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Palantir to Build Centralized Database on Americans
The Trump administration is quietly assembling a centralized data infrastructure on the American population. To build it, they’ve enlisted Palantir, a powerful data-mining company with deep ties to the intelligence world. Co-founded by Peter Thiel — Trump’s longtime ally and megadonor — Palantir was originally seeded by the CIA to help the government make sense of large, fragmented data sets.
In March, Trump signed an executive order demanding that agencies “eliminate information silos.” The language sounds bland, even bureaucratic. But the real implications are sweeping. By ordering agencies to pool citizen data, Trump signaled interest in something once unthinkable: a master file on American lives.
According to The New York Times, Trump hasn’t spoken publicly about the plan since. But behind the scenes, his administration has moved quickly.
The Order
Signed on March 20, the order is titled “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.” It presents mass data consolidation as a bureaucratic fix. “Removing unnecessary barriers to Federal employees accessing Government data,” it reads, will help eliminate “bureaucratic duplication” and detect fraud.
But the order’s power lies in its fine print:
- It gives “designated Federal officials” sweeping access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and data across departments.
- It orders agencies to remove internal sharing restrictions within 30 days, and grants the federal government “unfettered access” to state-level data programs, even if stored in third-party databases.
- It overrides previous executive orders and suspends regulatory safeguards that might slow it down.
Critics say the result is clear: a legal blueprint for a vast, centralized surveillance infrastructure — without guardrails, oversight, or external review.
DOGE
Much of the groundwork has been laid by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), not so long ago led by Elon Musk — Thiel’s longtime business partner. Officially tasked with “modernizing federal technology and software,” Musk described his mission in deceptively simple terms: “making computers talk to each other.”
But beneath that phrase lies a sweeping “AI-first” agenda. As The New American has tracked, since its inception, DOGE has been embedding artificial intelligence across federal agencies — automating analysis, standardizing systems, and preparing government data for large-scale consolidation.
Foundry
To continue the implementation of the order, the administration turned to Palantir — the firm built to do exactly this. Since Trump’s return to office, Palantir has received over $113 million in federal contracts, plus a new $795 million deal with the Department of Defense (DOD). At the center is Palantir’s flagship product: Foundry.
Foundry is not just an analytics tool. It’s a full-scale data operating system. Palantir describes it as a “central platform for data-driven decision making and situational intelligence” designed to pull together fragmented sources — from spreadsheets and real-time feeds to legacy federal databases — into a single, unified view.
At its core is Ontology, a semantic engine that turns raw data into high-fidelity, interactive objects. These objects represent real-world entities like people, payments, events, and relationships. Foundry uses them to build composite profiles, simulate outcomes, and automate decisions. Palantir calls it “closed-loop analytics” — in which the system doesn’t just analyze data, it acts on it.
One official told the Times that Foundry makes it easy “to merge information from different agencies.” That’s exactly what it’s doing.
Foundry is already embedded in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), where Palantir engineers are constructing a searchable database of taxpayer records. Expansion talks are underway with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Education.
Palantir and the Deep State
Palantir could be considered the Deep State’s private-sector arm. Founded in 2003 with seed funding from In-Q-Tel — the CIA’s venture wing — Palantir was built to turn surveillance into software, automating what intelligence agencies once did manually.
Before Palantir, analysts sifted through siloed data — satellite feeds, phone logs, visa records, financial reports — by hand. Palantir’s platforms changed that. They ingest fragmented data streams, map relationships in real time, and flag patterns of interest. What once took days of human labor now takes seconds of computation.
Palantir holds contracts with the DOD, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), DHS, and HHS. It supports battlefield analytics, predictive policing, and pandemic logistics, and is expanding into financial surveillance through the IRS and SSA.
The company runs two flagship platforms. Gotham, designed for military and intelligence use, helps track insurgents, map networks, and flag suspicious activity. In Afghanistan, it helped identify high-value targets. Domestically, it has been used to monitor U.S. citizens flagged as potential threats — combining drone footage, social media, and classified intelligence into a live, clickable map.
Foundry, its civilian counterpart, powers everything from disaster response and drug approval workflows to vaccine distribution and law enforcement surveillance. It played a key role in Operation Warp Speed (OWS) and continues to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and police departments via DHS partnerships.
Palantir also supplies the U.S. Army with battlefield intelligence through TITAN, a real-time sensor fusion system, and with logistics forecasting through VANTAGE.
This isn’t enterprise software. It’s the digital nervous system of the national security state — privatized, optimized, and deeply embedded. Palantir doesn’t just analyze information — it defines what matters. And once installed, it becomes indispensable.
A Constitutional Cure for “Fraud, Waste, and Abuse”
A common refrain among proponents of what DOGE has started and what Palantir is set to take to the next level is: “How else can we find waste?” Apparently they believe building a panopticon is the only reasonable solution to government inefficiency.
But that logic is backward — and dangerous.
DOGE was initially marketed as a small-government solution. In reality, the administration is now building the largest surveillance infrastructure in U.S. history. It replaces red tape with software, bureaucracy with automation, and decentralization with a centralized brain. That brain is Palantir.
If the goal is truly to stop fraud and abuse, the answer isn’t machine-led centralization. It’s constitutional decentralization.
Instead of wiring together every federal dataset, start really dismantling the unconstitutional sprawl, not automating it. Push responsibility back to the states, where programs are closer to the people and misuse is easier to detect. Let local governments handle entitlement verification, program audits, and budgeting. Empower independent inspectors general. Demand transparency from contractors. Enforce real congressional oversight — not automated compliance powered by black-box algorithms.
The Grid That Governs
Another favorite line is: “But the government already has the data!”
Yes, it does. But not like this.
Federal data is fragmented, purpose-bound, and legally siloed. Tax returns don’t live next to medical records. Immigration logs can’t be casually cross-queried with Social Security files. These barriers exist for good reason — to prevent abuse, mission creep, and political weaponization.
What DOGE and Palantir are doing is not storing data. They’re fusing it. Turning it into real-time profiles, simulations, and decision loops. This isn’t about merely “having” data. It’s about operationalizing it.
Finally, if fraud were truly the concern, why hasn’t DOGE looked into the biggest missing pile of all? The Pentagon has reportedly lost track of over $21 trillion. So far, DOGE’s grand data crusade has turned up just $80 million in flagged spending — mostly in diversity, equity, and inclusion and climate-related programs.
What DOGE has started, and what Palantir is now finalizing, is not a war on fraud. It’s the construction of a system that fuses surveillance, automation, and enforcement into a single architecture of control.
And once this grid is put in place, it won’t just monitor the governed — it will govern. Decisions will be made not by elected officials, but by algorithms. Rights won’t be revoked with force, but denied by code. The Constitution won’t be torn up — it will be silently bypassed.
And when the lights flicker, there will be no lever to pull.
Veronika Kyrylenko
Veronika is a writer with a passion for holding the powerful accountable, no matter their political affiliation. With a Ph.D. in Political Science from Odessa National University (Ukraine), she brings a sharp analytical eye to domestic and foreign policy, international relations, the economy, and healthcare.
Veronika’s work is driven by a belief that freedom is worth defending, and she is dedicated to keeping the public informed in an era where power often operates without scrutiny.
Published with permission of thenewamerican.com