Palantir’s ‘Manifesto’ and the Digital Sovereignty of Other Nations

Imagine if a Brazilian data analysis and artificial intelligence company—founded with seed money from the Brazilian intelligence agency, with the Ministry of Defense as its principal client, and with contracts with security agencies in other countries—published a singular 22-point manifesto on a social media network. It declares that Brazil’s technological elite has “an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation,” that ethical debates about military technology are “theatrical” and a waste of time, that Brazil’s power makes possible “an extraordinarily long peace,” that the age of soft power is over, and that cultures which have not kept pace with Brazilian development “remain dysfunctional and regressive.”

Imagine, further, that this company held active contracts with public health and education agencies in the United States—contracts awarded without competitive tender through a triangulation with a local state-owned enterprise.

What might Washington’s response be? In the current diplomatic climate, it would probably be immediate and forceful. The ambassador would be summoned, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States activated, and congressional investigations launched. No government genuinely committed to national sovereignty would tolerate a foreign company, with ties to its intelligence community, operating within sensitive public systems while declaring explicit allegiance to another nation.

The ‘manifesto’

This scenario is almost precisely what the American company Palantir has just done. Last weekend, Palantir’s official account on X published a 22-point text presented as a summary of The Technological Republic, a book written by the company’s CEO, Alex Karp and its head of corporate affairs, Nicholas Zamiska. The opening—“Because we get asked a lot”—feigned nonchalance. But the content is an explicit geopolitical program from a company that has merged with the machinery of the largest military-industrial complex on earth.

In cartoonish style, the first point asserts that Silicon Valley has “an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation”—the nation being, without any ambiguity, the US. The fifth declares that “The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” dismissing ethical debates as “theatrical.” The twelfth announces that “The atomic age is ending” and that a new era of deterrence built on AI is about to begin. The final points condemn pluralism as “vacant and hollow” and assert that “Some cultures have produced vital advances” while “others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”

As Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat aptly put it, these 22 points “aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating.” This is not the declaration of a neutral technology provider. It is a confession that Palantir is an instrument of American power—and that its contracts with foreign governments must be scrutinized within that logic.

Political scientist Don Moynihan criticized the Palantir manifesto for promoting a fusion between state power and Silicon Valley technology without accountability, allowing the company to exert influence over government decisions through opaque contracts while avoiding public or congressional scrutiny. He argues that this creates ideological “dominant players,” in which state service providers such as Palantir shape defense and digital sovereignty policies without democratic responsibility—contrasting with the need for internal governmental capacity to avoid risky and politicized dependencies.

Palantir’s business in Brazil

The question the manifesto makes impossible to defer is: in light of this declaration, what is Palantir currently doing inside the Brazilian state, and how much longer can this relationship be sustained?

The most thoroughly documented answer concerns the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE). Since March 2024, Palantir has been managing and analyzing data for the National Program for School Transport Support (PNATE). As reported by the Brazilian magazine Carta Capital, the FNDE’s Management Report for the first half of 2025, which is no longer available on the Fund’s website, confirmed the use of the software Palantir Foundry and the Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). The 2024 publication remains accessible and makes explicit mention of it.

The contract was made possible through a kind of triangulation that deserves scrutiny. Via the state-owned IT company Serviço Federal de Processamento de Dados (Serpro), Brazil contracted Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure and, within the AWS Marketplace, Palantir entered as an additional service layer—without a specific tender for Palantir itself, a procurement structure that critics such as sociologist Sérgio Amadeu argue circumvents public competition. Serpro’s own Cloud Solutions Manager confirmed the arrangement at an FNDE event: “Serpro is a great enabler for the FNDE to gain access to the tools of AWS and Palantir.” It would appear that the public IT state company, created to be an alternative vehicle for building our digital sovereignty, was effectively converted into an intermediary for a company that has just declared allegiance to another nation.

And the FNDE is merely the documented case. In August 2024, Palantir’s Vice-President for Latin America stated that the company’s system “now powers many of Brazil’s most important organizations, from government public health and education agencies.” Buried within a statement about a deal with a private company, this reference to state institutions was made without naming contracts and without specifying what data is being processed. It does not appear that any Brazilian authority demanded public clarification.

There is a further layer of risk that remains largely invisible in the Brazilian public debate. In October 2025, the Minister of Health traveled to London to renew the bilateral partnership between the Brazilian public healthcare system (SUS) and the British National Health Service (NHS)—presented, with historical justification, as a co-operation between two of the world’s largest public health systems. What the official communiqué does not mention is that the NHS currently operates its central data platform under a £330 million contract with Palantir—a contract that generated fierce resistance from digital rights organizations in the United Kingdom, such as Foxglove, precisely because of the risks of data sharing and the absence of public debate about the decision.

Researchers from Fiocruz and the Laboratory of Public Policy and Internet (LAPIN) have warned that the Brazil–UK cooperation on digital health—signed in January 2020 under the Bolsonaro government, with McKinsey as "implementing partner"—lacks public transparency about what British influence actually means for the Brazilian strategy. Given that the NHS's central data platform is operated by Palantir, the absence of public detail on the Brazilian side raises a question the researchers themselves flag: how exactly is that British model similar to the Brazilian one?

The Swiss mirror

In Switzerland, the campaign was similar over the last seven years. Last February, the independent magazine Republik published an investigation, based on 59 freedom-of-information requests, revealing that the Swiss Army had commissioned an internal report concluding that Palantir’s systems could be incompatible with Swiss sovereignty. According to Republik, Palantir spent years lobbying for contracts in Switzerland. But ultimately, the Swiss army rejected it over data sovereignty risks. Even with servers located on Swiss territory, American law could compel the company to grant the US government access to data.

Palantir’s reaction to the Republik investigation was instructive. Rather than contesting the facts, the company invoked a judicial “right of reply” mechanism demanding that Republik publish its version of events. The European Federation of Journalists classified the action as a potential Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), the well-known strategy for silencing public participation. A company valued at more than $300 billion sued a small independent magazine for having the temerity to inform Swiss citizens about a risk assessment conducted by its own government. The case is still pending.

Sovereignty under threat

Given the company’s posture at home and abroad, the manifesto published on X represents something without precedent in the global debate on digital governance and even in the political-corporate conduct of American companies. Here is a major technology company with active contracts in the governments of multiple countries publicly declaring, in an organized and proud manner, that it acts as an instrument of power for a specific nation, that it regards ethical debates as theatrical obstacles, and that its allegiance is placed in the geopolitical project of the United States. American technology companies have always been subject to legislation obliging them to answer to the US government. Historically, companies from other sectors have participated in coups d’état and sustained dictatorships across Latin America. But none had previously transformed this action into a corporate identity—until now.

In this context, maintaining contracts with a company that has just published that it has “an affirmative obligation” to the defense of the United States is not merely a political inconsistency. It is a contradiction that undermines the credibility of any digital sovereignty agenda Brazil might wish to pursue—including the Government Cloud that the federal government itself built with Serpro and Dataprev to protect sensitive data. Even the international declarations that President Lula has been making in this regard are compromised by this contractual relationship.

Switzerland reached the conclusion that Palantir’s product was potentially structurally incompatible with its sovereignty. Brazil needs to ask the same question—and with equal seriousness. The government needs to proceed with an audit of existing contracts, verification of the data being processed, an assessment of structural risks, and the termination of ties that cannot be justified in light of the country’s commitments to the protection of its citizens’ data.

Let us return to the hypothetical scene with which we opened this piece. If a Brazilian company with ties to Brazilian intelligence did all of this on American soil, Americans would fear it was capable of espionage. When Palantir does the equivalent in Brazilian territory, we call it the modernization of public administration.

That needs to change.