Palantir ad sparks backlash

A Palantir newspaper ad backing Israel set off a fresh round of online criticism, with one viral X post turning the ad into a proxy fight over the Gaza war. (cnbc.com) Palantir Chief Executive Alex Karp said in a March 13, 2024 CNBC interview that the company had taken out a full-page ad in The New York Times in October 2023 stating it “stands with Israel.” CNBC said Karp also acknowledged that his pro-Israel stance had led some employees to leave the company. (cnbc.com) The backlash cited in this episode spread on X, where Kim Dotcom reposted the ad and called it tone-deaf in a post identified by URL as status 2045653059699954079. The post itself is publicly reachable on X, though engagement figures were not independently visible in the fetched page. (x.com) Palantir’s ad did not land in a vacuum. On January 12, 2024, Bloomberg reported that Palantir had agreed to a strategic partnership with Israel’s Defense Ministry to provide technology for “war-related missions” during the conflict in Gaza. (bloomberg.com) That sequence — a public ad in October 2023 and a defense partnership in January 2024 — tied Palantir’s brand more closely to Israel than many U.S. software companies. TIME’s 2024 list of influential companies noted both moves in the same profile of the firm. (time.com) Palantir has framed that position as part of a broader policy of supporting U.S. allies. In the CNBC interview, Karp said the company “only supplies its products to Western allies,” placing Israel alongside Palantir’s government work in the United States and Europe. (cnbc.com) Critics have argued that Palantir’s software and public messaging make the company complicit in Israel’s military campaign. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre published allegations about Palantir’s role and also included the company’s response, which said its Israel work predates the October 7 attacks and aligns with its support for “US allies and liberal democracies.” (business-humanrights.org) The dispute fits Palantir’s longer pattern of attracting political heat around national security contracts. The company has faced separate protests over work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and over its surveillance tools, which has made its foreign-policy messaging easier to mobilize against online. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) In this case, a print ad bought months earlier kept circulating as a social-media artifact. Palantir used a traditional newspaper page to make a political statement, and critics used a single viral post to keep that statement in the feed. (cnbc.com)