the Army, number one, then the FBI, then, I mean, the Federal Acquisition Service, that can go to a number of different agencies in practice, then the Air Force, then ICE, then like the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Special Operations Command, etc., etc. The IRS is also on there, the Navy. So obviously there's a pretty high emphasis on branches of the military and investigative

agencies like the FBI and ICE. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Caroline Haskins.

Caroline is a staff writer at Wired.

At this point, you've probably heard of Palantir, the company that was funded by Peter Thiel and has benefited immensely as Donald Trump has come back to office.

But what does the company really do?

I figured it was a good opportunity to have a deep dive into the company, to understand where it comes from,

to understand how its product really works, and to understand any potential threat that it really poses to us,

as its market value has significantly increased under the Trump administration, as it's pushing

this ideology that the tech industry and the military need to work together closely to protect

American power in the 21st century, or however they want to put it, to a certain

degree, this company is able to fly under the radar because it sells its product for the

most part to major companies and to governments and militaries. So it doesn't need to really

make a pitch to the public. It doesn't need to sell itself to the public. It doesn't need to

actually ensure that the public understands what it does. And so even though it's hugely impactful, that has meant that a lot of people don't really understand it. And this week, we're going to change that. Caroline has been reporting on Palantir for quite a while now. She has a really in-depth knowledge of this company, and she was the perfect guest to have on to really dig into this in depth.

And of course, this episode pairs really well with the episode we did a few months ago

with Sam Biddle looking at this broader kind of transformation that Silicon Valley is doing,

where these companies are pivoting to working much more with the military, selling them AI

tools, trying to create new weapons that they want to sell them. The Palantir story is part of that, but it is also its own story, which is why I think it's worth dedicating a whole episode to exploring it. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Caroline. I certainly enjoyed chatting with her. If you do make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, you can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week, so I can keep having these critical in-depth conversations to help you better understand these tech companies and the way they're shaping our world. You can become a supporter like Greg in Chicago, Barbara from British Columbia, or Manuel from Heidelberg

by going to patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us and signing up to support the show. Thanks so much

and enjoy this week's conversation. Caroline, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks for having me on.

You have been writing about a bunch lately, but one of the topics that it seems like has been

...