US Health Department COVID-19 Tracking System To Use CIA-Backed Palantir Technologies
"In what was regarded as a highly political move, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently took over control of COVID-19 reporting by hospitals from the Center of Disease Control (CDC) and government contractor and big data analytics giant Palantir was awarded the bulk of the project’s blockchain needs without competitive bidding, according to an investigative report at Ledger Insights.
The US Health Department FAQ leaves few clues about what blockchain protocol is being deployed and how Palantir is integrating its controversial technology. According to reports online, Palantir’s data analysis clients as of 2013 included at least twelve groups within the U.S. government, including the CIA, DHS, NSA, and the FBI.
Palantir has gleaned more than $3 billion in VC funding from investors including In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, Thiel’s Founders Fund, Fidelity and Tiger Global Management. . .
In 2018, Morgan Stanley valued Palantir at $6 billion. Since the coronavirus pandemic the value has shot to some $20 billion and the company is planning an IPO according to the New York Times. Founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Nathan Gettings, Stephen Cohen and Alex Karp, who is its chief executive, the company began working with governments, law enforcement and the defence industry to analyze and process their data but has expanded into other areas.
About the author: Richard Kastelein https://www.the-blockchain.com
Inside Palantir, Silicon Valley's Most Secretive Unicorn
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Back in 2003, John Poindexter got a call from Richard Perle, an old friend from their days serving together in the Reagan administration. Perle, one of the architects of the Iraq War, which started that year, wanted to introduce Poindexter to a couple of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were starting a software company. The firm, Palantir Technologies, was hoping to pull together data collected by a wide range of spy agencies — everything from human intelligence and cell-phone calls to travel records and financial transactions — to help identify and stop terrorists planning attacks on the United States.
Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had been forced to resign as Reagan’s national-security adviser over his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, wasn’t exactly the kind of starry-eyed idealist who usually appeals to Silicon Valley visionaries. Returning to the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks, he had begun researching ways to develop a data-mining program that was as spooky as its name: Total Information Awareness. His work — dubbed a “super-snoop’s dream” by conservative columnist William Safire — was a precursor to the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs that were exposed a decade later by Edward Snowden.
Yet Poindexter was precisely the person Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, the co-founders of Palantir, wanted to meet. Their new company was similar in ambition to what Poindexter had tried to create at the Pentagon, and they wanted to pick the brain of the man now widely viewed as the godfather of modern surveillance
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