Palantir has hired former Sen. Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat and organic farmer, as an adviser as the company braces for Democratic scrutiny of its government work, NPR reported.
"My agreement with Palantir is advisory in nature, it is not lobbying," Tester, who lost reelection in 2024, told NPR. Tech companies expecting investigations over ties to the Trump administration have been hiring former Democratic lawmakers and aides ahead of the January change in Congress. Palantir, the software and artificial intelligence firm named by founder Peter Thiel after a "seeing stone" in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, has been accused of abetting mass surveillance of Americans and immigrants. "Perception is reality in Washington, D.C., and in politics in general," Tester said. "But the fact is, I think Palantir has got a good story to tell, and they need to tell it."
Palantir has long denied that it aids mass surveillance, saying it does not gather or manipulate data but builds tools for agencies and companies to organize their own information, and that it is committed to "protecting privacy and upholding liberal democratic values." Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and 30 other Democratic lawmakers demanded answers about Palantir's contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and whether its tools are part of efforts to surveil Americans. Palantir said it is "neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens." Wyden's office told NPR he "intends to ask again as chairman of the Finance Committee" about "Palantir's work to facilitate the Trump-Vance abuse of government data," and that "if Palantir is not responsive next year, compulsory processes will be on the table."
A $350 billion company, and a $30 million ICE contract
Valued at more than $350 billion, Palantir holds $2 billion in federal contracts, according to government records cited by NPR, mostly with the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments, and also with Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. Last year, more than a dozen former employees criticized a $30 million ICE contract to create a tool that provides "near real-time visibility" into the movement of migrants, arguing the company violated its own code of conduct. CEO and co-founder Alex Karp, a self-described liberal, has been sharply critical of Democrats on immigration and AI. "You have to grow a spine because a lot of these people actually agree with me in private," he said in a 2025 Axios interview, referring to more restrictive immigration policies.
Aya Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute and a former State Department official, told NPR that companies "have an inordinate amount of money and they will try and put it wherever they can in order to stave off any real accountability." Tester, an outspoken critic of the Patriot Act during 18 years in the Senate, said Palantir is different because it does not build "big databases" or trade in private data. "I wanted to do away with the Patriot Act because it was about privacy," he said. "I've talked to many people within Palantir. They believe the same way I do." He said he will focus on the government-services side of the company's work, called the midterms a blue "tidal wave," and predicted, "I don't think you're going to see the kind of aggressive tactics that were taken forth by ICE moving forward."