I approach Palantir’s 22-point manifesto as neither a partisan Democrat nor a partisan Republican. From my perspective, adversarial politics leads to conflict and war, not peace.
For more than fifty-five years, I have worked across political, cultural, religious, and national boundaries. My concern is not which political party gains power. My concern is whether today’s decisions will protect life, uphold human dignity, strengthen world peace, and leave a livable Mother Earth for generations yet unborn.
As an Indigenous person, I was taught that power can never be separated from responsibility. The greater the power placed in our hands, the greater our obligation to use it wisely. A tool capable of seeing farther, moving faster, and affecting millions of human beings carries an equally great spiritual, moral, and social responsibility. Artificial intelligence is no exception.
AI may become one of the most powerful instruments ever created by the human family. It can help us understand the causes of conflict, verify ceasefires, protect humanitarian corridors, expose corruption, anticipate food shortages, strengthen climate resilience and bring knowledge to communities historically denied access to it. But it can also intensify surveillance, centralize political power, accelerate warfare, automate targeting and place life-and-death decisions inside systems that ordinary citizens cannot see, understand or challenge.
That is why Palantir’s manifesto deserves careful examination. It is not merely a collection of private opinions or abstract philosophical reflections. Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, the company’s head of corporate affairs, wrote the manifesto, and Palantir published it through its official corporate account. Therefore, it represents Palantir Technologies’ publicly declared position. Palantir’s co-founder and chairman of the board is Peter Thiel. That is all that needs to be said about its institutional standing. This was not issued privately. It was published under Palantir’s name and authority as the corporation’s official position.
This matters because Palantir is not simply a publishing organization or philosophical society. It is a powerful technology corporation whose software is deeply embedded in military, intelligence, policing, immigration, and governmental operations. Its words must therefore be examined alongside its institutional power, government contracts,s and the enormous financial resources flowing into the systems it creates.
A Vision Built Around Hard Power
Several points in the manifesto raise legitimate concerns worthy of serious discussion. It is reasonable to say that those serving in the military should receive proper equipment and protection. It is also reasonable to insist that wealthy and privileged classes should not send other people’s children into war while remaining protected from the consequences themselves. Palantir’s criticism of shallow consumer technology, its call for meaningful public service and its defense of religious belief contain questions that deserve consideration.
However, the manifesto’s central direction is unmistakable. It calls for a much closer union between Silicon Valley, American state power and military power. It argues that soft power and moral appeals are insufficient, that this century’s hard power will be built through software, and that the question is not whether AI weapons will be created but who will create them and for what purpose.
The manifesto proposes serious consideration of compulsory national service, calls for the renewed militarization of Germany and Japan, declares that AI will replace nuclear weapons as a principal basis of deterrence, and suggests that some cultures have produced great achievements. In contrast, others are dysfunctional, regressive, or harmful.
Taken together, these positions do not simply advocate protecting a nation. They outline a technological doctrine of geopolitical and military dominance.
This doctrine may be presented as a means of preventing war through superior strength. Yet history teaches us that accumulating overwhelming military power does not automatically create peace. It can also create fear, rivalry, and an accelerating arms race in which every nation believes it must acquire more powerful weapons before its opponents do.
The nuclear arms race was justified through deterrence. It may have helped prevent direct warfare among nuclear powers, but it also brought humanity within moments of catastrophic destruction. It produced proxy wars, enormous military expenditures, contaminated Indigenous territories, displaced communities,s and left behind weapons capable of destroying much of life on Mother Earth.
Now we are being told that the atomic age is ending and an AI age of deterrence is beginning. But if humanity carries the same consciousness of domination, rivalry and fear into this new age, we will reproduce the same dangers at far greater speed.
AI does not require sleep. It can process information far beyond ordinary human capacity. It can connect surveillance systems, intelligence databases, drones, satellites, weapons and automated decision-making systems across Mother Earth. It can sometimes recognize and correct a human misunderstanding before action is taken. An automated chain of military decisions can unfold in seconds.
The answer cannot be to abandon national security. Every people has the right to safety and protection. But true security must be larger than military supremacy. It must include clean water, healthy food, adequate housing, resilient communities, ecological balance, trustworthy institutions, respect among peoples, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.
An Indigenous Understanding of Security
Indigenous peoples know what happens when a powerful society declares its own culture superior and labels other cultures primitive, dysfunctional, regressive, or obstacles to progress. Such judgments were never harmless opinions. They became the ideological justification for the taking of Indigenous lands, the breaking of treaties, the removal of children, the suppression of languages, forced religious conversion, sterilization, relocation and cultural destruction.
The officials responsible often claimed they were bringing civilization, education, security, and advancement. They did not see—or refused to see—the living systems of law, governance, spirituality, family responsibility and ecological knowledge that already existed among Indigenous Nations.
Therefore, when an immensely powerful surveillance and military-technology corporation declares that some cultures have produced wonders while others are regressive or harmful, Indigenous peoples have a responsibility to pay close attention. We must ask who will decide which cultures are valuable, who will identify those considered harmful, and whether these judgments will become embedded in the data used to evaluate communities.
We must ask whether these beliefs will influence who is watched, who is stopped, who is detained, who is considered dangerous and who is ultimately targeted. When a company’s technology is being used in policing, immigration, intelligence and warfare, these are not theoretical questions. They involve human rights, human freedom, and human life.
No culture is beyond criticism. Indigenous traditions themselves teach continual learning, correction, healing and renewal. But there is a profound difference between honest moral discernment and creating a hierarchy of human cultures in which the most technologically powerful society appoints itself the judge of all other peoples.
Pluralism does not require moral emptiness. Human beings can condemn cruelty, exploitation, racism, violence against women, abuse of children and destruction of Mother Earth without declaring entire peoples or cultures inferior. We can uphold shared moral principles while respecting the distinct histories, identities and spiritual inheritances of the human family.
Unity does not mean uniformity. The human family is one, but it was never intended to be all the same.
Following the Money
These questions become even more urgent when we examine the enormous amount of money flowing through Palantir.
For the second quarter of 2026, Palantir reported approximately $1.94 billion in total revenue. Of that amount, approximately $809 million came from the United States government in one three-month period, representing a reported 90 percent increase from the corresponding period one year earlier. Palantir projected total revenue of approximately $8.15 billion for 2026. These figures are documented in Palantir’s SEC-filed second-quarter results and were independently reported byReuters.
In May 2025, the United States Army increased the potential value of Palantir’s Maven Smart System contract by $795 million, with work potentially continuing through May 2029. Maven processes information from satellites, drones, sensors, and other intelligence sources to help identify and track battlefield threats. In March 2026, the Pentagon designated Maven as a core military program intended for adoption across the armed services. These developments are documented in theofficial Department of Defense contract announcement and subsequentReuters reporting.
In July 2025, the United States Army awarded Palantir an enterprise agreement with a $10 billion ceiling over ten years. This consolidated dozens of existing procurement arrangements and created a much larger pathway for the Army to purchase Palantir’s software, data-processing, and artificial-intelligence capabilities. The United States Department of Defense publicly announced the agreement.
It is important to explain this figure accurately. A $10 billion contract ceiling does not mean that Palantir immediately received $10 billion. It represents the maximum amount that could potentially be ordered under the agreement. Actual money must be committed through specific procurement decisions and orders. Nevertheless, a $10 billion contracting pathway for one private technology corporation is an extraordinary concentration of potential public expenditure and institutional power.
In September 2026, Palantir and Anduril were also awarded contracts totaling approximately $192 million for the Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, known as TITAN. Palantir’s reported share was approximately $127 million. TITAN uses artificial intelligence and large amounts of battlefield information to assist long-range sensing and targeting.
These figures should not simply be added together as though every dollar has already been paid. They represent different financial categories, including quarterly revenue, contract modifications, current awards and maximum contract ceilings. But collectively they demonstrate something undeniable: Palantir’s worldview is being accompanied and materially strengthened by a rapidly expanding financial relationship with military and governmental institutions.
The manifesto advocates software-based hard power, AI weapons, and AI-centered military deterrence, while the company publishing it receives hundreds of millions of dollars in government revenue and has access to multibillion-dollar contracting vehicles to build precisely those capabilities.
This does not automatically establish corruption or illegal conduct. Governments legitimately purchase technology, and corporations legitimately receive payment for services rendered. But it creates a direct and powerful financial alignment between the philosophy Palantir promotes and the technological systems from which Palantir profits.
When a corporation argues that the future depends upon greater technological militarization—and that same corporation stands to receive enormous revenues from that militarization—the public has every right to demand transparency, independent oversight, and open democratic debate.
Who Governs the Technology?
The fundamental issue is larger than Palantir. The deeper question is whether private technology corporations are beginning to shape national and international security policies while also selling the instruments required to implement them.
Corporations are not sovereign peoples. The public does not elect their leaders. Their economic structures reward growth, expanding market share and shareholder value. Yet their technologies increasingly influence policing, immigration, military targeting, public services and the movement of human beings.
If these corporations are permitted to define the threats, organize the information, build the decision-making systems and profit from the resulting policies, then technological power, political power and economic interest become dangerously concentrated.
Human judgment must remain accountable. No person should be targeted, detained, denied essential services or placed in danger solely because an opaque technological system assigned that person a risk score. Meaningful human review, accessible procedures for correction and appeal, clear legal responsibility, and independent public oversight must always be in place.
The people most affected by these systems—including Indigenous peoples, racialized communities, migrants, religious minorities, women, young people and communities living amid conflict—must have a place at the decision-making table. Nothing about us without us.
AI Must Serve Peace
Palantir asks Silicon Valley to put its abilities to work for national hard power. I would issue a greater invitation: place the most powerful intelligence on Mother Earth at the service of peace and the whole human family.
Imagine applying the same resources now flowing into automated warfare toward preventing violence before it begins. AI could map the deeper causes of conflict, including water scarcity, hunger, displacement, historical grievances, climate stress, weapons flows, and inflammatory communications. It could help mediators understand rapidly changing conditions and identify openings for dialogue.
AI could help verify ceasefires through transparent systems accepted by all parties. It could protect humanitarian corridors without turning civilian populations into permanent surveillance subjects. It could help identify missing people, reconnect separated families,s and coordinate emergency relief.
AI could help Indigenous Nations document treaty violations, preserve languages, protect sacred lands and monitor environmental destruction. It could reveal illegal logging, contamination, overfishing and the poisoning of rivers. It could strengthen food sovereignty, public health and community-controlled renewable energy.
AI could also make visible the true economic, environmental and human costs of warfare—not only military expenditures, but destroyed infrastructure, displaced families, climate emissions, psychological trauma, interrupted education and burdens passed to generations yet unborn.
But these possibilities will not emerge automatically. Technology follows the intentions, values, and financial incentives of those who direct it. If billions and trillions of dollars are directed toward domination, AI will increasingly become an instrument of domination. If humanity directs its intelligence and resources toward healing, cooperation, justice and prevention, AI can become an instrument of peace.
Our Choice
Palantir’s manifesto contains legitimate concerns about responsibility, public service, national preparedness and the shallowness of consumer culture. Those points deserve honest consideration. But its larger vision places too much confidence in domination, technological superiority and military deterrence, and too little confidence in relationship, justice, diplomacy, healing and the transformation of the conditions that produce war.
From an Indigenous perspective, peace does not arise simply because one side possesses overwhelming power. Peace grows from right relationships. It requires truth, justice, healing, reciprocity and the restoration of balance.
A nation cannot build lasting security by making other peoples permanently insecure. A corporation cannot claim to defend democracy while avoiding democratic accountability. Humanity cannot weaponize intelligence faster than it develops wisdom and expect a peaceful outcome.
We stand at a decisive threshold. The most powerful intelligence ever developed may soon help govern economies, borders, information systems and battlefields. The question is not merely who will build it. We must ask who will guide it, who will be accountable for it, whose values will be embedded within it, who will benefit, who may be harmed, and whether it will serve one nation’s dominance or the dignity, survival and flourishing of the whole human family.
We do not have to choose between defenselessness and endless militarization. We can protect communities while building peace. We can honor those who serve without accepting permanent warfare. We can advance technology without surrendering human conscience. We can love our respective nations without denying that all peoples belong to one human family.
The future of artificial intelligence must not be decided solely in corporate boardrooms, military command centers, or classified government offices. It must be shaped through a global moral covenant that includes Indigenous peoples, governments, scientists, spiritual leaders, peacebuilders, young people and communities most affected by violence.
The most powerful intelligence on Mother Earth must not become the servant of fear, warfare and domination. It must become the servant of life.