FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 7, 2025

Contact: Michael Clauw, mclauw@campaignforaccountability.org, 202.780.5750

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a non-profit watchdog group that runs the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), published a report detailing big data company Palantir’s quiet efforts to build an extensive influence operation in Washington. In addition to strengthening ties between Palantir executives and members of the Trump team, the company appears to be quietly establishing a presence capable of extending beyond the current administration. TTP found that Palantir’s practice of hiring former government officials is more extensive than previously reported, with the company stocking up on veterans of the White House, CIA, Congress, and Defense Department, including recent employees of a Pentagon office tasked with integrating commercial technology into military operations—a unit critical to Palantir’s government sales. The company also hit record lobbying expenditures in the last year, and in 2023 launched a foundation to promote policy ideas that serve to advance its Washington agenda.

Read TTP’s Report.

CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith said, “Palantir’s influence strategy follows a tried and tested playbook established by corporate giants like Google, who found success with a flood-the-zone approach. Palantir has fully embraced these tactics and is stoking fears of China to establish itself as a permanent player in DC.”

Palantir co-founder and Chairman Peter Thiel, a longtime mentor to Vice President JD Vance, is expected to have significant influence with the new administration through his ties to various Trump officials. Another one of Palantir’s co-founders, venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, reportedly helped set up the pro-Trump America PAC. Palantir officials have also begun making inroads with Trump’s newly confirmed Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, who has suggested changes in the Pentagon’s acquisition process that may be favorable to the company.

TTP’s report also lists several recent Palantir hires that served in both Democratic and Republican administrations and have extensive connections at the Pentagon and other federal agencies of interest to the company. In particular, the investigation found a particularly active revolving door between Palantir and the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. The office, which oversees adoption and deployment of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence programs throughout the Defense Department, is a critical government unit for Palantir’s contracting business.

Palantir has also been steadily boosting its lobbying in Washington and surpassed $5.7 million in spending in 2024, up from just over $1 million in 2016. It has also tapped more than a half dozen outside lobbying firms that have worked for lawmakers of both parties as well as the congressional committees that oversee military and government spending.

The company also quietly launched the Palantir Foundation for Defense Policy and International Affairs in 2023. The organization, which was granted non-profit tax status in March 2024, describes itself as non-partisan and says it plans to sponsor academic research, fellowships, and conferences on national security issues. This appears to be designed to create an echo chamber effect around ideas that are favorable to Palantir’s business interests.

Ms. Kuppersmith continued, “While Palantir’s connections to influential incoming figures like Elon Musk and JD Vance will likely prove beneficial in expanding its footprint, the company’s influence strategy appears to encompass far more than simply hitching its wagon to Trump world. Its tactics are helping it to establish a foothold in the U.S. defense-intelligence sector for years to come.”

Campaign for Accountability is a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that uses research, litigation, and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life and hold those who act at the expense of the public good accountable for their actions.