Palantir is No ‘Supporter’ of the Black Community

One of the “top supporters” of last month’s Congressional Black Caucus Weekend was a company that works with ICE to streamline its barbaric mass deportation campaign and uses artificial intelligence to facilitate over-policing in Black and brown neighborhoods.

That company, Palantir, founded by billionaire Peter Theil, is following a familiar playbook: Offering money to an organization that is considered the “conscience of Congress” to help sanitize the disastrous effects it has on our community and the nation at large. They claim the financial support was to “bolster ongoing efforts to provide internships and fellowships” and to help build “capacity around technology and innovation.”

But their real goal is obvious: Using the CBC to make their brand more palatable to Black voters and to curry favor with Black politicians. We shouldn’t let them.

Just weeks before, Palantir attempted to make similar inroads with Hispanic members of Congress, purchasing a table at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala. The organization, rightly, returned the donation and severed the relationship.

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This week, I joined Rashad Robinson, LaTosha Brown, Joy Reid, and other Black thought leaders in an open letter to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation urging them to reject Palantir money. 

Here’s why: 

Palantir’s products are being used by police departments across the country to streamline surveillance and facial recognition initiatives. Their technology has already been used to focus more police attention on black and brown neighborhoods. And when the technology makes a mistake, black people are most likely to suffer.

The company has deep ties with ICE, and uses its millions of dollars of government contracts to streamline deportations and family separations. ICE uses Palantir’s technology to map arrest targets, track immigrants, and help “build” deportation cases, with little transparency or oversight into the fairness or bias of their algorithms.

The technology is being used to streamline the murder of people—including children and babies—in conflicts across the world. Palantir’s products help the US and Israeli militaries accelerate target selection and generate “kill lists.” Our over-reliance on this tech has had tragic consequences, like the bombing of a school in Iran, killing 123 children.

Like many A.I. companies and the billionaires who own them, Palantir is no friend of the Black community. They will continue to throw money around our halls of power to further cement their influence, but we need leaders who are ready to stand up and say: enough.

Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party.Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party.