A chalk-art style illustration on a black background, depicting the militarization of AI. A panopticon-style watchtower looms in the upper left, while a brain-like AI circuit diagram occupies the center, marked with a Wi-Fi symbol and labeled 'AI'. In the foreground, a soldier holding a rifle stands alert. The imagery is drawn in rough white chalk lines, evoking themes of surveillance, control, and digital warfare.

The Silicon Panopticon: Palantir's Militarization of AI and the Erosion of Digital Liberty

The Silicon Panopticon: Palantir’s Militarization of AI and the Erosion of Digital Liberty In the dystopian fiction many of us grew up reading, surveillance states weren’t built by governments alone—they were constructed through public-private partnerships with corporations eager to profit from omniscience. Today, that fiction has materialized in the form of Palantir Technologies, a company whose very name—drawn from the corrupting “seeing stones” of Tolkien’s Middle Earth—betrays its function: to watch, to know, and to enable action based on that knowledge. ...