Partnership to Build World’s Premier Surveillance Network

A chilling partnership was just announced between one of the world’s most high-tech surveillance companies, Palantir, and one of the world’s leading semiconductor and high-performance computing firms, Nvidia. But from reading the jargon-heavy press release about it, you would be hard-pressed to understand the basics of the alliance—much less its worrying implications.

• Palantir works with a range of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to assess and track potential criminal activity. It was cofounded by German-American billionaire Peter Thiel and has been vital to United States President Donald Trump’s immigration and deportation programs. Once established, such systems can expand far beyond their original purpose, giving authorities unprecedented reach into citizens’ private lives.

• Nvidia is the global leader for AI and high-performance semiconductors. Its systems enable companies to build the world’s most powerful machine-learning models, process massive datasets, and push the boundaries of all manner of supercomputing. It can basically turbocharge a company’s operations, greatly streamlining activities and unlocking new capabilities.

It’s no wonder these two organizations would wish to obfuscate what it means for them to join forces.

The press release discusses “aip workloads,” “compliance domains,” “nvidia cuOpt™ decision optimization software,” “context-aware reasoning,” “business-critical workflows” and “route optimization libraries.”

Beneath the opaque language lies a stark reality: This alliance will empower the government to monitor, profile and control Americans to an unprecedented degree—with virtually no oversight or accountability.