Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it. PALANTIR IS ARGUABLY one of the most notorious corporations in contemporary America. Cofounded by libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel, the software firm’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US Department of Defense, and the Israeli military has sparked numerous protests in multiple countries. Palantir has been so infamous for so long that, for some people, its name has become a cultural shorthand for dystopian surveillance. (…) What it’s ultimately selling them is not just software, but the idea of a seamless, almost magical solution to complex problems. To do that, Palantir often uses the language and aesthetics of warfare, painting itself as a powerful, quasi-military intelligence partner. “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world,” Palantir CEO Alexander Karp says in a February 2025 earnings call, “And when it’s necessary, to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them.” Palantir sends its employees to work inside client organizations essentially as consultants, helping to customize their data pipelines, troubleshoot problems, and fix bugs. It calls these workers “forward deployed software engineers,” a term that appears to be inspired by the concept of forward-deployed troops, who are stationed in adversarial regions to deter nearby enemies from attacking. A former Palantir employee tells WIRED that the company also has code words for certain job titles—like “Delta” for a forward deployed engineer, and “Echo” for Palantir’s version of a product manager—which they say are sourced from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s phonetic alphabet of code words meant for use over military radio. A different former employee tells WIRED that Palantir staffers will often use the military term “FYSA,” or “for your situational awareness,” instead of “FYI.” Many Palantir emails, they say, also begin with “BLUF:” or “bottom line up front,” followed by a short summary of key details or events. (It’s essentially the military equivalent of “TLDR,” or “too long didn’t read.”) The ex-staffer says this jargon can be traced back to Palantir’s first clients, which included US intelligence and military agencies. But arguably Palantir’s most recognizable jargon is borrowed from the Lord of the Rings universe. The company’s name is a reference to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “palantíri,” magical stones that can be used to communicate, see faraway places, and occasionally observe moments from the past. (…) Underneath the jargon and marketing, Palantir sells tools that its customers—corporations, nonprofits, government agencies—use to sort through data. What makes Palantir different from other tech companies is the scale and scope of its products. Its pitch to potential customers is that they can buy one system and use it to replace perhaps a dozen other dashboards and programs, according to a 2022 analysis of Palantir’s offerings published by blogger and data engineer Ben Rogojan. Crucially, Palantir doesn’t reorganize a company’s bins and pipes, so to speak, meaning it doesn’t change how data is collected or how it moves through the guts of an organization. Instead, its software sits on top of a customer’s messy systems and allows them to integrate and analyze data without needing to fix the underlying architecture. In some ways, it’s a technical band-aid. In theory, this makes Palantir particularly well suited for government agencies that may use state-of-the-art software cobbled together with programming languages dating back to the 1960s. Palantir began gaining steam in the 2010s, a decade when corporate business discourse was dominated by the rise of “Big Data.” Hundreds of tech startups popped up promising to disrupt the market by leveraging information that was now readily available thanks to smartphones and internet-connected sensors, including everything from global shipping patterns to the social media habits of college students. The hype around Big Data put pressure on companies, especially legacy brands without sophisticated technical know-how, to upgrade their software, or else risk looking like dinosaurs to their customers and investors. But it’s not exactly easy or cheap to upgrade computer systems that may date back years, or even decades. Rather than tearing everything down and building anew, companies may want a solution designed to be slapped on top of what they already have. That’s where Palantir comes in. Palantir’s software is designed with nontechnical users in mind. Rather than relying on specialized technical teams to parse and analyze data, Palantir allows people across an organization to get insights, sometimes without writing a single line of code. All they need to do is log into one of Palantir’s two primary platforms: Foundry, for commercial users, or Gotham, for law enforcement and government users.
via wired: What Does Palantir Actually Do?
