Love in the time of Palantir

To a lot of people, Palantir is a mystery — what does the company know, what data do they have, and (if they have it) what do they do with it all? We dig into that mystery and take you to a singles event to see if Big Data is good for Big Dating. That event, deep in the heart of Manhattan, is called: “Singles Dating Matching Using Palantir Data.” The evening promised: “Data analysis!” and “Pattern matching!” We decided that we needed to know more. Read: - Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD - Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUB - Our weekly Indicator round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicator Follow: - Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuws - TikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrq - YouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3C - Facebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more atplus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and edited by Jess Jiang. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo and Maggie Luthar and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. Music: Universal Production Music - "Silvana’s Theme," "Masseria Del Sud," Sunset in Florence," and "An Italian Romance" See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:17Speaker 01

  This is Planet Money from NPR.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  A few weeks ago, there was an ad on Instagram for an event in New York called Singles Dating Matching Using Palantir Data. The ad went on to explain that if you bought a ticket, you could come, maybe find love, using the same technology that tracked down Osama bin Laden. The evening promised "data analysis and 'pattern matching'!" To be clear, Palantir is a company known for working with ICE and the Department of Defense, and it is rumored to have helped track down bin Laden, although that has never been confirmed. Needless to say, Palantir, not known for making love matches. Now, look, this event is clearly at least a little bit of a joke, but we wanted to see who would show up.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Can I ask why you guys came tonight?

• 1:08Speaker 03

  We both work in tech, and we're critical of tech, but also wanted to see how we might be optimized for love.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Are you actually looking to meet anybody? I mean, if it happens, it happens. Are you nervous? Hmm, like on a 1 to 10, maybe like a 4? Zaza Swang, Alejandro Ojeda Olarte, and Lina Rolcas were some of the 60 or so people who'd bought a $20 ticket to this event. Most had given the organizer their name and their phone number. So the question was, what data could be pulled about them with just that info? Zach Young and Latifah Alabi weren't sure.

• 1:47Speaker 04

  I want to see what my file holds. And I was maybe teased that they found a lot about me.

• 1:55Speaker 05

  I really don't have a ton to hide, or I'm scared of famous last words, I guess.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Palantir is a company that makes software in order to analyze data. And there is this public perception of Palantir as a monolithic panopticon company, watching all of us all the time. And so a lot of people came to this event just trying to figure out what is the truth about Palantir, including Latifah.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  If they're really going to show the data Palantir and flock cameras have, it's also a good privacy awareness event, right? Like, you should know what everybody else knows about you.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Another attendee, Jeannie Chan, she was concerned about her secrets being found in all the data. But she had also found a way to maintain some privacy. What data are you worried about them knowing about you?

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Um, ooh, that's a good one. I'm afraid to say.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  But there's something on the internet that you're like, I hope they don't find that.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  I'm sure there is, yes.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  How much faith do you have in their accuracy?

• 2:56Speaker 00

  I hope not great, but also my name is pretty common as well.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  So when you search your name, you'll find a whole bunch of different people?

• 3:03Speaker 00

  A bunch, a lot, yes. I actually even have a doppelganger who does my job, my role, living in New York. So I hope they find that one.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Talking to the people here, everyone's got a lot of questions about data surveillance these days. And it is clear that Palantir is this company that looms large in our collective psyche. But most people don't have a real sense of what they're actually doing. So the event organizer wanted to show the power of what is possible. He combed the data out there, pulled info about the attendees, and compiled dating profiles and some potential matches. We are just about ready to get started and give you your match. You're not going to find it. We're going to give it to you. So step on over this way, down the hall to the right. Your match awaits. Come on in.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Amanda Aronchik. Today on the show, we're taking you to a singles event to learn about the company Palantir, of course. What better way? To a lot of people, Palantir is a mystery. What do they know? What data do they have? And what do they do with it all? We will dig into that mystery and our eventgoers' attempt to find love in the data.

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• 5:32Speaker 02

  James Steinberg, the organizer of this Palantir-inspired dating night, has put together a bunch of random tech events over the years.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  A lot of my events start with the pun or the joke.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Like the upcoming "Build a Happy Little Robot That Draws", or "Rehome a Crypto Bro", where people can pitch hobbies to bros who are trying to move on from crypto.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  I'm a tech guy, throwing weird tech events that are somewhat comedic, somewhat tech, somewhat-- always a little weird.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  James is a real, actual tech guy who has founded some startups and spent time working as a cybersecurity CTO. So he does know a lot about online privacy. Several months ago, he came up with this idea.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  This was too perfect. Palantir Dating is too perfect.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Now, we should say, James is not using, quote-unquote, "data" from Palantir. He's not using anything from Palantir. For James, this event is more of a dark joke, which initially, no one thought was very funny.

• 6:29Speaker 04

  I talked to a lot of venues, and as soon as I said the word "Palantir", they just were like, "No." And I was like, but you realize I'm not-- this is like a joke, it's satire. They're like, "Nope." So I was like, oh, maybe this is too much.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Palantir has been in the news because of its contracts with ICE, because some of the things co-founders Alex Karp and Peter Thiel have said publicly, and also because it has been used in the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran. It is known for shortening the kill chain. So the military has been using Palantir's tools to more quickly identify people it intends to kill. So it is not all that surprising that an event about Palantir and dating scared off a few venues, maybe some eventgoers as well. But recently, something has changed. People want to better understand what exactly Palantir is doing and what data they might have. I think when people hear the word "Palantir",

• 7:24Speaker 02

  they think this is a company that owns all of the data. So do they own the data? Do they buy the data? Do they sell the data?

• 7:32Speaker 05

  They do not own the data. They do not buy the data, and they definitely don't sell the data.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  This is Mike Steinberger. He writes for The New York Times Magazine, and he recently published a book about Palantir. Mike started reporting on the company about seven years ago. Mike says that Palantir's mission was to work with government agencies like the CIA. They have succeeded, and they've worked with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the IRS, the Department of Justice, as well as foreign governments and countless businesses. And while there are times when one of Palantir's forward-deployed engineers-- yes, that's what they call employees who go out in the field to work with clients-- when these engineers are working closely with a government agency or a company, then they can see that organization's data.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  But yeah, apart from those instances, Palantir does not actually have access to the data. It is simply providing a tool that enables organizations to make better, faster use of their own data.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Palantir makes software. They don't keep any data, and that is an intentional choice. They say that they care a lot about privacy, so much so that they have built in guardrails. Like, every time an action is performed on Palantir's platform, it is logged, and there's a record of it. So what does this software that Palantir developed actually do? It basically takes messy data sets from all over an organization and makes them legible and useful. Here's an example. About 10 years ago, Palantir started working with the manufacturer Airbus.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  The relationship began because Airbus was having some production glitches with its A350 airplane. It was costing the company a lot of money because if you don't deliver planes on time, you're paying penalties to the airlines that have purchased them. A real problem. Palantir was brought in, and the software was able to identify where things were breaking down very quickly.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  At times, Mike says, Airbus was missing their deadline to deliver a plane, and it was taking them nearly a month to just figure out when and where something had gone wrong. They couldn't see the entire production line at once, and Airbus's planes were being assembled in eight different plants over four different countries. So they called in Palantir.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Palantir just merged just-- it seemed a very large amount of data very quickly and found the needles in the haystack, where things were breaking down.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Palantir's software created a visual representation of the entire A350 production line for Airbus. It's kind of like a digital twin, where the data gets updated in real time. Before Airbus started using Palantir's software, it took almost a month to find and fix production glitches. After, they were able to cut that time down by a week. In some ways, what Palantir does is kind of workaday, maybe even boring. But basically, the big idea is that the answer to your company's thorniest issues can be found in the data, if only you could see it. I want to ask you a question that I'm sure you get asked all the time, which is like, is Palantir's software good for making love matches?

• 10:39Speaker 05

  I mean, it's possible. It is very-- it is-- you know, one of the distinguishing features of their software is that it is very flexible, very malleable, can be put to all sorts of purposes. And I suppose with their very talented engineers, they could make it a very useful way of trying to find a suitable life partner.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Which brings us back to the main event, Dating Night. James, the event organizer, is now on stage, addressing a crowd of about 60 people.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  Are you here for dating?

• 11:13Speaker 05

  Are you here for Palantir? Big data, big dating?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  James is tall, blondish with a beard. He is wearing meta glasses to record the event. He's kind of giving nerdy host. He tells the crowd, no, he does not, nor has he ever worked for Palantir. Yes, he has some friends who work there and he's tried out the platform before, so he's familiar with it. But he is not in any way, shape or form actually using Palantir's software tonight. And no, they did not endorse this event.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  I don't know if you know, Palantir actually sent me an email to say, don't use the word Palantir and stop doing this type of thing. But yeah, they, at the moment, they're just saying cease and desist, but there's a very good chance they could sue me. I could lose everything. There is a lot at stake, but it would all be worth it if at least two people here have a spark. So, no pressure.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  No pressure, everybody. Just find your soulmate. James had spent the previous 50 hours taking everyone's phone number and their name and using methodologies inspired by Palantir to put together dating profiles on the people in the crowd. He's used data enrichment, basically taking one piece of data and enriching it with more data. He's used facial recognition software, reverse phone number lookup, bounty hunter databases. He's a licensed bounty hunter. Also, court records, leaked data that's ended up on the dark web. You know, these are a bunch of tricks that he learned while he was working in cybersecurity.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  I've prepared some unusually specific facts about the audience. Is Becca here?

• 12:51Speaker 05

  Becca. Earlier, earlier this year, Becca, you went to Cleveland to see Jake and Jamie's beautiful wedding, right?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Becca gave part of a speech at a wedding.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Do you think there was maybe too many Taylor Swift references?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Becca says, though, that is not her fault. She didn't write it. The crowd is somewhat impressed, although these details are probably Googleable. There's also a more traditional dating event segment. Based on everyone's dating profiles, James has given everyone a number and a color. And James's co-host, comedian Neil Patel, calls up the first potential couple.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  I do want to call up a blue 17 and entity blue 80. Are you guys here?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Two people, number 17 and number 80, stand up and approach the stage.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  All right, coming up, okay, cool, yes.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  As they make their way, I imagine they are filled with that very specific kind of dread that comes from being pulled onstage at a live event. So far, they appear to be game. They sit down beside each other onstage, and there's a big screen behind them. Comedian Pete Bommer takes the mic.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  Let's give it up for Zach and Jeannie, huh?

• 14:00Speaker 05

  They're doing a weird thing. Zach, what is, what is something that you look for in a significant other?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  It's a bit hard to hear, but Zach says, I like people who read.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Jeannie, you reading much these days?

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Let's just all go home. This is a waste. Okay, I can see the conversation's a little stilted.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  At this point, James decides to take control and starts to use the dating profiles that he's put together. He's madly typing on his phone, and random pieces of information about Jeannie start popping up on the screen. The first data point says, Jeannie did something with the Ministry of Agriculture in Indonesia.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  Tell us about your experience in agriculture.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Are you sure that's me?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Jeannie, turns out, has never done anything with the Ministry of Agriculture in Indonesia.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  There may be mistakes. This was in the event description. Also, maybe Palantir knows something that you don't about yourself. Maybe one day you will do something with the Ministry of Agriculture in Indonesia.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  They then put up a couple of photos of Jeannie.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  Is that a real image?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Jeannie looks over her shoulder to see.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Um, I'm absolutely offended. Neither of those people are me.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  Oh, nevermind, sorry. Why did you do that, man?

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Jeannie, who I spoke with before the show, did say that there is a woman with the same name as her and the same job who also lives in New York. So, the real Jeannie was going to be hard to find. But also, facial recognition software is notoriously bad at recognizing people of color. So, that leads regularly to misidentifying people, also seems kind of racist. The upshot is that Jeannie has succeeded at keeping her privacy. James and the facial recognition software he used had an easier time with Zach, a tall, white man with a beard and glasses. The hosts start reading from Zach's dossier. The dossier was created, again with Palantir-inspired techniques,

• 15:58Speaker 02

  taking different data sources and connecting them to find surprising details. They project some of those details up on the big screen. Is Zach a machine learning engineer?

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Oh, are you a machine learning engineer?

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Did he work for Nike? Yep.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  They start with the easy stuff, almost definitely on his LinkedIn profile. But then the info gets more specific. Zach keeps looking over his shoulder at the screen behind him. Did Zach build an online tool for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign? Yeah. Did Zach march in an anti-Ice demonstration? Yeah, yeah, he did.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  How was your, did you do a week in Goa?

• 16:38Speaker 04

  Uh, I did do a week in Goa.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, how was that?

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Zach told me he never posted anything about going to Goa or that anti-Ice protest. So, he was really thrown that James had found that out. And then James started sharing photos of Zach on the big screen. And this was when Zach got really unnerved. I called him up later to ask about the photos.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Um, there's a photo of me at a protest that was, you know, from just someone taking a photo of the crowd. And there was a photo of me, what looks like it was, it was at a concert, I think by the band. And you could see me in like the third row back at the concert.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Wait, by the band, what do you mean?

• 17:22Speaker 04

  The photo was taken from on the stage.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Did you not know that those have been taken at all?

• 17:27Speaker 04

  At all, at all.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Zach did not realize that just walking around in the world and being photographed was growing his digital footprint, and that all of these details were so findable, especially with facial recognition technology. Everything it put together created an eerily accurate picture of his life.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  I never thought of myself as like consenting to being searchable by my face. And like, oh, any photo that gets taken of me here is like part of my public record now. I think that's, um, I can't imagine it would be a very popular technology if more people knew that this was possible.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Even though Zach works in AI, he hadn't known what was possible. The rest of the Palantir dating evening involved more potential couples getting pulled onstage and more dating profiles, which were hit or miss. Then, when it was over, everyone headed to the bar down the hall to mingle, flirt, and unpack what they'd just been through.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  After the break, we will dig in more to how Palantir is creating tools that the government can use to assemble files on millions of people. And did Palantir dating actually make any matches? Was there love to be found in the data? That's coming up.

• 18:54Speaker 00

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• 20:21Speaker 02

  Now, I spoke with many of the people who came out for this weird dating event. And one of the reasons they gave for coming was that they did want to know more about Palantir. In particular, people wanted to know, what does the government know about individuals? Do they have files on Americans? And how is Palantir helping them? Mike Steinberger, the author of the book on Palantir, says yes. Palantir tools have been helping the government organize their data and make files on people.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  This was a company that was founded in the aftermath of 9/11.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  At that time, the CIA and the FBI were dealing with the failure of not stopping 9/11, even though there'd been a lot of intel warning them. Palantir's pitch to the CIA was that if data could be pulled from both agencies brought together, it might have been evident what was going to happen. Maybe they could help prevent future attacks. Around 2005, Palantir gets a contract with the CIA and embeds with some of their analysts. And they're building software that helps track and create files about people suspected of being involved with terrorism. In the past, the government's digital systems were perhaps lacking. Also, data was often intentionally siloed. And there were firewalls between government agencies

• 21:38Speaker 02

  to keep them from sharing too much data. This is largely because of some dark chapters in US history. Think the 1940s, when the US Census Bureau gave over its data to the War Department so they could round up Japanese Americans and imprison them. Or during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, when President Nixon used FBI data to target his enemies.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  It was recognized that while this might have resulted in inefficiencies, what we didn't want was a master database

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:09Speaker 05

  of personal information on Americans, because that was a scary prospect.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  The fear of a master database led to the Privacy Act of 1974, which basically said, if the government is collecting data for one reason, like for filing taxes, it was not allowed to give that data to another government agency that wanted to use it for some other reason, not without consent. But last year, President Trump signed an executive order called "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos." This attempted to remove some of those firewalls. There was also a memo of understanding between ICE and the IRS, because ICE was trying to get taxpayer info. Things like that have made it possible

• 22:55Speaker 02

  for ICE to now access 30 to 40 different data sets. This is where Palantir's software becomes very useful to the government. The government can use the software to enrich disparate data sets, find patterns and connections, and create much more detailed files about individual people and the networks that they're a part of.

• 23:16Speaker 05

  It appears that Palantir has been the technological backbone for a vast surveillance apparatus that ICE has been constructing.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  So, does this mean, and this is why these people, many of these people came to this dating night, they were like, I believe that Palantir has created some dossier about me. And it's got my driver's license, and it's got my license plate, and it's got my tax filings, my cellphone number, my location, my search habits, my buying things. Like, does that now exist?

• 23:47Speaker 05

  Well, it appears that ICE is collecting much more extensive information about some parts of the population that it has in the past. And it's not Palantir that has the information, but Palantir is making ICE's job easier.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  It used to take ICE hours to locate people. And they only got the person they were looking for a quarter of the time. But now, according to an article from 404 Media, with the help of Palantir's software, ICE can locate people in minutes. And this database apparently has 20 million names in it. That is substantially more than the estimated number of undocumented people currently living in the US, which means ICE presumably has files on people who are here legally or who are American citizens.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  People can sit here and say, well, you know, they're going after people who are here illegally, people who've been earmarked for deportation.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 24:42Speaker 05

  You know, they're not going to, it's not going to bother me. And maybe that's true. But a lot of information is being pulled in. And, you know, I don't share the confidence that this won't be turned on other segments of the population.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  In some ways, this is the moment for Palantir's software. If an organization wants some data, that organization can scrape the whole internet. Plus, the government is desiloing some of their data. And Palantir's software is very good at connecting these disparate sets of data and making sense of them. We reached out to Palantir, and they declined to be interviewed. But in response to critics in the past, they've said they are not working on any master surveillance database for the government. Although Mike says Palantir might not know what the government is doing with their software.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  Well, the problem has always been that Palantir doesn't ultimately control what its customers do with the technology.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  It does not exercise that level of oversight.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  We also reached out to ICE, and we didn't hear back.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  As of right now, September 2026, Palantir has not sued James or anyone involved in the Palantir dating event. So, James went ahead, booked two more of these for the coming months. Zach, the guy who got on stage, for his part, he signed up because he thought it would be a funny way to spend a Friday night. And he says it was. He was also open to the possibility of matchmaking. I hope you don't mind me asking. It has been a week. Did you meet anyone you were at all interested in seeing again?

• 26:25Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  No kidding?

• 26:27Speaker 07

  No kidding.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  That's exciting. Zach was a little shy about the details. I didn't want to pry too much. When are you guys going to get drinks?

• 26:36Speaker 07

  Tonight.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Tonight?

• 26:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Well, so this Palantir dating event did, in fact, create some, I don't want to say love, that's a little strong, but at least some dating matches.

• 26:50Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, again, like, it was definitely a bit stressful, a bit uncomfortable. But having, you know, basically, my resume read off on stage was kind of an advantage, because people who were interested in me could just come up after.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Right, right. I hadn't thought, like, you had a bit of an advantage, which was you were put up for display along with your resume.

• 27:17Speaker 07

  A little bit.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  OK, well, do me a favor. If tonight's date goes extremely well, and like, six months, a year passes, you're still together, check in and let us know, OK? Because that would be incredible. We want to know.

• 27:30Speaker 07

  OK, can do.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  According to event organizer James, at least six phone numbers were exchanged that night, four dates were made, and one couple even began their date immediately after the event ended.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Thank you, as always, to our NPR Plus subscribers. Your regular support helps us be more ambitious. If you want to support Planet Money and the reporting we do, sign up at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. And thank you. Today's episode was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kessler and was edited by Jess Jang. It was engineered by Sina LaFredo and Maggie Luthar, and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Mike Steinberger's book is titled "The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State." I'm Amanda Aronchuk. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

• 28:39Speaker 06

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• 29:15Speaker 00

  This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab. Financial decisions can be tricky. Your biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/financialdecoder.