Palentir Panopticon

by Amelia Hoskins · Published 29. June 2026 · Updated 25. September 2026

Using AI Responsibly

'During Operation Epic Fury a girls school was attacked killing 156, on day one, a chilling event immediately alerting people everywhere that AI could be responsible.'

Burak Oktenli in The Defense Post lays out the scenario about automation of orders and gives some recommendations for better human oversight of AI in 'When the Machine Decides and the Human Signs' i.e. signs off approval for a mission target. In the school massacre case, old information was used (we are told) of when the school was a military base. AI has to be kept up to date; quite a vast task, but necessary to avoid targeting the innocent.

'No human can independently classify a target, weigh proportionality, and estimate civilian harm in that window, not once every few minutes for days on end. Artificial intelligence did that work. The commander approved the result.'

This crucial factor of human control is emphasised in Military AI:

'A machine cannot be allowed to determine mission-critical outcomes without meaningful human oversight. AI, and especially large language models, must operate within a broader decision-making framework where human judgment, reasoning, and accountability remain central.'

Karp believes 'engineers have a moral duty to build weapons for the state'. Strong men and good men will save the world. 'He believes liberal democracy is an obstacle.' 'Peter Theil believes democracy and freedom are incompatible.' "The idea of government will fade away and corporations will run states." This is already true, we can see how corps have taken over nation states. Well... His attitude is moving into unusual areas where he philosophises...

"Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world, and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them."

"if you do not feel comfortable supporting the legitimate efforts of America and its allies in the context of war, don't join Palentir"

At least he gives an option, but he is assuming that his goals allied to Pentagon are good and true ones. AI used by Israel in Gaza goes against civil rights and creates war crimes which no one is owning up to. For all this Karp was paid 6.8 billion in 2025!

Two AI sectors: Palentir FOUNDRY is used by businesses. Palentir GOTHAM is presented as an operating system for global decision making. (mainly used in war; also travel and official records.) By 2010 Palentir was used in battlefield analysis. Data is gathered to build profiles on everyone. All 6 US military branches, UK, German and Australian police all use GOTHAM.

Its been called 'techno-fascism in plain sight'. Yanis Varoufakis former finance minister for Greece calls Palentir a player in 'technofeudalism' and 'techlordism'. Palentir pushes a vision of hard power and aggressive technological dominance. They want to be top dog for institutional western powers. Just TWO men shouldn't be in control of this. A real Panopticon..

MAVERN is specifically for war; selects military targets for destruction. Anthropic helped at the start of the Iran attacks.

We've moved quickly into drone wars controlled by AI.

"Artificial intelligence raises Ukranian drone kill rates to 80%"

- called the test lab for the future of war. This is exactly whats happening as information technology takes over running wars: we see that the tech firms choose which nations they support. Karp supports Israel.

"We are controversial, quite frankly, because we power every western power that's at war". ~ Alex Karp

'Palantir’s tech helps detect unusual or suspicious patterns in large datasets using techniques that the founders learned working together at PayPal. The CIA was one of the company’s earliest investors and its only customer for a number of years. Eventually, other intelligence agencies like the FBI and the NSA jumped aboard.'

Karp was personally protested when acting on behalf of ICE, in tracking migrants. Dystopian predictive crime was also a focus.

Karp on Iran situation: CNBC interview.

"Palentir makes valuable LLMs lethal and useful on the battlefield"
"A wide swath of Palentirians working on this."

"drones going through advanced radar systems". ...Can be done with great precision now.
"You have to bring your unique way of doing things which no one else has"

Karp says can't do a blue/red debate. "Nationalisation is coming"..."We need a common purpose"

NOTE: 'Common Purpose' has been identified by ukcolumn.org as a long term organisation training thousands of people into government, police and other national organisations.

Maven 'Kill Chain'?

Bloomberg article 'Inside the US killchain' states Pentagon officials knew the US was responsible for the bombing of girls school Shajarah Tayyebeh in Minab. Pentagon staff weren't allowed to comment on some things (obviously!) and a report is not yet available but states 'flawed imagery and over reliance on AI'. MAVEN system has been blamed, a system developed by Palentir, but lack of detailed checks may have caused the horror.

Cold Fusion explains about Maven...

We cannot know yet how much the system was badly designed; or Karp may have a point when he said the Pentagon should be checking results more rigorously themselves. i.e. was it the system, or was it the details the operatives 'fed' the system? A command for 1000 targets is a lot to rigorously check. The entire decision was madness. They will keep it quiet as no one will want to own up to incompetence.

Laws are yet to be written for the ethics of AI driven war targetting. Tech giants need to develop a profound purpose to their work development, to keep it within the interests of human values for life. Its going to be a battle for world sanity with military AI and general public Open Source AI.
Lets hope an humanity valuing Open AI can somehow hack and influence the military systems, to prevent the automatic targeting rituals of our careless and unconscionable overlords.

Ethics and laws for AI in war

Minab School Strike and the Case for War Juries by Mirko Farina on September 17th, 2026

Technology and Society writes in detail about the need for ethics and rigour with AI use in war.

'As targeting systems become increasingly data driven and technologically accelerated, traditional mechanisms of legal and ethical scrutiny risk becoming insufficient. This article argues that addressing this tension requires not only technical safeguards but also new institutional forms of civilian oversight capable of re-embedding human responsibility within AI-mediated military decision-making.'

As modern armed forces rely more heavily on data-driven intelligence systems and algorithmically assisted analysis, the risk emerges that errors originating in outdated information, flawed databases, or automation bias may propagate rapidly through the operational decision-making chain.

'The growing integration of private AI technologies into military planning is illustrated by the increasing collaboration between U.S. defense institutions and leading AI companies. One prominent example is Anthropic, a public benefit corporation based in San Francisco and founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei. Anthropic has publicly presented itself as a safety-oriented AI company and is known for developing Constitutional AI, a method intended to guide model behavior through explicit principles. Although this method reflects the company’s official philosophy, which is “safety-first,” when it comes to AI, it is known that in June 2025, Anthropic unveiled Claude Gov, a tailored AI model for U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, featuring adaptations that some external observers have interpreted as a relaxation of the ordinary safety constraints and enhanced capabilities for analyzing classified data. The Pentagon’s AI office awarded Anthropic a two-year U.S. $ 200 million deal, and Anthropic expanded its defense footprint with partners like Palantir, integrating Claude into classified mission workflows.'

Distinguishing between targets

Teams that review targets for civilian risks were disbanded

'The strike exemplifies a failure of the principle of distinction, which requires parties to distinguish between combatants and civilians. The incident also reveals significant ethical erosion in U.S. military protocols, which follow, the scaled back of the Pentagon’s civilian protection office in the summer of 2025, ahead of the U.S. attack on Iran. Numerous senior military lawyers were fired in the last year, and targeting protocols were loosened. It is reported that “civilian environment teams” and “red teams” (which review targets for civilian risk) were disbanded and excluded from the operational chain of command'.

'Our argument here is that AI supported targeting systems can amplify pre-existing institutional vulnerabilities: outdated target decks, insufficient verification, automation bias, pressure for speed, and indifference to civilian presence on the ground.'

'.....the Minab incident should not be interpreted only as a possible case of individual failure or operational negligence. Rather, it exposes a deeper institutional vulnerability: modern military organizations increasingly rely on technologically accelerated decision systems that may outpace traditional mechanisms of legal and ethical scrutiny. When operational tempo becomes the primary priority, safeguards designed to ensure compliance with the principles of distinction and proportionality risk being weakened or bypassed. The result is a decision environment in which lethal force may be authorized based on incomplete, outdated, or insufficiently scrutinized information.'

EEE suggests a good case for war juries, who would oversee and ensure no civilian targetting could happen.

'.....Their role would not be to conduct military operations or replace command authority, but rather to introduce an additional layer of ethical and legal scrutiny over targeting decisions that involve a significant risk of civilian harm.'

'.....War juries would not replace the political and military chain of command but would serve as a procedural safeguard designed to ensure that decisions involving a high probability of civilian harm are subjected to meaningful deliberation before the use of force..'