Palantir Employees Grapple with Ethical Crisis Amid Controversial Contracts and Internal Backlash

Palantir, the military and intelligence contractor co-founded by Peter Thiel, has faced relentless controversy during Donald Trump’s second term in office. The company has been directly involved in the administration’s aggressive policies targeting undocumented immigrants, a campaign linked to multiple deaths. Additionally, Palantir has been associated with U.S. airstrikes that destroyed a school in Iran, resulting in the deaths of over 120 schoolchildren.

Last week, the company escalated tensions by releasing a 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s 2025 book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. Critics have labeled the manifesto a “hideous ideology” and an example of “technofascism.”

Employees Question Their Role in Controversial Projects

Palantir’s ongoing negative publicity has unsettled both current and former employees, Wired reports. Many are now questioning whether they are complicit in harmful actions, sparking an internal identity crisis.

“I think there’s a bit of an identity crisis and a bit of a challenge,” said one former employee to Wired. “We were supposed to be the ones who were preventing a lot of these abuses. Now we’re not preventing them. We seem to be enabling them.”

Despite Palantir’s claim of fostering “a culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement over the complex areas we work on,” employees and alumni are bound by non-disparagement agreements that prohibit them from speaking to the press.

Internal Concerns Over ICE and Protester-Related Violence

Workers have expressed growing concerns in internal Slack threads, particularly regarding Palantir’s relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Tensions escalated further after the shooting deaths of multiple protesters. In response, Palantir began auto-deleting Slack conversations after seven days, raising additional concerns among employees.

Palantir has defended its ICE contract, asserting in an internal blog post that it allows the company to “make a difference in mitigating risks while enabling targeted outcomes.”

Reactions to the Iranian School Strike and Corporate Manifesto

Following the deadly strike on the Iranian school, an employee questioned in a Slack channel whether the company was involved and whether steps were being taken to prevent future incidents, as reported by Wired.

The company’s recent manifesto summarizing Karp’s book has also drawn sharp criticism internally. Employees voiced frustration over its publication on the company’s official account.

“I’m curious why this had to be posted,” one employee wrote in a Slack thread viewed by Wired. “Especially on the company account. On the practical level, every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the U.S. (for sure in the current political climate), and I doubt we need this in the U.S.”

“I’ve already had multiple friends reach out and ask what the hell did we post,” another employee wrote.

“It’s like we taped a ‘kick me’ sign on our own backs,” another worker wrote. “I hope no one who decided to put this out is surprised that we are, in fact, getting kicked.”

Palantir’s Ongoing Controversies

For more on Palantir’s recent controversies, read: Palantir Issues Ominous Corporate Manifesto.

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