Palantir Technologies
Encyclopedia
Palantir Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Palo Alto, California
, with offices in Tysons Corner, Virginia
, New York City
and Covent Garden, London
, is a software company that produces the Palantir Government and Palantir Finance platforms. Palantir offers a Java-based platform for analyzing, integrating, and visualizing data of all kinds, including structured, unstructured, relational, temporal, and geospatial.
, Dr. Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale
, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Early investments came in the form of $2 million from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel
and $30 million from Thiel and his firm, The Founders Fund
. Dr. Alex Karp is Palantir’s CEO. Palantir’s name comes from the "seeing stones" in the Lord of the Rings.
Palantir was built through iterative collaboration between computer scientists and analysts from various intelligence agencies over the course of nearly three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel
. The software concept grew out of technology developed at PayPal to detect fraudulent activity, much of it conducted by Russian organized crime syndicates. The team leveraged the fundamental insight that computers alone (Artificial Intelligence
) could not defeat an adaptive adversary. Palantir allows human analysts to quickly explore data from many sources in conceptual ways (Intelligence Augmentation
).
In April 2010, Palantir announced a partnership with Thomson Reuters
to sell the Palantir Finance product as QA Studio.
On June 18, 2010, Vice President
Joe Biden
and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag
held a press conference at the White House announcing the success of fighting fraud in the stimulus by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
(RATB). Biden credited the success to the software, Palantir, being deployed by the federal government. He announced that the capability will be deployed at other government agencies, starting with Medicare and Medicaid.
techniques that have drawn criticiscm from privacy advocates concerned about civil liberties protection. Palantir maintains security tags at a granular level such that analysts can only see the specific information they have permission to see.
Palantir runs the site AnalyzeThe.US, which allows the public to use Palantir Government to perform analysis on publicly available data from data.gov, usaspending.gov, the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets Database, and Community Health Data from HHS.gov.
, and cyber analysts at Information Warfare Monitor (responsible for the GhostNet
and the Shadow Network investigation). Palantir Finance is used by a number of well-known hedge funds, banks, and financial services firms.
and the Shadow Network. The Ghostnet was a China-based cyber espionage network targeting 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including the Dalai Lama’s office, a NATO computer and various embassies. The Shadow Network was also a China-based espionage operation that hacked into the Indian security and defense apparatus. Cyber spies stole documents related to Indian security, embassies abroad, and NATO troop activity in Afghanistan.
to detect and investigate fraud and abuse in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Specifically the Recovery Operations Center (ROC) uses Palantir to integrate transactional data with open-source and private data sets that describe the entities receiving Stimulus funds.
approached Palantir, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies
to draft a report on the threat posed by WikiLeaks
. The report recommends attacking constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald
for his support of WikiLeaks, launching a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities" and obtaining data on document submitters by hacking Wikileaks' servers.
Circa Feb 11, 2011, Dr. Karp issued an apology to Mr Greenwald, and "directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HBGary
".
In subsequent weeks, some started to question Palantir over the full scope of their role, including comments and actions made by a company engineer, Matthew Steckman. Further, internal emails from Steckman seem to confirm that a payment split was approved by Karp for plans relating to another Hunton & Williams target, critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
March 16, 2011: The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities asked the Defense Department and the National Security Agency to provide any contracts with Palantir Technologies for investigation. This might pose an existential threat to Palantir since a very large part of their business is based on those entities.
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, with offices in Tysons Corner, Virginia
Tysons Corner, Virginia
Tysons Corner is an unincorporated census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Part of the Washington Metropolitan Area located in Northern Virginia, Tysons Corner lies between the community of McLean and the town of Vienna along the Capital Beltway . The population was...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Covent Garden, London
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, is a software company that produces the Palantir Government and Palantir Finance platforms. Palantir offers a Java-based platform for analyzing, integrating, and visualizing data of all kinds, including structured, unstructured, relational, temporal, and geospatial.
History
Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter ThielPeter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American business magnate, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. With Elon Musk and Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO...
, Dr. Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale
Joe Lonsdale
Joe Lonsdale is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He is a founder of Palantir Technologies, a private company focused on analyzing, integrating, and visualizing data. Prior to Palantir Lonsdale was an early executive at Clarium Capital. He helped Peter Thiel grow the global...
, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Early investments came in the form of $2 million from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel of Arlington, Virginia, United States is a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability...
and $30 million from Thiel and his firm, The Founders Fund
The Founders Fund
Founders Fund is a San Francisco based venture capital firm which invests at all stages in companies with revolutionary technologies. The firm’s six partners, Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Bruce Gibney, and Brian Singerman have been founders of or early investors in numerous...
. Dr. Alex Karp is Palantir’s CEO. Palantir’s name comes from the "seeing stones" in the Lord of the Rings.
Palantir was built through iterative collaboration between computer scientists and analysts from various intelligence agencies over the course of nearly three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel of Arlington, Virginia, United States is a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability...
. The software concept grew out of technology developed at PayPal to detect fraudulent activity, much of it conducted by Russian organized crime syndicates. The team leveraged the fundamental insight that computers alone (Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
) could not defeat an adaptive adversary. Palantir allows human analysts to quickly explore data from many sources in conceptual ways (Intelligence Augmentation
Intelligence amplification
Intelligence amplification refers to the effective use of information technology in augmenting human intelligence...
).
In April 2010, Palantir announced a partnership with Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...
to sell the Palantir Finance product as QA Studio.
On June 18, 2010, Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Joe Biden
Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...
and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag
Peter Ország
Peter Ország is a Slovak ice hockey referee, who referees in the Slovak Extraliga.-Career:He has officiated many international tournaments including the Winter Olympics. He has been named Slovak referee of the year....
held a press conference at the White House announcing the success of fighting fraud in the stimulus by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is an agency of the United States federal government, which manages the Recovery.gov website and oversees spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Recovery.gov is the U.S...
(RATB). Biden credited the success to the software, Palantir, being deployed by the federal government. He announced that the capability will be deployed at other government agencies, starting with Medicare and Medicaid.
Palantir Government
Palantir Government integrates structured and unstructured data, provides advanced search and discovery capabilities, enables knowledge management, and facilitates secure collaboration. The Palantir platform includes the privacy and civil liberties protections mandated by legal requirements such as those in the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act. Palantir’s privacy controls keep investigations focused, as opposed to the expansive data miningData mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
techniques that have drawn criticiscm from privacy advocates concerned about civil liberties protection. Palantir maintains security tags at a granular level such that analysts can only see the specific information they have permission to see.
AnalyzeThe.US
Palantir runs the site AnalyzeThe.US, which allows the public to use Palantir Government to perform analysis on publicly available data from data.gov, usaspending.gov, the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets Database, and Community Health Data from HHS.gov.
Palantir Finance
Palantir Finance is a software platform for data integration, information management and quantitative analysis. The software connects to commercial, proprietary and public data sets and discovers trends, relationships and anomalies. Palantir Finance is used to study the markets, test and refine trading strategies, and generate complex signals across asset classes.JoyRide
JoyRide is a public demo of Palantir Finance. It offers training exercises and the data is provided by Thomson Reuters.Customers
Palantir Government is used by counter-terrorism analysts at offices of the FBI and CIA, fraud investigators at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency BoardRecovery Accountability and Transparency Board
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is an agency of the United States federal government, which manages the Recovery.gov website and oversees spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Recovery.gov is the U.S...
, and cyber analysts at Information Warfare Monitor (responsible for the GhostNet
GhostNet
GhostNet is the name given by researchers at the Information Warfare Monitor to a large-scale cyber spying operation discovered in March 2009. The operation is likely associated with an Advanced Persistent Threat...
and the Shadow Network investigation). Palantir Finance is used by a number of well-known hedge funds, banks, and financial services firms.
Infowar Monitor
Palantir partner Information Warfare Monitor used Palantir software to uncover both the GhostnetGhostNet
GhostNet is the name given by researchers at the Information Warfare Monitor to a large-scale cyber spying operation discovered in March 2009. The operation is likely associated with an Advanced Persistent Threat...
and the Shadow Network. The Ghostnet was a China-based cyber espionage network targeting 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including the Dalai Lama’s office, a NATO computer and various embassies. The Shadow Network was also a China-based espionage operation that hacked into the Indian security and defense apparatus. Cyber spies stole documents related to Indian security, embassies abroad, and NATO troop activity in Afghanistan.
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Palantir’s software is used by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency BoardRecovery Accountability and Transparency Board
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is an agency of the United States federal government, which manages the Recovery.gov website and oversees spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Recovery.gov is the U.S...
to detect and investigate fraud and abuse in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Specifically the Recovery Operations Center (ROC) uses Palantir to integrate transactional data with open-source and private data sets that describe the entities receiving Stimulus funds.
Palantir Night Live
Palantir hosts Palantir Night Live at Palantir’s Tysons Corner and Palo Alto offices. The event brings speakers from the intelligence community and technology space to discuss topics of common interest. Past speakers include Garry Kasparov, Nart Villeneuve from Information Warfare Monitor, Andrew McAfee, author of Enterprise 2.0, and Michael Chertoff.WikiLeaks Proposals
According to leaked documents, in December 2010 the law firm Hunton & WilliamsHunton & Williams
Founded in 1901, Hunton & Williams LLP is a US law firm that employs more than 800 lawyers. It has been called "one of the most well-connected legal and lobbying firms in DC." The firm was founded in Richmond, Virginia and has 18 other offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In...
approached Palantir, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies
Berico Technologies
Berico Technologies is an analysis and technology company. Its customers are primarily Defense and Intelligence groups in the US government.It is based in Arlington, Virginia.- History :Berico was founded in 2006 by military veterans....
to draft a report on the threat posed by WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
. The report recommends attacking constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is an American lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a contributor to Salon.com, where he focuses on political and legal topics...
for his support of WikiLeaks, launching a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities" and obtaining data on document submitters by hacking Wikileaks' servers.
Circa Feb 11, 2011, Dr. Karp issued an apology to Mr Greenwald, and "directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HBGary
HBGary
HBGary is a technology security company. Two distinct but affiliated firms carry the name: HBGary Federal, which sells its products to the US Federal Government, and HB Gary, Inc. Its other clients include information assurance companies, computer emergency response teams, and computer forensic...
".
"The right to free speech and the right to privacy are critical to a flourishing democracy. From its inception, Palantir Technologies has supported these ideals and demonstrated a commitment to building software that protects privacy and civil liberties. Furthermore, personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." - Dr Alex Karp, CEO, 2-11-2011
In subsequent weeks, some started to question Palantir over the full scope of their role, including comments and actions made by a company engineer, Matthew Steckman. Further, internal emails from Steckman seem to confirm that a payment split was approved by Karp for plans relating to another Hunton & Williams target, critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
March 16, 2011: The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities asked the Defense Department and the National Security Agency to provide any contracts with Palantir Technologies for investigation. This might pose an existential threat to Palantir since a very large part of their business is based on those entities.
External links
- Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government (by Nate Anderson, ars technica)