"‘Digital kill chains’: The dark side of tech in warfare", 6 June 2024

In recent years, the intersection of technology and warfare has come under public fire, raising profound ethical and legal questions about state military use of advanced tech tools. The role of advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in modern conflicts is under intense scrutiny, especially when civilian lives are at stake. 

As the genocide in Gaza advances, attention is turning to the companies whose technologies may be facilitating Israel’s daily atrocities, with US-based Palantir Technologies among them.

While the International Criminal Court (ICC) is stepping in to address genocide accusations, the tech barons who design and supply the tools of warfare remain largely unchallenged. 

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Palantir’s integration in Israel

Companies like Palantir Technologies, led by CEO Alex Karp, have been implicated in enabling some of these atrocities. Its advanced data analytics and AI tools that supposedly provide “precision targeting” are mass-killing civilians and have transformed warfare into a calculated and systematic campaign of extermination with little human oversight.

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The tech giant’s involvement in Israel predates its formal agreements by many years. The company established an office in Tel Aviv in 2015, strategically located overlooking Rothschild Boulevard on one side and Yehuda Halevy Street on the other. 

This location underscores the company’s deep integration into the Israeli tech ecosystem. Karp himself highlighted Palantir’s strong ties to Israel in a December 2023 interview on Fox Business, stating, “We are very well known in Israel. Israel appreciates our product.”

Formalizing the partnership

The partnership between Palantir and Israel’s military began to solidify with a formal agreement signed on 12 January 2024 – three months after the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza began – following a visit by company executives to Israel, during which they held their first board meeting of the year in Tel Aviv. 

As Palantir Executive Vice President Josh Harris stated, “Both parties have mutually agreed to harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions,” a euphemism for what has been qualified as enabling genocidal actions.

Palantir’s arsenal of technological tools – akin to digital weapons of mass destruction – is currently being deployed by the occupation army, leaving no doubt about the company’s complicity in the ongoing genocide. 

The brutal reality of precision

The recent carnage in Rafah on 26 May, in which Israel bombed a refugee camp, killing dozens of Palestinians, and the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April during airstrikes, highlight the brutal misuse of Palantir’s so-called “precision” technology. 

The company’s TITAN system, promoted as a highly accurate AI model designed to enhance targeting precision, epitomizes the problems with Palantir’s claimed high accuracy capabilities. While there is no direct evidence that TITAN, specifically, is used by Israel, the company’s tech claims are integral to its broader product offerings, some of which are employed by Tel Aviv.

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The collaboration has deeply embedded Palantir into Israel’s military infrastructure, providing a technological or “digital” backbone for brutalities in Gaza and other occupied Palestinian territories.

Tech titans in warfare

Given that Palantir has been active in Israel since 2015, the timing of the strategic agreement, dubbed the “Partnership for Battle Tech,” in early 2024 raises serious questions. 

Was this a calculated move by Palantir to use the intensified conflict as an opportunity to test their AI models on civilians, turning Gaza into a gruesome proving ground for their technology? This suggestion would cast yet another dark shadow on Palantir’s ethics, implying that their business strategy might involve exploiting human suffering for technological advancement.

Palantir’s deep involvement in Israel’s military infrastructure is part of a broader, troubling pattern of technology enabling warfare. That connection extends to another tech giant – SpaceX’s Starlink, led by Elon Musk. Understanding this intricate relationship is crucial to grasping how modern conflicts are increasingly driven by advanced technologies developed by private corporations.

In Ukraine, the collaboration between Palantir and Starlink starkly illustrates the profound impact of integrated technology on warfare. Palantir’s AI models provide the Ukrainian military with essential data analytics, transforming raw images from drones, satellites, and ground reports into real-time actionable intelligence. 

This process, which Palantir’s CEO Karp chillingly refers to as a “digital kill chain,” has become central to Ukraine’s defense strategy, enabling precise targeting and battlefield assessments. Simultaneously, Elon Musk’s Starlink ensures uninterrupted communication for Ukrainian forces, maintaining a continuous flow of critical information vital for modern warfare. 

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Starlink’s controversial approval in Gaza

On 12 January, the Israeli government approved the use of Starlink services at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, ostensibly for medical purposes. 

This approval should not be viewed as a purely humanitarian gesture. Instead, it lays the groundwork for another potential insidious integration of Palantir and Starlink, mirroring their collaboration in Ukraine. 

By enabling advanced satellite communication, Starlink’s approval in Gaza potentially supports military operations, suggesting the establishment of the “digital kill chain” behind the fig leaf of humanitarian aid. 

The brutal siege on Al-Shifa Hospital by Israeli forces, involving severe atrocities against both civilians and medical staff, sharply contradicts any supposed altruistic intent behind Starlink’s deployment. ...

The question arises: was this highly publicized approval of Starlink at Shifa a soft PR salvo laying the groundwork to integrate the company’s products into Israeli military operations inside the Gaza Strip? The timing and context of these developments raise unsettling questions about the actual intentions of both Starlink and Tel Aviv.

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Holding tech execs accountable 

Recent legal actions, such as the case in the UK brought by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) against British ministers, highlight the growing effort to hold enablers of genocide accountable. 

Yet, prominent figures in the tech industry remain conspicuously unexamined. But why? This situation mirrors the prosecution of individuals in Nazi Germany who enabled the Holocaust through their technological and logistical support, underscoring the need for comprehensive accountability in modern times. 

The statutes of the ICC, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) explicitly recognize various forms of complicity. These include aiding and abetting, which encompass providing the necessary tools and support for committing war crimes and genocide.

This legal framework implies that tech executives whose innovations facilitate large-scale violence should be held accountable under international law. 

The intersection of advanced technology and warfare, driven by powerful tech magnates, illustrates a chilling reality: the tools designed to connect and protect are being repurposed to destroy and devastate. Worse yet, it seems war fields like Gaza are viewed as relatively risk-free testing grounds for these tech systems. It is time to make business collaborations with genocide a risk-heavy endeavor, and those efforts must start in the courtroom.