Correcting the Record: Palantir’s Support to the US Government is Not a Political Football

Editor’s Note: This post provides a detailed rebuttal of the multitude of misguided assertions presented in a letter received from Sen. Wyden, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, et al., dated June 17, 2025. Our formal response to the letter is here.

Introduction

As a company founded in the wake of the September 11th attacks with a dual focus of both enabling the effective and responsible mission outcomes of America’s bedrock government institutions while also ensuring the protection of privacy and civil liberties, we are deeply concerned by the speculative allegations made by The New York Times and subsequently repeated by Senator Wyden and Representative Ocasio-Cortez in a letter to Palantir (and other similar inquiries). There have been recent, recurring claims that 1) Palantir is working on a master database aimed at compiling sensitive data on Americans in order to surveil them; 2) Palantir has the ability to proactively share data across federal government sources; and 3) Palantir accesses, scrapes, or otherwise “compiles” data on American citizens for its own purposes. All of these allegations are false.

We have addressed the false and misleading narrative and specific allegations from The New York Times piece in a detailed rebuttal, Correcting the Record: Responses to the May 30, 2025 New York Times Article on Palantir. Over the years, we have worked hard to be transparent about our business, products, culture, and the principles that guide our company. Many of the corrections we published in response to The New York Times story are readily available in the public domain, because we believe it’s important to be clear about how our technology works and our company’s commitment to upholding the highest legal and ethical standards in designing our products.

Palantir’s founding mission and our commitment to privacy and civil liberties, which have guided our work for over 20 years, help the US government deliver essential services to the American people. We welcome the opportunity to further engage and clarify any misconceptions about Palantir and what we do.

A Better Sense of Palantir’s Support of the US Government

Before addressing the substantive allegations raised in Sen. Wyden and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s letter, we wish to provide a perspective on Palantir’s work with the US government to better contextualize the true scope of Palantir’s impact for the good of Americans.

For over two decades and across multiple administrations, Palantir has been helping the US government provide essential services and fulfill the lawful, congressionally authorized mandates of a multitude of agencies spanning several departments. Our work with the US government is a founding and enduring cornerstone of our company. To paint a picture of how we have worked to help American institutions and the public they serve — independent of partisanship — here are some examples of our work:

• Palantir helped address the recent measles outbreak as part of its longstanding work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In a time when the CDC has been under substantial reorganization, we are helping them continue to deliver on their critical mission of addressing life-threatening communicable pathogen outbreaks.
• During the Covid-19 pandemic, Palantir made it possible to comprehensively assess Covid-19 cases and deliver vaccines to Americans. Before our software was implemented, paper and pen were used to allocate resources from the national stockpile.
• Palantir’s partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was crucial in making it safe for planes to fly during the 5G rollout, and we have been called upon to assist the agency following the January 29, 2025 American Airlines Flight 5342 collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
• Palantir helps enable real world data analysis for National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers, grants and scientific research as part of ARPA-H, and we are deeply proud of the impact we’ve been able to further in our partnership with HHS.
• Palantir has longstanding work with the IRS supporting the agency’s criminal investigative and civil compliance workflows, and our software has even been used by the IRS to enforce privacy laws and protect taxpayer data.
• Palantir works with the State Department to keep department employees and their families healthy and safe around the world. Our software allowed the department to replace a paper record system — the medical record system for primary care is utilized at 200+ health clinics around the world. The same software is also used to support medical evacuations in times of crisis.
• Palantir’s platforms are currently being used by thousands of US soldiers, including top commanders, to protect America and her allies in the Middle East. Our support of American defense goes back almost twenty years, and we are deeply proud that our platforms have saved American lives in multiple theaters.
• Palantir supports key American allies around the world, including Ukraine following the Russian invasion, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Palantir was founded to support the United States, its institutions, and its people, and we have grown over the last twenty years due to our fierce commitment to those goals. We are concerned that the politicization of critical digital infrastructure or work to modernize how the government operates will only limit civil servants from doing their jobs effectively, and ultimately limit the federal government from being responsive to the people it serves.

Letter Claims & Palantir Responses

Here we have consolidated direct responses to the statements contained in the letter. For a fuller response to each specific allegation from The New York Times article, please see our published rebuttal.

“[Palantir] is enabling and profiting from serious violations of Federal law by the Trump administration, which is amassing troves of data on Americans to create a government-wide, searchable ‘mega-database’ containing the sensitive taxpayer data of American citizens.”

• There is no contract or project under the Trump administration for Palantir to build something like a whole-of-government master database on Americans, as The New York Times article seems to imply. Palantir is not a vendor on any master database project to unify databases across federal agencies. Palantir has not proposed the US government build a ‘master list’ for the surveillance of citizens, nor have we been asked to consider building such a system for any customer. Such a hypothetical project is fundamentally at odds with Palantir’s values and our commitment to work in support of liberal democracies.
• Such an effort would not only run afoul of any number of legislative, policy, and procedural restrictions on the federal government, but it would also be at odds with Palantir’s long-established and deeply entrenched regard for the protection of privacy and civil liberties. Further, any such project would represent a massive breach of that trust and be an existential threat to our business.
• Palantir has worked with the federal government for almost 20 years. Separate contracts with various government agencies simply do not represent evidence of some broader effort to build a “mega-database.” The suggestion misperceives the structure of our customer licenses and product infrastructure. All of our government contracts and the corresponding deployments of software instances are unique to the contracting agency, with legal, procedural, and technical guardrails in place to protect each agency’s data.
• As reported in our public filings, revenue from US government customers was $373.0 million for the three months ended on March 31, 2025, and in the last quarter of the prior administration (Q4 2024), our US government revenue grew 45% year over year. We are honored to have grown in that mission of support since the founding of the company and we remain optimistic that — on the merits of our products and business focus — we can further expand our impact under the current administration.
• With regard to taxpayer data, Palantir has longstanding work with the IRS supporting the agency’s criminal investigative workflows starting in 2013, which is a matter of public record.
• Discussions with customer and prospective customer agencies are no grounds for insinuation of nefarious intent. On the contrary, Palantir, as a US federal government contractor, has discussions with agencies in the government because that is simply part of the business development cycle. Our work with the US government is a cornerstone of our business, and our ability to continue to operate relies on trust within those institutions. In fact, the company was started with the driving focus of providing software to support the US government and its allies to more effectively and responsibly manage and make use of their data.
• Palantir views its work with the US government as an enduring mission that transcends political shifts and administrations. That work should not be halted and restarted based on public opinion towards a particular administration.

“Palantir employees have reportedly been installed at the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), where they are helping the agency use Palantir’s software to create a “single, searchable database” of taxpayer records.”

• Palantir has longstanding work with the IRS supporting the agency’s criminal investigative workflows starting in 2013, which is a matter of public record. Our contracts with the IRS have been extended on multiple occasions under multiple administrations, including under the Biden administration.
• Our work with the IRS is in support of existing IRS missions and authorities under applicable law, including the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act of 1974. As we’ve addressed in our response to The New York Times’ misleading article, Palantir is not building any so-called “mega-database” or any other such initiative that would aggregate or provide access to taxpayer records outside of authorized, legitimate purposes at the core of the IRS congressionally mandated responsibilities.
• Specifically, our contract with the IRS involves a competed Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with multiple task orders covering discrete and scoped lines of effort. More recent task orders have focused on additional IRS functions including supporting the taxpayer customer service experience and sunsetting legacy IT systems.
• The Unified API project at the core of these misguided allegations is directed at establishing a mapping of the IRS data ontology for unified data governance purposes. It is an effort conducted strictly within the confines of IRS objectives, infrastructure, and oversight; it is in support of core IRS digital infrastructure needs that have been unaddressed for many years.
• Palantir is well aware of its obligations to uphold federal law, including relevant privacy regulations. The strength of our software platform is built upon decades of operating in highly secure, sensitive environments, where we help our customers meet the highest standards of security, privacy, data governance, and auditability. To contravene those laws with a federal customer would be entirely unacceptable and violate the business practices and obligations that have enabled us to win the trust of customers spanning some of the world’s most sensitive and discerning organizations.
• The role of Palantir employees supporting our contractual obligations to customers is the same in our work with the IRS as with other US government and commercial customers. The role of our Forward Deployed Engineering teams is to provide technical support in the configuration, training, and use of our software platforms. Palantir employees are subject to standard contractor oversight — including background checks, agency trainings, and customer security requirements. This has been true throughout both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“The sensitive taxpayer data compiled into this Palantir database will likely be shared throughout the government regardless of whether access to this information will be related to tax administration or enforcement.”

• This statement misperceives the structure of our customer licenses and product infrastructure. All of our government contracts and the corresponding deployments of software instances are unique to the contracting agency, with legal, procedural, and technical guardrails in place to protect each agency’s data.
• Further, Palantir’s software products do not ‘pave the way … for merg[ing] information’ (see The New York Times article, upon which this claim is based) across agencies. This statement gives no regard to the legal, procedural, and fundamental technical restrictions on such activity, and is dangerously wrong because it would represent a massive breach of that trust and be an existential threat to our business.
• Within the bounds of Palantir’s work with the IRS, access to all information is rigorously limited and supervised using the Palantir platform’s granular access control capabilities and audit logs. Collectively, these core platform features ensure that sensitive information is restricted to only authorized IRS employees in accordance with their designated roles and purposes.
• Beyond Palantir’s steadfast commitment to upholding and furthering privacy and civil liberties, our privacy protective technology has even been used by the IRS to enforce privacy laws.

“Palantir’s products and services were reportedly selected for this brazenly illegal project by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”

• This statement is false. Palantir is not a vendor on any “master list” or similar project to unify databases across federal agencies. To our knowledge, no such effort exists driven by the Department of Government Efficiency or otherwise.
• Palantir has no contracts with DOGE.

“Several DOGE members are former Palantir employees.”

• Palantir does not control where its employees go after leaving the company. Where this statement becomes misleading is by implying that either prior relationships with former Palantir employees or any more recent discussions between Palantir and government officials (DOGE or otherwise) lend credence to a conspiracy to surveil the American public.

“The unprecedented possibility of a searchable, “mega-database” of tax returns and other data that will potentially be shared with or accessed by other federal agencies is a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump’s Administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans.”

• There is no contract or project under the Trump administration for Palantir to build something like a whole-of-government master database on Americans. Palantir is not a vendor on any “master list” or similar project to unify databases across federal agencies. To our knowledge, no such effort exists driven by the Department of Government Efficiency or otherwise.
• Palantir has been working with the IRS on modernization since 2013. Such efforts are critical to ensuring appropriate security and privacy controls on sensitive data, and any access by government agencies would be governed by applicable legal, procedural, technical, and other frameworks.
• To reiterate, the unified API project at the core of these misguided allegations is directed at establishing a mapping of the IRS data ontology for unified data governance purposes. It is an effort conducted strictly within the confines of IRS objectives, infrastructure, and oversight; it is in support of core IRS digital infrastructure needs that have been unaddressed for many years.

“This potential “mega-database” at the IRS and elsewhere also raises myriad potential violations of privacy laws designed to strictly limit those who can access the tax return records of individuals and businesses, specifically the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act of 1974.”

• Palantir is acutely aware of US privacy law, including our obligations to privacy in our work with not only the IRS, but every other federal agency, and public and commercial customers. Violating these laws would represent an existential threat to Palantir’s business and the trust that we have built with the federal government for multiple decades
• As stated above, our privacy protective technology has even been used by the IRS to enforce privacy laws.

“While Treasury employees, such as IRS personnel, can access tax return information for their official duties involving tax administration, such as conducting audits or processing tax returns, they generally may not access them for reasons unrelated to those purposes. In addition, there are significant restrictions on access to tax return information for others in the employ of the federal government, including contractors.”

• Palantir has long championed robust security, access control, audit logging capabilities, and other privacy protective technology that not only meets regulatory standards in the US and abroad, but redefines the bar of data governance to ensure that our customers can determine who has access to what data for what purposes, and then granularly audit access and use over time. This is just one of the reasons why our software has thrived in highly secure and sensitive environments, notably in our US government work over the last twenty years.
• Many federal agencies, including the IRS, rely on Palantir to deliver essential services to the American public. Our support for the US government is not a politicized issue, but rather the foundation of our business.
• Many of our customers, from US federal agencies to commercial organizations operating in highly sensitive domains, choose to work with Palantir because of our robust security, governance, and privacy controls. Palantir’s products are built to thrive in highly regulated and secure environments.

“[W]hen data is shared across agencies for use in matching programs, the computer matching provisions of the Privacy Act specify several procedural requirements, including the creation of a matching agreement with specific requirements before that sharing happens.”

• All of our government contracts and the corresponding deployments of software instances are unique to the contracting agency, with legal, procedural, and technical guardrails in place to protect each agency’s data. Any data sharing facilitated by Palantir across agencies is done according to legal and technical requirements, including those of the Privacy Act of 1974.
• There is a genuine need and indeed legislated requirements (e.g., The Modernizing Government Technology Act, The Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA)) to update IT systems and digital infrastructure in the federal government in order to improve operational efficiencies and prevent unnecessary waste. Such efforts can and should be pursued responsibly, to be sure.

“The IRS hiring Palantir to help it establish a “mega-database” of government-held personal data, including sensitive taxpayer data, for seamless processing for a limitless number of purposes blatantly violates the notice, transparency, and procedural requirements of the Privacy Act. As you should be aware, contractors are explicitly covered by many of the Privacy Act’s requirements. Palantir, including individual Palantir employees, can face civil and criminal liability for violating the Privacy Act.”

• Again, there is no contract or project under the Trump administration for Palantir to begin any “mega-database” of government-held personal data. Palantir is not a vendor on any “master list” or similar project to unify databases across federal agencies. Our work with the IRS in support of the development of a “Unified API” is strictly focused on enabling authorized operational IRS use cases for taxpayer services. Such work is conducted in accordance with applicable IRS authorities and consistent with all relevant policy and legislative obligations, including under the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act of 1974.
• The “Unified API” does not support a “limitless number of purposes” — in fact, it is scoped to specific pillars of work as directed by IRS and consistent with IRS obligations.

“Palantir’s troubling assistance to the Trump Administration is not limited to its work for the IRS.”

• Palantir views its work with the US government as an enduring mission that transcends political shifts and administrations. That work should not be halted and restarted based on public opinion towards a particular administration. We are proud that our products have helped federal agencies deliver essential services to the American public for nearly two decades.
• As reported in our public filings, revenue from US government customers was $373.0 million for the three months ended on March 31, 2025, and in the last quarter of the prior administration (Q4 2024), our US government revenue grew 45% year over year. We are honored to have grown in that mission of support since the founding of the company and we remain optimistic that — on the merits of our products and business focus — we can further expand our impact under the current administration.

“Such an opaque tool in the hands of an Administration that openly violates the due process rights of immigrants is a grave threat to our Constitution. Former acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause, acting Chief Counsel Bill Paul, and Chief Privacy Officer Kathleen Walters all appear to have resigned or been reassigned over the IRS’s agreement with ICE.”

• Palantir’s software products are anything but “opaque tools.” We provide data management and AI infrastructure platforms that enable our customers to transform their own data into useful information, analysis, and derivative work products to help achieve their objectives. In the interests of transparency, we provide extensive publicly available documentation of our platforms’ capabilities.
• Palantir has worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since the Obama administration, notably in supporting investigations into transnational criminal organizations engaged in major criminal activity with a nexus to the border, such as human smuggling and drug trafficking. Our recent pilot contract with ICE, which began negotiation under the Biden administration, reflects a continued commitment by Palantir to support the US government in its most central missions.
• Contrary to the suggestion of this statement, the use of our software is intended to help enable more rigorous data quality and access to relevant immigration information in order to help minimize risks of errant immigration enforcement actions that might undermine due process requirements or other constitutionally guaranteed privacy and civil liberties protections.
• Further, and for the avoidance of doubt, let us reiterate that Palantir is not involved in any data sharing between IRS and ICE, nor have we been asked to support such data sharing. The vast majority of our work at the IRS started before this administration.

“Furthermore, you have bragged that Palantir enables its military customers to “bring violence and death to our enemies” and that your software is “used by US and allied defense and intelligence agencies for functions like target selection and mission planning.” We are concerned that Palantir’s software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans’ rights.”

• It is no secret that Palantir has worked in US defense for multiple decades. We are deeply proud of our support of the American armed forces, and that our products have been used to save the lives of our soldiers around the world.
• Further, we do not shy away from our responsibility to develop products that uphold the Laws of Armed Conflict (or International Humanitarian Law/IHL) and defend human rights. These are principles we have discussed at length in our human rights policy, and in different publications from our Privacy and Civil Liberties Engineering team over the years. It is why we have championed building civilian protection software into our defense products. These are core commitments of our company, including our founding thesis to enshrine privacy and civil liberties in our work.

“The Trump Administration has spent taxpayer dollars on Palantir software at numerous other government agencies and paid it billions of dollars to conduct similar data gathering efforts. For example, the Department of Defense recently awarded Palantir a $795 million contract to lead data fusion and artificial intelligence programs throughout the US military, with the possibility to increase the award to $1.3 billion. Additionally, the Trump Administration has deployed Palantir’s Foundry software at the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control Prevention and National Institute of Health.”

• We have been proud that our US government business has continued to grow under governments of both parties, as this represents our underlying commitment to the most critical American institutions regardless of who is in power.
• “Conduct similar data gathering efforts” fundamentally misunderstands what Palantir’s business and products do. Palantir does not own or control data that our customers integrate using our software, meaning Palantir does not direct the collection, scraping, sourcing, or “compilation” of data on behalf its customers. We also do not provide data mining as a service. The further implication that Palantir is proactively collecting data on people in a malignant way is categorically incorrect.
• Palantir is a software company and, in the context of our customer engagements, operates as a “data processor” — our software is used by customers to manage and make use of their data. This is a crucial distinction, as detailed in our recent blog post Palantir is still not a data company.
• The contracts referenced above are matters of public record. They are instances of our widespread federal government work which has existed under multiple administrations and is free of partisanship. Finally, Palantir is but one of many software vendors used by the US government and does not, as this statement implies, have a monopoly on recent government IT contracts.

“Palantir is certainly not the first American company to earn huge profits by enabling violations of human rights by authoritarian governments.”

• This statement, and the comparison of Palantir to organizations that actively facilitated the Holocaust and genocide, are deeply troubling, particularly when they are based on false reporting and mischaracterizations of our work. This type of rhetoric does not further what we hope can be a productive discussion about subjects and issues of public concern.
• Any research of Palantir would quickly show that our founding — and enduring — mission is to support the US and other liberal democracies, and the values they represent. That same research would find that Palantir has worked with the US government for multiple administrations, across the political aisle, and the same projects referenced in these broader accusations as “enabling violations of human rights” are rooted under the previous administration.

“Congress will fully investigate and hold accountable Trump Administration officials that violate Americans’ rights, as well as contractors like Palantir that profit from and enable those abuses.”

• Finally, to reiterate and state clearly, Palantir does not violate the rights of American citizens, nor does it profit from or enable abuses. Doing so would run in direct opposition to the founding mission of this company and twenty years of proud support of this great country, its institutions, and its people. Indeed, given our extensive focus on designing and building privacy-enhancing security and accountability capabilities into our platforms, our software may in fact be the least desirable environment for anyone seeking to knowingly engage in misdeeds or to violate the rights of Americans.
• We have welcomed dialogue with Congress around privacy and civil liberties, and we will continue to support productive, fact-based conversations in those areas.

Turning to the Specific Questions

The letter includes a set of specific questions directed at Palantir. Having addressed, in detail, the misguided claims of the letter that appear to motivate those questions, we instead continue to welcome the opportunity to demonstrate our software and its core privacy and civil liberties protections to Members and their staff.

Concluding Remarks

The allegations following from the false and misleading reporting about Palantir’s business and products have real consequences that impact Palantir employees, the institutions our products serve, and American society at large. One notable example being that since the publication of The New York Times article we’ve observed a dramatic uptick in threats of physical violence against Palantir employees.

To be clear, Palantir does not shy away from questions and even pointed criticisms about our work. We have no intention to silence legitimate inquiries about our work and its impact. To the contrary, we welcome a robust dialogue around the role of advancing technologies in a digital age and the need to balance the opportunities, demands, and risks of an increasingly data-fied world against the preservation of fundamental rights which imbue that world with value. But that discussion must be grounded in truthful propositions that reflect the actual state of play, and not misguided and false narratives based on fundamental misunderstandings of our work.

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Correcting the Record: Palantir’s Support to the US Government is Not a Political Football was originally published in Palantir Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.