The Digital Eye of This Century

Named after the fictional world, but its impact feels very real. Palantir, a word borrowed from the seeing stone in the tale of The Lord of the Rings, a tool of Sauron to see far and surveil anyone.

It is a metaphor that is too honest for a company name. It seems from the beginning it had no intention of hiding its ambitions: to see everything, just as you witness it being used by Sauron.

The company was born in 2003, founded by Peter Thiel—the brain behind PayPal—along with Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. The “Pal” in Palantir is not just a linguistic coincidence. It is a genetic trace.

PayPal was its school, where they learned one important thing: data can reveal hidden patterns. At PayPal, that pattern was used to detect fraud. At Palantir, that pattern is scaled up—from fraudsters to terrorists, from suspicious transactions to military targets.

If PayPal helps you send money safely, Palantir helps a nation decide who should be watched, arrested, or in some extreme cases—attacked.

Its workings are not as simple as “spying”. It is more like a machine that merges reality. Platforms like Gotham gather fragments of data from various sources: human intelligence from field agents, intercepted communication signals, satellite imagery, CCTV footage, immigration data, financial transactions, even digital traces on social media.

All those fragments, previously scattered across various agencies—CIA, NSA, FBI, military—are collected, combined, then woven into one complete narrative. A human is no longer seen as an individual, but as a network of relations: who their friends are, where they go, their habits, who they frequently contact.

At that point, the Palantir machine begins to “think”. It searches for patterns. It detects anomalies. It assembles possibilities. From simply knowing, the system shifts to predicting. From predicting, it gives recommendations. And at the end of that chain, armed humans make decisions.

In modern military operations, this process is known as the kill chain—the chain of killing. Previously, this chain was slow, relying on manual reports and intuition. Now, with tools like Palantir, the chain is accelerated, condensed, and—ironically—polished to be more “rational”.

This is where we need to pause for a moment, not to reject technology, but to compare. In our heritage, there is a story about a prophet who was also given an “eye”—not an ordinary eye, but the ability to see that transcends human limits. He is Prophet Solomon, peace be upon him.

However, Solomon’s “eye” is not the result of algorithmic engineering. It is a divine gift. It is not used for control, but to uphold justice.

When the hoopoe bird brought information about a kingdom, it was not merely intelligence, but part of wisdom and trusteeship. Information does not stand alone; it is bound to direct moral responsibility to Allah SWT.

Compare that with the modern “eye” named Palantir. It gathers everything, but has no revelation. It predicts everything, but has no wisdom. It recommends actions, but does not bear moral responsibility before the All-Knowing.

Here is where the difference becomes very sharp: between vision given to guide, and vision built to dominate.

In the context of conflicts like the tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran, systems like this play a role that is not always visible on television screens. When a precision strike occurs, often behind it is data analytics that filters thousands of possible targets into one coordinate point.

In Israel’s operations in Gaza, the use of data-based systems for target identification has become part of modern military strategy. The United States itself acknowledges the use of analytics software to support target determination in foreign operations.

However, Palantir does not stop at the battlefield. It also enters the urban space. In the hands of law enforcement, this system is used for predictive policing—predicting crime before it happens.

In Los Angeles, citizens’ data—addresses, social connections, digital activities—are collected to map who might potentially become a perpetrator or victim. A city turns into a chessboard, and its citizens become pieces that are analysed.