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Microsoft is teaming up with secretive data analytics company Palantir<\/a>, which has been accused of (among other wretched acts) enabling the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate \u201cas a domestic surveillance agency<\/a>.\u201d Bloomberg<\/em> reports<\/a> that Palantir will integrate its products with Microsoft\u2019s government cloud tools, including the Azure OpenAI service, \u201cin a bid to sell software\u201d to US defense agencies. Oh, joy.<\/p>\n The pair will reportedly focus on products for US defense workers to handle logistics, contracting and action planning. But given the secretive nature of Palantir\u2019s work, those generic and seemingly non-threatening terms don\u2019t necessarily say much.<\/p>\n Palantir\u2019s software has been used<\/a> to track and suppress dissent. The company was founded by Peter Thiel, who supports and funds<\/a> far-right causes and has a political philosophy his biographer described as \u201cbordering on fascism.\u201d In Thiel\u2019s Stanford classes and his book Zero to One<\/em>, the Silicon Valley billionaire gushed over how much better companies are run than governments\u00a0because they have a single decision-maker. \u201cA dictator, basically,\u201d Thiel\u2019s biographer told<\/a> Time<\/em> in 2021.<\/p>\n Thiel also wrote<\/a> the words, \u201cI no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2018, Palantir claimed<\/a> in The New York Times<\/em> that it doesn\u2019t work with ICE\u2019s deportation squad, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). This contradicted<\/a> a report from The Intercept<\/em> revealing a 2016 Homeland Security disclosure showing ERO used Palantir\u2019s software to \u201cgather information for both criminal and civil cases against immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, Amnesty International warned<\/a> about Palantir, \u201cWe could close our eyes and pretend that contrary to all the evidence, Palantir is a rights-respecting company or we can call this fa\u00e7ade what it is: another company placing profit over people, no matter the human cost.\u201d<\/p>\n Bloomberg<\/em> reports that Palantir\u2019s newest AI software requires a large language model. Now, in classified government environments, Palantir will combine its powers with those of Microsoft\u2019s Azure OpenAI<\/a>, which includes GPT-4o<\/a>, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, GPT-4<\/a>, GPT-3.5<\/a> and more.<\/p>\n What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n