In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Palantir's technology is part of a larger shift in modern warfare

As warfare becomes increasingly technical, Palantir executives say artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize how military leaders in war zones make decisions. They argue that this shift towards "algorithmic warfare," or the integration of large technological enhancements like AI, will enable militaries to be more powerful and make fewer mistakes.

Palantir's executives have become increasingly involved in American politics in recent years

Palantir's government contracts have steadily increased since Donald Trump was re-elected in 2024, moving from intelligence and defense to public health and assisting in Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency efforts.

In 2020, Palantir moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Denver, CO

Despite being a famous tech startup synonymous with Silicon Valley, Palantir executives and cofounders have criticized tech founders for not taking a bigger role in upholding Western institutions and supporting American defense and intelligence work. That cultural tension is frequently cited as a motivating factor for the company's 2020 move to Denver, CO. In early 2026, the company announced another move to a suburb of Miami, FL.

After the October 7 attacks, Palantir took out a full-page New York Times ad supporting Israel

Palantir provides its software to the Israeli Defense Forces. Alex Karp has frequently said that while his company's support for Israel may be controversial, it's critical to support Western allies.

Read about Palantir's early days—from a Stanford University dorm to an investment from the CIA

Palantir was originally founded after the 9/11 attacks as a private-sector solution to the government's growing need for advanced intelligence. One of its earliest investors was In-Q-Tel, the CIA's non-profit venture capital firm.

Watch a rare early interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp

Prior to Palantir's public listing in 2020, CEO Alex Karp did not give many interviews. In a rare interview from 2009, Karp discussed the dominance of American technology, his academic background, and the founding idea of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as key players in aiding the fight against terrorism.

In 2025, more than 10 former Palantir employees published a letter condemning the company's partnerships

Thirteen so-called "ex-Palantirians," condemned a $30M deal that gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement near real-time insights on migrants. The letter, named "The Scouring of the Shire" in a nod to "The Lord of the Rings," alleges that the company is violating its code of conduct by supporting this application of its service.

Listen to a former Palantir employee's take on the company

Among other former Palantir employees who have spoken out against the company's role in aiding surveillance and in the American government, former content strategist Juan Sebastían Pinto is concerned that Palantir is creating a monopoly over artificial intelligence.

Learn more about Palantir's 'meritocracy fellowship'

In 2025, Palantir launched a fellowship program for high school graduates to bypass college and begin working at Palantir. The fellowship is positioned as an alternative to American universities, which Palantir leaders and cofounders frequently criticize, and offers students four months of paid training, seminars from business leaders, and return offers to top students.

Palantir's software is widely speculated to have enabled Osama bin Laden's assassination

While Palantir has never publicly confirmed the use of its software in the 2011 assassination, its technology is widely speculated to have been a critical aspect of the operation. However, Palantir executives have never denied the claim, either, and have frequently commented on the software's important role in defending Western civilizations from terrorism.

Palantir's services allow both companies and the government to analyze complex data

There's a common misconception that Palantir buys, sells, and shares data, but Palantir insists it isn't a data broker. Rather, Palantir is more like a data analytics company that allows corporations and government agencies to combine messy, large, and often hard to access datasets to gather insights.

Since its founding, Palantir has refused to sell its software to China or Russia

In line with the founding principle of supporting Western institutions, Palantir has vowed to not share its technology with companies or government agencies in China and Russia—which Palantir frequently calls the West's largest threats.

3 out of Palantir's 5 cofounders once served as editor-in-chief of The Stanford Review

After Peter Thiel founded the conservative student newspaper, he remained involved and invested in the paper's success. Other Palantir cofounders, Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen, also both previously served as the paper's editor-in-chief.

OpenAI helped kick-start an AI arms race in Silicon Valley

Led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI's mission is to "ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity" by making its products open to all users. In 2023, the $86B company behind the chatbot ChatGPT consisted of a for-profit arm under its nonprofit governing board.

Dario Amodei explains what led to his company being designated a supply chain risk

When pressed about the use of Claude in the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Anthropic's CEO acknowledged its contract with the Pentagon. However, he also emphasized that Claude is not to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, in part because the technology is not yet safe or reliable for such uses.

See a website that tracks layoffs

A startup founder has been tracking tech layoffs since 2020. In 2025, 124,201 tech employees were laid off, per the website.

Tech giants like SpaceX and Meta are increasingly behaving like sovereign powers

Companies now make unilateral decisions once reserved for nation-states, such as controlling satellite internet access in active war zones and influencing global information flows. Lawmakers and the international order are struggling to keep up with technological developments, let alone regulate them.

Early testing of the US Army's mixed reality headsets made soldiers perform worse

Soldiers involved in testing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System reported headaches, nausea, limited peripheral vision, and concerns about security due to the display backlighting, which could be viewed from hundreds of meters away. The difficulties led the Department of Defense to transfer the program's contract from Microsoft to Anduril Industries.

The global defense industry in one chart

The world's most valuable defense companies (for example, Lockheed Martin) make up much of the global defense industry. As of 2025, RTX led the pack with a roughly $183B market cap.

The history of ARPANET and how it helped the US military during the Cold War

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958, which recruited scientists to design the first large-scale computer network to support the American military during the Cold War. Academics would use the network to communicate via email among several US research universities.

In 2025, ByteDance agreed to sell the app's US branch

In 2024, US lawmakers passed a requirement for parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the country, which the company challenged in court. After several extensions granted by President Trump, ByteDance agreed to sell the company's US branch to a group of US investors, including Oracle, which will oversee the app's security and cloud computing.

The original 'four horsemen' of tech were Intel, Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco

These companies became known as the "four horsemen of tech" for the influence the companies had both on other businesses and investors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The expansion of internet infrastructure throughout the 1990s and the dot-com bubble lifted these companies to incredible heights.

The National Guard serves both state governors and presidents

Roughly 430,000 trained military personnel act as a strategic reserve for the US military, deployed domestically during natural disasters or unrest as well as overseas. It consists of the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard, overseen at the federal level by the National Guard Bureau.

Meta's former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is a highly influential female business leader

Sandberg joined Facebook as the chief operating officer in 2008, after previously serving as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers' chief of staff under the Clinton Administration and the vice president of global sales and operations at Google. She built a personal brand for herself as a feminist business leader through becoming Facebook's first female board leader in 2012 and her 2013 book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead."

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Twenty of the coolest products from CES 2025

This roundup from Cybernews showcases standout CES 2025 innovations—from flying cars and robot dogs to VR headsets and AI-powered gadgets—showing the event’s most talked-about tech.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.