1. United States
2. Mo.
3. Letter

Billionaire Peter Thiel has spent millions working to elect people to Congress and now it appears to be paying off. Last week, the Pentagon announced a no-bid contract that will be awarded to Palantir for "the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the field of geospatial intelligence" as part of Project Maven. It’s worth $1.3 billion. Project Maven is considered the military's frontline AI tool for scanning satellite and drone footage to flag and track threats. It’s already used by over 20,000 personnel across more than 35 tools in the military’s operational network. And the Pentagon evidently just gave the contract to Palantir without even considering if another company could do it better. Investigate how Peter Thiel’s company got this deal and why. Billionaire political donors don’t get gifts like this for nothing. It’s almost impossible to imagine this happening without some form of behind the scenes pay to play.