Palantir exec defends company’s immigration surveillance work

One of the founders of startup accelerator Y Combinator offered unsparing criticism this weekend of the controversial data analytics company Palantir, leading a company executive to offer an extensive defense of Palantir’s work. The back-and-forth came after federal filings showed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy — is paying Palantir $30 million to create what it’s calling the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System, or ImmigrationOS, to help ICE decide who to target for deportation, as well as offering “near real-time visibility” into self-deportations. Y Combinator founder Paul Graham shared headlines about Palantir’s contract on X, writing, “It’s a very exciting time in tech right now. If you’re a first-rate programmer, there are a huge number of other places you can go work rather than at the company building the infrastructure of the police state.” In response, Palantir’s glo ... Read full article.