Gray State: Pentagon Signs Deal To Make Palantir AI "Maven" Its Core Military System - Its Most 'Revolutionary' Surveillance Tool Yet To Track Civilians And Increase The Kill Chain
“Conspiracy theorists — you may hate this, but there's one person protecting your rights to be a conspiracy theorist that actually has a seat at the table, and that person is me," said CEO Alex Karp.
Palantir has deepened its ties within the Trump administration and the Pentagon, after it was revealed this week the Department of War struck a deal with the AI defense contractor to act as the DoW’s core AI military system.
As first reported by Reuters:
Palantir’s Maven artificial intelligence system will become an official program of record, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg said in a letter to Pentagon leaders, a move that locks in long-term use of Palantir’s weapons-targeting technology across the U.S. military.
In the March 9 letter to senior Pentagon leaders and U.S. military commanders, Feinberg said embedding Palantir’s Maven Smart System would provide warfighters “with the latest tools necessary to detect, deter, and dominate our adversaries in all domains”.
The decision is expected to go into effect by the close of the current fiscal year, which ends in September, according to the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters and has not been previously reported.
Maven is a command-and-control software platform that analyzes battlefield data and identifies targets. It is already the primary AI operating system for the U.S. military, which has carried out thousands of targeted strikes against Iran over the last three weeks.
Designating Maven as a program of record will streamline its adoption across all arms of the military and provide stable, long-term funding, Feinberg said.
The memo ordered oversight of Maven be moved from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon’s Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office within 30 days. Future contracting with Palantir will be handled by the Army, the letter said.
“It is imperative that we invest now and with focus to deepen the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) across the Joint Force and establish AI-enabled decision-making as the cornerstone of our strategy,” Feinberg wrote.
Maven — which is a Yiddish word that means “connoisseur, expert, know-it-all” — was first formed in 2017 as a means of accelerating the adoption of machine learning and data integration across U.S. military intelligence workflows, primarily in intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance along with geospatial intelligence. Maven coalesces data from drones, satellites, and other sensors to mark potential targets, provide collected intelligence to analysts, and transmit their decisions to operational systems.
In September 2024, Palantir announced a nearly $100 million contract from the Pentagon to expand Maven across its six branches.
“To stay ahead of our adversaries, we must deliver software advantage at speed and at every level of the Department of Defense,” said Shannon Clark, Head of Defense Growth, Palantir. “NGA has been a leader in rapidly adopting the strongest AI capabilities to enable warfighters around the globe, and we are excited to support the program as it scales to meet critical infrastructure requirements across all of the services.”
Last week, Palantir provided a demonstration showcasing its capabilities at their AIPCon 9 forum — which this year’s theme featured two interlocking rings that say “There Are NO Secrets.”
Cameron Stanley, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer of the Department of War, showcased what Maven can do.
“This is Maven’s smart system. Palantir’s software-as-a-service product that we are deploying across the entire department. As you can see, it’s not just one data feed, it’s multiple.
“As you can see, it's not just one data feed, it's multiple. And instead of having eight or nine systems for those decision makers to look at every single day in order for them to make decisions, you then fuse it into a single visualization tool. The single visualization tool allows you to select, deselect different types of data, look at different approaches to data, but more importantly, action from the same system that you're trying to develop your workflows around.
“Once you have a detection that you wanna actually move and actually move into a targeting workflow, for example, this is what we do. Left-click, right-click, left-click, magically, it becomes a detection. That detection then gets moved into a workflow.
“This is standard digitized workflow, but I wanna walk you through it quickly. You have different types of targets that are identified on the left there. Every single column produces a different type of decision-making process. Once you have that decision and you're trying to actually action that process, we now move into co-generation, course of action generation, where we are automatically, via a number of factors, trying to identify what the best asset to prosecute a target looks like.
“Once we've got the different approaches and we select one, we then can move directly into how do we action that target. We've gone from identifying the target to now coming up with a course of action to now actioning that target, all from one system.
“This is revolutionary. We were having this done in about eight or nine systems where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to our desired end state. (8:19) In this case, actually closing a kill chain.
“[…] But more importantly, connect those disparate systems in a way that's never been done before, using an abstraction layer called Maven Smart System that connects and interconnects all of those things with the right data approach, the right data ontology, and the right data formatting to connect these systems. This is not something that happened overnight. This took seven years to get here, not only from a data connections perspective, but also to connect each of those systems together.”
On the sidelines of Palantir’s forum event, co-founder and CEO Alex Karp told CNBC:
“The fact that you can now target more precisely, more accurately, more quickly, and that, meaning America, can do all these, organize the total power of our fleet and all of our resources, and bring it to bear against our adversaries and enemies has shifted the way in which war is fought. And I have read that Palantir’s Project Maven is the core backbone of that.”
Palantir has been quite controversial as it manages a myriad of very personal data on people and uses the collected data to power “the kill chain.” Its technology, for example, has been heavily used by the Israeli Defense Force to launch autonomous strikes in Gaza.
Palantir’s systems are also used to power other AI LLM’s such as Anthropic’s Claude, which, despite the contentions between the Pentagon and Anthropic, Claude was used to carry out AI-assisted targeted strikes in Iran.
But the issue goes beyond defense contracting, as many have worried that Palantir will and is currently being used against ordinary Americans and others around the world to be intrusively spied upon.
Business Reform has a title for the company: “Palantir: Because There Are Some Lines Google Won’t Cross.”
President Donald Trump, who has close relations with its co-founder Peter Thiel — who has also heavily funded Trump and Vice President JD Vance — last year drew controversy when it was revealed that he contracted Palantir to create a master database on all Americans, consolidating data from across multiple agencies and departments that were typically supposed to stay separate.
Whitney Webb at Unlimited Hangout has also done plenty of very in-depth reporting into co-founder Peter Thiel and Palantir’s nefarious ambitions. Bloomberg published a feature post in 2018 documenting how expansive their data coverage is, having access to and knowing everything Americans do.
Moreover, Palantir technologies are being used to build a pre-crime surveillance state. In the wake of the tragic Catholic school shooting in August, former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) agent and Fox News contributor Aaron Cohen debuted his first-ever AI threat detection system that “scrapes the internet 24/7 using an Israeli grade ontology to pull specific threat language, and then routes it to local law enforcement,” he said. “It’s a 24/7 detective. It never sleeps and it’s going to get us in front of these attacks.”
In May, Cohen published a short demo and crowdfunding trailer.
According to him,
“It’s a system that scans the open web, social media, Reddit, Discord, gaming chats, and flags real behavioral signals before someone picks up a rifle and walks into a school. We’re talking grievance buildup, martyrdom language, tactical planning.”
In June, during an episode of Fox’s Sean Hannity, Cohen called upon the Trump administration to partner with him and scale it, revealing it was built on Palantir’s technology. Cohen boasted: “The Israeli model meets Palantir quality engineering, and I’ve got it. And the White House needs to give me a buzz and let’s get this thing scaled nationally.”
On September 22nd, 2025, the day after Charlie Kirk’s funeral event that was held at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, Turning Point USA executive producer Andrew Kolvet admitted on primetime television on Fox and in a X post:
“I just broke the news that our tech partners tracked over 277,000 devices in and around State Farm Stadium yesterday. They came from all across the country because Charlie pointed us all to Christ, and in his martyrdom given us the courage to do the same.”
But Karp is not taking the continued criticisms of Palantir lightly. In an interview with tech show TBPN, Karp rebuked the ‘conspiracy theorists’ and argued that his company is protecting and giving the ability to have online opinions.
“Conspiracy theorists — you may hate this, but there's one person protecting your rights to be a conspiracy theorist that actually has a seat at the table, and that person is me.
“You may not want to hear that truth, but it’s f****** true. Maybe do a little more reading before you pontificate on your absurd and obviously ill-formed and many times stupid opinions.
“You're attacking the person who's protecting you— idiot. It’s like f****** so stupid.”
Last year, in an interview with Andrew Ross-Sorkin hosted by the New York Times, Karp blasted some of his detractors as having “Palantir Derangement Syndrome.” “My biggest fans started off as Palantir skeptics and haters,” he said as he erratically fidgeted and flopped around in his chair.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Well, clearly Palantir’s “kill chain” tech isn’t so hot because the U.S. is struggling to take down a ‘third-world country’ that is still using what is considered to be antiquated technology, a country that Trump near-daily keeps saying we’ve destroyed and blown-off the face of the earth dozens of times over already. Then again, it’s great at killing children, as we’ve seen in Gaza and recently in Iran. Israel’s autonomous AI-powered kill chain tech — “Lavender,” “The Gospel,” “Where’s Daddy?” (yes, these are the actual names) — is all powered by Palantir.
But what is even more concerning, in my opinion, is how Maven will CLEARLY be turned on us (and already is as far as I am concerned) for deep AI pre-crime surveillance, to enforce broader social credit scores, and asset and monetary tokenization. They are doing it with ICE and they, along with Oracle, are helping to build-out that infrastructure in the federal government.
Lamentations 4:17 As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us. Lamentations 4:18 They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come. Lamentations 4:19 Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.
Palantir — a name derived from seer stones in the Lord of the Rings universe — is openly telling you what they are about: “There Are NO Secrets.” They make it clear that their technology is all about omni-surveillance, all part of this tokenized trivergence I have warned about. They know your steps, they know your habits, they know your likes, they know your activities, they know your purchases, they know your predisposition; and eventually with the power of 6G technology (which President Trump signed an executive order for last year, promising the rollout of biometrics, implantables, and even spatial penetrative surveillance to look beneath our skin), Palantir and other companies such as Oracle will be able to know nearly everything about us.
This IS the “gray state” we have been warned about, perhaps even worse.
— And it is building towards the eventual, full-blown mark of the beast system.
Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: [17]And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [18] Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Maven is just one of the tools on display. At AIPCon 9, Palantir bragged about how their tech generates “home ownership” (i.e. data-driven tokenization) and reforms to the healthcare sector globally.
Everything about this is pure evil. It’s always the same old thing: it’s for our safety, we have to protect the children, we have to protect against foreign threats and bad actors, we have to beat other countries and do it better because in their hands they will destroy the world, etc…
Yet Peter Thiel will tell you that if he and Karp aren’t allowed to build their 24/7 surveillance panopticon, then the antichrist will arrive. These people are lunatics and evil at their core!
Yet the average person doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Bring on the bread & circuses! ‘This is fine. I love being a little hamster in my digital cage.’
May the Lord guide and protect us in these trying times.
Psalm 10:1 Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? [2] The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. [3] For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth. [4] The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts. [5] His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. [6] He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity. [7] His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity. [8] He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor. [9] He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. [10] He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. [11] He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it. [12] Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. [13] Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it. [14] Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless. [15] Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his wickedness till thou find none. [16] The LORD is King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land. [17] LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear: [18] To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress.
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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Have been linking about Palantir for several years, linked yesterday about Pentagon to adopt Palantir AI as core US military system. Made the comment that since they use Maven for targeting sites that we can officially blame Palantir for targeting the school where all the girls were killed. The company and Thiel should be tried as criminals
Eventually we will have to toss our E- devices and use a lower tech platform for communication. 3G flip phone or the Bofung hand held radios.