If you were unfamiliar with the American analytics company Palanatir Technologies, prepare to hear about it on every news channel in the coming months. Donald Trump secured the presidency twice because he was the anti-establishment candidate. The White House has tasked Planatir with developing an extensive centralized federal database to house the personal data of every American citizen.
In March 2025, Donald Trump signed an “Information Silos” executive order focused on “removing unnecessary barriers to federal employees accessing government data and promoting inter‑agency data sharing are important steps toward eliminating bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency.”
Planatir was a clear choice. At least three DOGE employees formerly worked at Palantir, and co-founder Peter Thiel has supported both Trump and Vance on the campaign trail. Peter Thiel, who also co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, donated around $1.5 million to Trump during his 2016 Presidential campaign. Thiel spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention and joined Trump’s transition team after he won. Thiel did not contribute to the Trump campaign in 2020 and stated he wanted to remain neutral by declining to back any political candidate in 2024 financially.
J.D. Vance would not be in his current position without Peter Thiel. Thiel spent $15 million helping JD Vance secure his Senate seat in the 2022 election. The two men met in 2011 after Thiel gave a speech at Yale Law School and developed a close friendship, with Thiel becoming a mentor to Vance and guiding him as he transitioned from law to venture capital. First, Thiel secured Vance a seat at Mithril Capital, another firm he co-founded. Vance went on to launch his own firm called Narya Capital, and Thiel heavily invested in his project. Thiel provided the doorway for Vance to reach key players in Silicon Valley who would go on to fund his political aspirations.
Going further, Peter Thiel introduced J.D. Vance to Donald Trump in 2021 at a meeting in Mar-a-Lago. Trump went on to support Vance’s 2022 Ohio Senate run, and as we know, tapped him on the shoulder two years later to run beside him as vice president.
Palantir has received $113 million in government contracts since Trump and Vance entered the White House. The Department of Defense awarded Palantir an additional $795 million last week. The company experienced a 45% YoY increase in government revenue in the first quarter of 2025 alone. The stock itself rose over 80% since Trump and Vance took office.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Social Security Administration, and the Department of Education have already begun working with Palantir engineers to develop the most extensive federal database in US history. Social security numbers, medical claims, tax filings, bank information, immigration records, education records, debt—every piece of information that various agencies have collected on American citizens will be transferred tothe coming centralized database.
The agency has long worked with the US government. Former President Joe Biden awarded the company a contract during COVID through the Defense Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track vaccine distribution.
Alex Karp, the other founder of Plantir, said his company was focused on “the finding of hidden things” within massive databases. One can imagine the patterns that the government will seek from the American public. Yes, the government already has everyone’s data, but this centralized database will yield tremendous power and grant the government the ability to easily and instantaneously access every single trace of data their various agencies have compiled on US citizens.
The New York Times reported that Palantir employees are urging the company to reconsider this contract as they are worried it will damage the company’s reputation.
“We act as a data processor, not a data controller,” a spokesperson for Palantir said. “Our software and services are used under direction from the organisations that license our products: these organisations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.” Essentially, the firm is stating that they merely compile the data that the government provides to them.
Government databases are routinely hacked. The threat of abuse is massive. India, Brazil, Estonia, and Pakistan are among the other nations that have compiled centralized databases on their citizens; however, no comparison has garnered more attention than China’s National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC).
China boasts the most comprehensive and extensive citizen database in the world, containing data on over 1.3 billion citizens. The government has instant access to the lives of its citizens. Healthcare, education, legal information, banking—any and every possible pinch of data that could be gathered goes into the database. China has also collected biometric data from its citizens, including fingerprints, and in some instances, voice samples and facial scans have been recorded. The NCIIC is directly tied to China’s infamous Social Credit System, whereby the government assigns a score to each citizen based on their behavior.
The government could easily create digital IDs based on this centralized database. The United States has never defaulted on or canceled its currency. But what would happen if it became necessary to avoid a collapse? CBDC.
This initiative has sparked significant backlash among Trump’s supporters, who believed he was against government overreach. DOGE helped streamline government functions and reduce excessive waste. Some believe the database will help government agencies perform their tasks more efficiently, unaware of the sheer power this system will contain. Donald Trump is the President of the United States—he is the establishment now. The true regime change and restructuring of the system will not come until after 2032. In the meantime, Americans are now at risk of living under a dystopian surveillance state where their every action is monitored and tracked. It remains to be seen what “patterns” the new system will be seeking, but rest assured that personal capital will be of major interest to the US government as its debt rises.