Palantir response to allegations over its complicity in war crimes amid Israel’s war in Gaza
Palantir response to BHRRC; April 21, 2025:
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In an effort to provide as much clarity as possible, given the range of topics raised in this note, we are delineating ourresponse to these reports into two parts: 1) specific claims about our work in Israel and Gaza, and 2) how we approachbroader human rights due diligence and incorporate a deep respect for fundamental rights into our business practices andproduct design.
Overall, the reports referenced in this outreach make numerous incorrect statements about Palantir, our work in Israel and Gaza, a number of which are even acknowledged in the article as having no supporting evidence. To this end, and given the clear editorial slant of this writing, it is impractical for us to address every single accusation therein. ... A cursory level of research would quickly negate the claims surfaced in these reports. Furthermore, Palantir was not approached for comment on either of these reports. We attempt to address some of the more salient points surfaced in these reports to not only shed light on our work in Israel, but also detail our long history of incorporating fundamental rights into our products and approaches.
Palantir’s work in Israel and the conflict in Gaza
To cover our work in Israel, Palantir has been vocal in support of and solidarity with Israel in response to the barbaric attacks on October 7th, particularly in light of the horrific details of abuse and torture of Israeli civilians that day. Our work in Israel predates the terror attack, and is in line with our global support of US allies and liberal democracies. The first report speculates that our support of Israel following the October 7th attack was “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.” [1] This unfounded and inflammatory claim reveals more about the author’s rhetorical objectives than it does about any substantiated evidence or facts on the ground and should not be dignified with a response. However, as noted, Palantir’s presence in Israel predates the October 7th attack, and to baselessly allege that our solidarity with Israel following the terrorist attack, in which innocent civilian women and children were butchered, is all to train AI models in order to kill further civilians with abandon, signals the contempt for facts and due diligence contained in these reports.
Both of these reports either state or posit that Palantir provides scaled, critical target identification and kinetic workflows to the IDF. For example, “ Palantir’s arsenal of technological tools – akin to digital weapons of mass destruction – is currently beingdeployed by the occupation army, leaving no doubt about the company’s complicity in the ongoing genocide. ” [1] , and “ The most in-depth examination of the connection between AI and the massive numbers of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children slaughtered in Gaza by Israel comes from an investigation recently published by +972 Magazine and Local Call. Although Palantir is not mentioned by name, the AI systems discussed by the journalists appear to fit into the same category. According to the lengthy investigation, Unit 8200 is currently using a system called “Lavender” to target thousands of alleged Hamas fighters" [2].
These claims assert that Palantir is the (or a) developer of the “Gospel” – the AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, and that we are involved with the “Lavender” database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing. These statements are not true. Both capabilities are independent of and pre-date Palantir's announced partnership [3] with the Israeli Defense Ministry. Additionally, we have no involvement with the “Lavender” database used by the IDF for targeting identification. We have no relationship to these programs and their use, but are proud to support Israeli defense and national security missions in other programs and contexts. Moreover, we object to assertions of 'ongoing genocide' as a foregone conclusion on a contested and unadjudicated matter as yet another signal of the authors' unabashed tendentiousness, rather than adherence to any kind of professional research or journalistic standards.
The continuation, and any expansion, of our work in the Israel, including in defense contexts, inherently brings alongside it our human rights due diligence approach (further detailed below) that directly incorporates commitments and principles from international humanitarian law and civilian protection into our products.
Palantir’s approach to human rights due diligence and respecting international humanitarian law
Palantir has a longstanding commitment to the preservation of human rights via our original mission in national security [4] aswell as the work we’ve furthered around the protection of privacy [5] and enablement of technology governance, and throughour partnerships with humanitarian organizations and public sector institutions vital to the protection of human rights. Our company’s Human Rights Policy [6] affirms our support for fundamental human rights, lays out the principles most aligned with our business model and impact, and outlines the ways in which we mitigate human rights risks in our work. As noted in the human rights policy, there are several ways in which Palantir mitigates against human rights risk in our work:
- Incorporating privacy-by-design into Palantir products
- Proactive risk scoping of customers before work begins
- Thoughtful review of new product use cases
- Reactively addressing concerns around third party use of Palantir products
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More broadly, Palantir was founded to support critical national security missions. Palantir’s support for the U.S. Military is one of our defining commitments as a company. As a builder of powerful software systems, we believe that it is our responsibility to ensure that the capabilities we build and workflows we enable are built out in a way that is informed by our customers’ obligations under the laws of armed conflicts and their need to make critical decisions quickly and confidently. Palantir software is built to ensure that the relevant subject matter experts ultimately make these highly consequential decisions, especially those that may impact the lives and well-being of others. We think the U.S. Military needs access to the best technology firms America has to offer and that we can work in partnership to ensure that this technology is developed and deployed ethically and responsibly. Ultimately, the civil liberties we enjoy at home are defended by a strong and successful military, and we believe improving their ability to fight and win wars is, itself, a moral good.
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Given the volume of publicly available content not only on Palantir’s thoughtful approach to work in defense and but also ourtrack record of protecting and promoting human rights - in Ukraine, humanitarian missions, and across our work - it is disappointing that The Cradle and The Nation reported with such little regard to due diligence in research. Furthermore, we were not given the opportunity to respond to this material prior to publish.
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