This gets even uglier when you look at what happens after Palantir gets inside a system. It is pure dependency engineering. In Britain, MPs are now openly warning that Palantir is becoming ubiquitous across government, while the same regulator that hired it had already warned that heavy reliance on a small number of big tech firms creates systemic risk. Read that again. Even while taking the deal, they are admitting the model itself is dangerous. And the NHS angle is worse than many people realize. In Parliament, MPs said that after more than £330m, the contract leaves the NHS with no software ownership, no IP, and no lasting know how. The supplier keeps the rights. So the public pays, the private contractor learns, and the state stays stuck renting the machinery. Now add the military side. Palantir’s Maven platform is moving deeper into permanent Pentagon status, with a previous contract ceiling already raised to $1.3b and a separate Army enterprise agreement worth up to $10b. During a recent Palantir event, a Pentagon official even demonstrated how Maven could be used for weapons targeting in the Middle East. People keep pretending this is just “data software” while it is literally being normalized closer and closer to the kill chain. And while all this is happening, Palantir’s CEO is out there defending the company’s surveillance tech as government sales surge. Palantir U.S. government revenue jumped 66% in Q4 2025 to $570m. So no, this is not some edgy startup fighting the machine. The machine is feeding it. Rapidly. This is the warning people need to get through their skulls: You are looking at an unelected operating layer for power. And once the state gets addicted to that layer, good luck removing it before it starts deciding what a society is allowed to see, sort, flag, punish, and optimize. And the Vance angle makes it even darker. J.D. Vance is not some neutral bystander who just happens to be standing next to this machine. He is a political product of Peter Thiel’s network. Thiel hired him into Mithril. Thiel backed his rise. Thiel then poured $15 million into the super PAC that helped shove Vance through the Ohio Senate primary. So when people act like Palantir and the current US power structure are separate worlds, they are lying to themselves. The vice president came out of the same patronage ecosystem that built Palantir. And this is no longer just about “defense tech.” The US government is wiring itself around Palantir as infrastructure. The Army collapsed about 75 separate contracts into 1 Palantir enterprise agreement for its future software and data needs. DHS then opened a $1 billion blanket purchase agreement so agencies like ICE, CBP, TSA, FEMA, and Secret Service can buy Palantir faster and with less friction. That is not ordinary procurement. That is institutional lock in. The military piece is worse still. The Pentagon’s own budget documents already placed Maven Smart System and Army Vantage inside the data and application layer used to support the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in giving decision support to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense. Read that again. Palantir linked systems are not sitting on the edge. They are moving into the bloodstream of top level state decision making. Then add immigration. So the same company orbit is now sitting across war planning, federal data integration, and deportation machinery, while one of the most powerful men in Washington rose through the patronage network of its chairman. That should terrify people. Because this is how democratic states rot in the digital age. Not when 1 cartoon villain grabs a microphone. When private software, private patronage, and public force merge so completely that nobody can tell where government ends and the contractor begins.