Palantir harvests battlefield data that Ukraine pays for ‘with blood’
The US company is using Kyiv’s unique war data to train its controversial technologies.
Months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp became the first chief of a major Western Big Tech company to personally visit Kyiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in June 2022 that he was “delighted” to receive the support of such a company in the fight against Russia “on the digital front line”.
Ukraine has since become the first nation in modern history to systematically collect battlefield data, a crucial asset for training military artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise patterns and make predictions.
Its core software platforms, ICM and FALCON, facilitated the administration of US President Donald Trump in detaining and deporting thousands of people, including asylum seekers, since January 2025. Amnesty International found the company aggregated massive amounts of data, built detailed individual profiles to track migrants and asylum seekers and assisted with deportations, contrary to its obligations to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses under international law.