SAN FRANCISCO AND PALO ALTO, Calif. — Hundreds of Bay Area residents took to the streets Friday to protest the growing political and economic influence of billionaire Palantir Technologies founder Peter Thiel, targeting both his company and his role in financing surveillance and militarization efforts under the Trump administration.
The demonstrations, part of the national “People Over Billionaires” campaign, sought to highlight the ways in which private tech firms profit from mass surveillance, militarized policing and authoritarian policies. Organizers released a statement titled “Community Members in San Francisco and Palo Alto Protest Founders Fund and Palantir” detailing the reasons behind the coordinated actions.
Protesters in San Francisco marched on Founders Fund, the venture capital firm Thiel co-founded that helped bankroll Palantir in its early years. It was the first protest to directly target the firm, with speakers stressing Thiel’s role in expanding Palantir’s government contracts under Trump. Demonstrators described Thiel not just as a wealthy investor but as someone who profits from the surveillance and marginalization of vulnerable communities.
In Palo Alto, community members gathered at Valor Equity Partners before marching to Palantir’s headquarters. They handed out flyers and spoke to passersby about how Palantir is not a neutral data company but a firm building tools that enable mass deportations, militarized policing and authoritarian crackdowns.
According to the press release, since Trump took office last year “the company has received over $113 million in federal spending, plus a massive $800 million Pentagon deal.” Protesters linked those contracts to Thiel’s multimillion-dollar donations to Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, raising alarms about profiteering and conflicts of interest.
The protests followed a New York Times report noting Palantir CEO Alex Karp “received $6.8 billion in ‘compensation actually paid,’ making him the highest-paid executive of a publicly traded U.S. company in 2024.”
Palantir, founded in 2003, has long been criticized for its government contracts, particularly its partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement beginning in 2014. “Palantir is helping the Trump administration compile data on all U.S. residents, and was awarded a contract in April to develop tech infrastructure for ICE, that would help turbocharge an anti-immigrant agenda through its tech surveillance apparatus ImmigrationOS,” the press release stated.
For many residents, those contracts have had devastating effects. Adriana Martinez, a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said: “I live in East Oakland where I’ve watched my neighbors… [be] forced to live in hiding in fear that ICE may hunt them down. In my neighborhood, people are afraid to go to work, to take their kids to school, even go to church or do something as basic as laundry… Palantir helps the government use our own data against us, and they’re making billions while they do it.”
Another protester, Alice Hu, an organizer with Planet Over Profit, said the fight against Palantir and Thiel is bigger than one company. “Palantir’s tech is enabling ICE to kidnap immigrants en masse while its chairman Peter Thiel has espoused far-right ideology. As Palantir rakes in massive windfalls from government contracts and Trump occupies our country’s capital city with federal troops, Thiel, a major Trump and JD Vance donor, is getting a handsome return on his investment. But we are fighting back. Today’s protests are just the start of a surging mass movement fearlessly fighting to break the stranglehold that billionaires have on our government.”
The protests also referenced Palantir’s involvement abroad. The company has been named in “the advance edited UN Report of the Special Rapporteur on companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza,” which states Palantir software has supported the Israel Defense Forces in targeting Gazans and has aided the U.S. Defense Department in analyzing drone footage.
Leslie Change, a member of DSA-LA, spoke of the international scope of the protests. “I’m here to stand in unwavering solidarity with immigrants and Palestinians, whose lives are being threatened by the surveillance technology developed by Peter Thiel’s company Palantir… As a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at the University of California, I am disgusted by the way billionaires commandeer science for genocide profiteering and Trump’s authoritarian regime. This world belongs to the working class, not tech billionaires.”
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” The company has been named in “the advance edited UN Report of the Special Rapporteur on companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza,” ”
That sentence uses the rhetorical trick known as a *presupposition*. This is where a something is presented as fact as part of the sentence structure, so it is not presented as an opinion. It’s kind of like having someone feed you oatmeal by grabbing a handful and shoving their arm down your throat.
“which states Palantir software has supported the Israel Defense Forces in targeting Gazans and has aided the U.S. Defense Department in analyzing drone footage.”
Targeting any . . . particular . . . Gazans ? . . . like, gee, I think the word begins with an H, and I believe they slaughtered a whole bunch of Jews on October 7, 2023 and still hold hostages nearly two years later. So maybe there is a reason they are being targeted.