'Must resist': Ex-employees blast Trump-aligned firm amid 'increasingly violent rhetoric'

More than a dozen former employees of the powerful data-mining firm Palantir Technologiesshredded their former employer in a letter obtained exclusively by NPR, in which they seek to trigger a "domino effect" that will spread throughout Silicon Valley.

The thirteen ex-workers slammed their former workplace — which was co-founded by Trump ally billionaire Peter Thiel — over revelations that Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached a deal to pay Palantir $30 million to develop "ImmigrationOS," a tracking system designed to help ICE agents identify migrants for deportation, track self-deportation cases, and share data with other agencies like Customs and Border Protection.

Former software engineers, managers and an employee who worked in the firm's privacy and civil liberties team wrote in the letter that the tech giant once stood by its code of conduct, which said its software should be a pillar for democracy and ensure artificial intelligence systems are responsibly created.

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"Early Palantirians understood the ethical weight of building these technologies," the letter said. "These principles have now been violated, and are rapidly being dismantled at Palantir Technologies and across Silicon Valley."

The former employees noted that Silicon Valley has been notably quieter in Trump 2.0, writing, "democracy faces escalating threats: biometric data collection on immigrant children, journalists being targeted, science programs defunded, and key U.S. allies, like Ukraine, sidelined."

The authors noted the Trump administration is trying to significantly expand the powers of the executive branch, "while alluding to monarchy."

And Big Tech isn't doing enough to prevent that encroachment, they said.

"Big Tech, including Palantir, is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution' led by oligarchs. We must resist this trend," they said.

The former employees accused Palantir of becoming "increasingly violent rhetoric" after CEO Alex Karp bragged that the company's products are being used to kill enemies, and took a shot at fellow tech titan Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

"As Musk's DOGE operation dismantles U.S. government institutions under the guise of exposing corruption, opposition remains silent," the letter said. "Government databases are already erasing references to transgender people and gender-affirming care. These injustices could be facilitated by the very software infrastructure we help build."

They hope "to speak out while we still can, and to work against the dangerous path in the history of technology we are currently heading down towards," the letter said, asserting they hope to kick off a "domino effect" in Big Tech for others to feel comfortable resisting the Trump administration's misuse of technology.