# Purge Palantir A U.S.-based divestment and boycott coalition campaign targeting [[Palantir]] Technologies — the [[Peter Thiel]]-founded surveillance and defense-tech firm whose software underpins ICE deportations, Pentagon AI targeting, NHS data platforms, and hospital worker-surveillance tools. Purge Palantir is a counterweight-side organizing effort: its premise is that Palantir's business model depends on public-sector contracts and institutional adopters, and that targeted pressure on those anchor customers (hospitals, universities, pension funds, state contracts) can materially constrain the company's growth and political influence. The campaign reached wider public attention in April 2026 after [[Gil Durán]]'s *[The Nerd Reich](https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-to-purge-palantir/)* published "How to Purge Palantir," interviewing lead organizers [[Jacinta González]] and [[João Paulo Connolly]] about tactics, targets, and the escalating stakes following Palantir's 22-point manifesto. ## Lead Organizations - **[[American Friends Service Committee]] (AFSC)** — Quaker peace and justice organization; hosts the campaign's primary research hub and the interactive Palantir locations map. AFSC's investigative arm has driven much of the public-facing documentation of Palantir's institutional ties. - **[[Mijente]]** — Latinx organizing network; originator of the predecessor [[No Tech for ICE]] campaign (2018–2020), which forced Palantir off multiple college campus recruiting circuits and drove early awareness of [[Palantir ICE Systems]]. - **[[MediaJustice]]** — Communications and strategy organization focused on tech accountability; home of [[Jacinta González]], who leads organizing programs. ## Coalition Partners Immigrant rights groups, Palestine solidarity organizations (including [[Jewish Voice for Peace]]), labor unions (notably [[National Nurses United]] via the Timpani / HCA Inspire fight), environmental justice advocates, Bay Area tech-worker organizing (via [[Bay Resistance]] and [[Working Partnerships USA]]), and the Boycott National Committee. The coalition frame deliberately links U.S. deportation enforcement, Gaza operations, and worker-surveillance in hospitals — captured in the campaign's traveling workshop title, "From Minneapolis to Gaza, Purge Palantir!" ## Core Tools ### Palantir Locations Map Launched by AFSC on **February 11, 2026**. An interactive map of institutions, investors, pension funds, universities, and political figures connected to Palantir. The map surfaced previously under-reported ties at Johns Hopkins, Rutgers–New Brunswick, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a wide network of U.S. hospital systems. ### Palantir Payroll A campaign tool tracking Palantir-linked political contributions to U.S. legislators — framed to make visible the "revolving door" pipeline between the company and federal agencies. Per [[Jacinta González]], the goal is "accountability around how they're using money to be able to manipulate the political environment and also policy." ### Divestment Workshop Series "From Minneapolis to Gaza" online workshop series, teaching local organizers how to run divestment and boycott campaigns against specific Palantir-connected institutions — hospitals, universities, and state pension funds. ## Targets Purge Palantir's targeting theory is that Palantir's most politically exposed revenue flows are *not* its Pentagon and intelligence contracts (which are insulated) but its **civilian anchor customers** — the hospitals, universities, and pension funds whose institutional reputations are vulnerable to public pressure. Specific target categories: - **Hospital systems** using [[Palantir Foundry]] (patient data analytics) or HCA Inspire / Timpani (nurse scheduling and worker surveillance) - **Universities** with Palantir research partnerships or recruiting pipelines - **State public-employee pension funds** holding Palantir equity (documented by *Sludge* in March 2026) - **Municipal and county contracts** for data analytics - **Prime contractors' subcontractor stacks** — added in practice in August 2026 (see the Milwaukee win below): pressuring a *bidder* rather than a buyer, so that carrying Palantir becomes a scoring liability in a competitive public procurement. The largest of these surfaces by dollar volume, and the only one that works pre-emptively. ## Campaign Wins ### NYC Health + Hospitals (March 2026) At a March 16, 2026 New York City Council meeting, NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Mitchell Katz disclosed that the hospital system's $4M Palantir contract would not be renewed when it expires in October 2026. The contract had drawn sustained protest from Purge Palantir organizers, who objected to NYCHH routing patient data through a company whose platforms also power ICE deportation operations and lethal airstrike targeting. NYCHH will bring the data-analysis work in-house. This was the campaign's first high-profile civilian-contract win. ### Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Divestment Vote (June 2026) On June 30, 2026, the 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted unanimously to divest the denomination's ~$2.5M stake in [[Palantir]] and GE Aerospace, naming [[ICE]], the Department of War, and the Israeli military. Reported as the first U.S. denomination to directly and successfully target Palantir for divestment, it gave the campaign a portable, roll-call-clean template that was being cited within weeks in the push for New Jersey pension divestment and the Minneapolis campaign against the Swiss National Bank's ~$1.1B PLTR stake. See [[PCUSA Palantir Divestment Vote]]. ### Jacobs Drops Palantir to Win a $700M Milwaukee Contract (August 2026) On August 17, 2026, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's ad hoc committee unanimously recommended [[Jacobs Solutions]] over incumbent [[Veolia]] for a 10-year wastewater contract worth up to $700M — after Jacobs agreed, **as part of its final bid**, to end its 2022 strategic partnership with [[Palantir]]. Local organizing (Comité Sin Fronteras, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, following Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporting) had rallied against the connection on July 20; Rev. Al Sharpton raised it publicly on August 14. This is the campaign's first win by a **different mechanism**. Every prior action asked an institution to end its *own* relationship with Palantir, which requires a governing body to take an affirmative, attributable vote. Here the pressure landed on a bidder's supply chain and resolved **pre-emptively**: Jacobs dropped Palantir before it had the contract, unprompted by any MMSD requirement, because the association had become a scoring liability. ⚠️ Keep the caveat attached — Jacobs' bid was also **$54M below** Veolia's, so no source establishes the divestiture was decisive. The defensible claim is that the relationship was a liability the bidder chose to eliminate rather than defend. Full Commission vote due September 2026. See [[Jacobs MMSD Palantir Divestiture]]. ### BMA Pullback Recommendation (February 2026) While not a direct campaign action, the British Medical Association's call for NHS doctors to refuse non-direct-care use of [[Palantir NHS Federated Data Platform]] was informed by the same concerns about ICE-linked data integration that Purge Palantir has been surfacing. The BMA explicitly cited Palantir's [[Palantir ICE Systems]] deployment as rationale. ## The Palantir Manifesto as Catalyst (April 2026) On April 19, 2026, Palantir published a 22-point manifesto on its official X account summarizing CEO [[Alex Karp]]'s 2025 book *[[The Technological Republic]]*. Key planks: - **Compulsory military service:** "National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost." - **Silicon Valley as militant arm of the state:** "Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation"; tech firms owe a "moral debt" to the United States. - **Remilitarization of former Axis powers:** "The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone." - **Hard-power software supremacy:** "Hard power in this century will be built on software." - **AI weapons inevitability:** "The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose." - **Rejection of pluralism:** Critiques "the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism"; asserts "certain cultures and indeed subcultures have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful." Critics across outlets — Common Dreams, Truthout, Al Jazeera, Fast Company, TechPolicy.Press — characterized the document as "technofascism" and an explicit pivot away from the reluctant-warrior posture Karp had previously cultivated. Purge Palantir organizers have used the manifesto as an organizing accelerant, arguing it confirms the campaign's framing that Palantir is not a neutral tech vendor but an ideological actor advocating a specific (and authoritarian-adjacent) vision of state power. Per Gil Durán's reporting, the manifesto dissolved the remaining ambiguity about Palantir's politics — making the case for divestment easier to carry into rooms that previously treated it as a niche concern. ## The Framing: Why This Moment [[Gil Durán]]'s interview with González and Connolly laid out the coalition's strategic read: 1. **Palantir's technology is the operational spine** of the Trump-era surveillance state — enabling ICE raids, merging federal databases across agencies, and extending into worker surveillance via hospital scheduling apps like Timpani / HCA Inspire. 2. **The business model is dependent on government revolving doors** — traced back to CIA venture funding through [[In-Q-Tel]] in 2003 and continuing through personnel pipelines into [[DOGE Ecosystem]] (see [[DOGE-Palantir Nexus]]). 3. **The manifesto reveals intent** — what was previously defensible as contractor pragmatism now reads as an ideological program for compulsory service, AI warfare, and Silicon Valley militarization. 4. **Institutional pressure is viable** — the NYC Health + Hospitals win, the NHS pullback, and growing university/pension-fund scrutiny suggest that civilian anchor customers can be peeled away. ## Counter-Campaign Response Right-leaning outlets including [[City Journal]] have argued that Purge Palantir's pressure on Palantir contracts constitutes a threat to U.S. national security — a framing that attempts to reclassify institutional divestment as subversion. Palantir itself has published "Correcting the Record" blog posts responding to EFF, NYT, and American Conservative reports, and its UK leadership has lobbied the British government to preserve the NHS contract amid BMA opposition. ## See Also - [[Palantir]] — Company record - [[Palantir Product Ecosystem]] — Master product reference - [[Palantir ICE Systems]] — FALCON / ICM / ImmigrationOS - [[Palantir NHS Federated Data Platform]] — UK healthcare deployment - [[DOGE-Palantir Nexus]] — Federal database integration - [[Alex Karp]] — Author of the 22-point manifesto's source book - [[Peter Thiel]] — Founding investor and political architect - [[Stephen Miller]] — Palantir stakeholder / immigration policy architect - [[Jacinta González]] — Lead organizer - [[João Paulo Connolly]] — Lead organizer - [[Gil Durán]] — Journalist whose reporting elevated the campaign - [[No Tech for ICE]] — Predecessor Mijente campaign (2018–2020) - [[Jacobs MMSD Palantir Divestiture]] — the supply-chain-pressure win (August 2026) - [[Palantir-USA Today Audience Data Partnership]] — the newsroom front - [[Palantir DoD Sole-Source Funding Memo]] — the procurement side the campaign cannot reach - [[The Unholy Alliance]] — Coalition framework - [[Tanton Network]] — Anti-immigration infrastructure enabled by Palantir ICE Systems