Palantir Technologies, which was founded by Peter Thiel, is a fast moving data analytics and technology company. Today, it’s become a central player in the federal government’s responses to monitoring diseases and analyzing data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) made recent waves with ambitious plans to greatly expand the authority of the agency. They’ll transition their disease intelligence operation to a real-time system based on Palantir’s platform, Foundry. This change has triggered national uproar over patient privacy.
The Denver-based Palantir has in recent months grown its work with different federal agencies. Surrounding the company’s work is a conversation about the nature of collecting such in-depth information about Americans and what it means to do so. The Foundry platform will centralize all data into a single platform, significantly growing the efficiency at which data can be analyzed from multiple agencies. These capabilities have worried many state and local officials, especially ever since the capabilities became public. They are extremely nervous and distrustful about how their highly sensitive health information could be abused or weaponized.
These worries over Palantir’s role are not without merit. Under the Trump administration, the company experienced a remarkable expansion of its influence in the federal government. Critics argue that this expansion may lead to a breach of privacy and civil liberties, particularly as Palantir’s systems enable cross-agency data sharing. Labor and public interest advocacy organizations have led the charge against the Trump administration’s push to incentivize sharing data across public agencies. They highlight the dangers of centralizing sensitive individual health data.
The C.D.C. began implementing its plan to modernize and centralize data systems in the early days of the Biden administration. This new initiative provides an opportunity for enhanced overall public health surveillance. The heavy reliance on Palantir has added a new layer of complexity that some stakeholders now find troubling. The C.D.C.’s initiative to consolidate data on various diseases, including measles and polio, aims to streamline responses to health crises but raises questions about transparency and accountability.
