PG&E’s Connection to Palantir Exposed and Protested

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar

(San Francisco, October 7) - Palantir, a leader in the technology of repression, has been getting more and more publicity lately as protests throughput the Bay Area increasingly call them out.

For instance, on September 30, over a thousand nurses marched to the San Fransisco ICE detention center to protest Palantir’s involvement in ICE ‘s targeting of people seeking medical care.

On February 3rd, protesters broke up an energy industry conference in San Diego forcing attendees, including a PG&E executive, to flee.

Their offices in downtown Palo Alto are seeing frequent protests.

Palantir’s work includes integrating databases which provide massive, detailed information on millions of people, where they go, what they say or write and who they communicate with. Human rights advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Amnesty International, have long criticized Palantir for its contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Palantir had been named for supplying its artificial intelligence and data-analytics platforms (such as Gotham) to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and military services, implicating them in the Gaza genocide.

While PG&E might be using Palatir's AI tools for little more that analyzing fire risks and equipment failures, as they claim, doing business with war criminals does raise profound ethical questions. The point was brought home by protesters at this morning’s PG&E conference at the San Francisco Hilton hotel near Union Square.

They lined up at the hotel’s main entrance and with considerable volume, made their feelings known. A large red banner on the building across the street supported them.

See all high resolution photos here.