Oppose the Palantir Data Platform: Protect Privacy and Stop Authoritarian Risks

I am writing to express my strong opposition to the new federal contract awarded to Palantir to build a vast, centralized data platform. This platform is designed to connect sensitive records from across key government agencies, including the IRS, Social Security, and immigration databases, under a powerful AI system using Palantir’s Gotham software. Experts describe this initiative as potentially the most expansive civilian surveillance infrastructure in U.S. history. Privacy advocates are raising serious alarms, warning that this system could easily evolve into a digital dragnet used for political purposes, targeted surveillance, or immigration crackdowns, consolidating both data and power without clear public oversight or legal guardrails. These developments appear consistent with ideologies gaining influence within the incoming administration, particularly those associated with Curtis Yarvin and the "Dark Enlightenment" movement. Yarvin, who has intellectual influence on key figures like Vice President J.D. Vance, is a far-right thinker who considers liberal democracy a "decadent enemy" to be dismantled. He advocates for replacing democracy with a strict hierarchy headed by a single person, functioning like a monarch or CEO. Actions and rhetoric from the incoming administration closely resemble Yarvin’s proposals for taking autocratic power in America. This includes using a state of emergency to take direct control over law enforcement authorities, mobilizing a populist base against critics, and targeting institutions like the media and universities. The Palantir platform, backed by the Trump administration, enables the type of real-time data integration, profiling, and decision-support tools that could serve such an authoritarian vision where the state operates with centralized control over information and individuals. The concern is that what begins as fraud detection could quickly morph into a tool of control, particularly given the polarized political climate and the ideological currents favoring consolidated power and hierarchy over democratic norms and individual privacy. Allowing a private tech firm to build and manage this level of centralized data infrastructure for the government, particularly under the influence of anti-democratic philosophies that advocate for replacing republican rule with executive authority and using data to profile and control citizens, poses a fundamental threat to civil rights and the balance of power in America’s digital infrastructure. I urge you to oppose this Palantir contract and any similar initiatives that centralize sensitive citizen data without robust public oversight and legal safeguards, especially when driven by ideologies that seek to dismantle democratic institutions in favor of techno-authoritarian rule.