In 2003 a company called Palantir Technologies was founded. Its premise was simple: Developing a search engine to locate terrorists. An inescapable idea in a post-2001-America with google on the rise.
In its first years the company struggled, but major investments from In-Q-Tel, which belongs the CIA, ensured its growth. CIA would subsequently become Palantir’s only customer for several years.
Among its founding members were Alexander Karp and Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel had just sold Paypal, which he had run together with Elon Musk and others, to eBay in 2002. His future investments, particularily that in Facebook, would make him one of the most successful members of the so-called PayPal Mafia and the archetype of the visionary silicon valley investor.
Alexander Karp, self-proclaimed Neo-marxist, had just finished his phd in Frankfurt and gained some attention with a talent for trading and investing.
By no later than the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011, in which Palantir’s software allegedly played a key role, it had become the leading software company regarding data mining and analysis.
Palantir later entered the commercial field making their software available not only to government institutions but to other companies. A step that lead to the integration of Palantir code into numerous different environments. It is essentially the same software that locates osama bin laden in Abottabad, allows for predictive policing in New Orleans, helps Hessian police investigating and that optimizes the production pipeline of Airbus.
in 2017 Anduril industries was founded, a defense-tech-company specializing in providing real-time intelligence on large scale areas. Just like Palantir and unlike most start-ups Anduril also focuses on manufacturing solutions for government institutions, particularily in the field of border protection.
Backed by Peter Thiel it thrived under the Trump-administration and aquired a number of million-dollar-military-contracts in a relatively short period of time. It’s led by former Oculus-Rift CEO Palmer Luckey, who made a fortune as a virtual-reality-pioneer. Luckey received the Thiel-Stupendium, which forced him to drop out of college. He later had to leave Oculus when it got public he liked islamophobic Tweets from his girlfriend Nikki Moxxi and he got exposed as Nimblerichman on reddit.
As nimblerichman he promoted Nimble America, an organisation dedicated to a hate campaign against Hillary Clinton during elections in 2016, on the infamous The Donald subreddit: an alt-right -ideology-fueled meme and conspiracy theory incubator, which was later banned from the platform. As Palantir provides the operating for managing and connecting data and intelligence, Anduril aims to provide the operating system for war.
Both companies utilize traditional silicon valley narratives and strategies, Anduril particularly in the aim of disrupting overcome markets with established players.
At the same time they break with the neoliberal, sometimes even left-leaning consensus of silicon valley by openly identifying as tech-nationalist companies. Something companies that have become integral part of our public sphere wouldn’t be able to do. Yet they rely on the same structures, in which knowledge, expertise, workforce and capital is organized. Structures that for the most part have served and have been developed in the context of private enterprises and consumer markets, that through Anduril and Palantir, however, are made available to military and defense activity.
Thiel, Karp and Luckey form the trias representing this new form of tech-nationalist start-up as the public reception of the valley has always required iconic figures which the discourse could circle around instead of the likely very boring actual work on software.
Both companies also share The-Lord-of-the-Rings as a source for their strong corporate narrative. While on a surface level Lord-of-the-Rings certainly isn’t hard to swallow for someone with alt-right or conservative tendencies with its pale, celestial elves and its dark-skinned uncivilised Uruk hai, it is the core moral, which makes it appealing as corporative narrative for a nationalist company. the fight of good versus pure evil. Evil is not a political category like enemyship. Enemyship is the result of certain real-world circumstances that can be tackled. Evil, though is eternal, and its obliteration justifies all means. Tolkien was a true catholic. Palantiri, the seeing stones, and Anduril, the Flame of the West, Aragorn’s sword, that was broken and forged back together and that now burns at the american-mexican border.