of America. And it’s deeply embedded across hospitals, militaries, and federal agencies.

  11. #11

    And 2025 changed everything. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order. Every federal agency must now share their data. Tax records, health data, immigration files, surveillance logs Palantir’s Foundry is integrating it all. America is becoming one massive database.

  12. #12

    And Wall Street loves it. Palantir stock is outpacing the S&P 500. Investors don’t just see a tech company, they see a new kind of infrastructure. It’s no longer a controversial startup… It’s the backbone of America’s surveillance machine.

  13. #13

    But what do you think: Too much power? Or exactly what the world needs? Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed: Follow @Slothenater for more insights like this.