The surveillance empire of Germany’s police is rapidly moving towards artificial intelligence (AI). Worse, it is set to become dependent on Hitler salute showing Elon Musk’s South African White Power off-sider Peter Thiel and his Uber-surveillance software supplied by Palantir.

This will substantially expand the surveillance capability of Germany’s police by combining facial recognition software with the AI-driven analysis of Big Data. It will set up conditions for an AI-driven super police state.

When tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Los Angeles in June 2025 against the mass deportations of migrants – engineered by the Trump administration – MQ-9 predator reconnaissance drones of the US Border Protection Agency were patrolling high up in the sky.

Such technologies have been tested and further developed in wars, conflicts, and on the border with Mexico. Yet, they are now increasingly being used inside the USA – to spy on people. 

The “Eye in the Sky” no longer “monitors” democratic protest rallies and migrants fleeing from war, famine, and the global pathologies of capitalism offloaded onto the Global South. 

The US Big-Tech corporation Palantir is currently developing an AI-driven system called “ImmigrationOS” – a €30 million ($35 million) platform that pulls together data on migrants, tracks their whereabouts, and furnishes the speed-up of arrests and mass deportations.

Thiel’s software forms the digital architecture for Trump’s menacing migration regime. Meanwhile, experts have already warned that “ImmigrationOS” might not stop as mass surveillance and the dehumanizing persecution of migrants.

In the future – all Americans, anyone who is in the USA, and people elsewhere, so the profit-driven dreams of Palantir go – can be monitored via detailed, personal profiles, and facial recognition. George Orwell’s nightmarishly dystopian vision of “1984” is turbo-charged by Thiel’s AI super-surveillance.

Only in March, Trump announced “by decree” (read: no democratically-enshrined law needed) that separate information “silos” – data collected by individual state bureaucracies – should be abolished. The excuse: to combat corruption – something that hardly exists between US government agencies.

To create an AI-driven surveillance Uber-state, data collected for a wide variety of purposes will be exchanged across all government agencies. US citizens will become translucent like a body made of glass – Trump’s super-state can see it all, through and through.

This is the future and it is tailored by Palantir. Simultaneously, Palantir is set to become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump regime. Trump’s fabrications of “political upheavals” in the USA will only encourage the introduction of Thiel’s spying software.

This is an old, yet highly successful tactics: create a threat or enemy and claim to be the great saviour. It works almost all the time.

Unsurprisingly, the hype around AI, mass surveillance (always for “security” reasons), and war-making technology (officially sold as “defence” technology) exist in close proximity of Paypal and Palantir – both co-founded by Big Tech multi-billionaire Peter Thiel.

Budding up the Trump regime means driving up the company’s stock market prices. Surveillance and capitalism go hand in hand creating “surveillance capitalism”. 

It has a double whammy: corporate profits plus shadowing the populations. Even better: both are financed by the taxpayer – AI-driven surveillance capitalism can look at a wonderful future.

Initially, Thiel’s company was founded with CIA funds in 2003. It is truly lovely to see that state-hating and libertarian extremist Thiel rakes in state money under the table while above the table outlining how evil the state is.

Partly set up with tax money, currently Thiel’s company is worth around $335bn. Thiel – the anti-state and Uber-radical libertarian – is a powerful stripper of state cash.

In 2009, Thiel wrote in his hyper-neoliberal “manifesto” deceptively labelled “The Education of a Libertarian” that elaborates on his extremism.

While camouflaging the raking in of state tax money, Thiel grandiosely announced that he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible with each other”. For libertarian free-market zealots, democracy has to go, so Thiel believes. The despised and evil state (that assisted him in setting up ImmigrationOS) can go with it.

After his ingenious plan to set up “no-tax” enclaves floating in the ocean did not quite work out, Thiel’s new hobbyhorse seems to be the infiltration and undermining of democracy. 

His goal is the destruction of much-hated regulatory authorities from within. For the ideologically motivated Thiel, the dim-witted showboat entertainer Trump is merely a means to an end.

Tellingly, Thiel was the only Big-Tech boss from Silicon Valley who had supported Trump in the election campaign in 2016. Later, he became Trump’s adviser – even though Trump is a man who hardly takes advice.

More importantly, Thiel was pushing the USA’s intellectual shift to the right. It came after his beloved racist, white power, and apartheid supporting government in his South Africa was, eventually, replaced. 

Like Elon Musk, Thiel promoted far right Republican candidates. He also made the career of the current vice-president JD Vance possible.

While officially loathing the democratic state, the US government is Palantir’s most important customer. 

As social and health programs are being cut under Donald Trump, billions of dollars are currently flowing into AI investments, armament and war technology – to the financial enjoyment of Thiel’s Palantir. Supporting Trump paid off handsomely. 

Palantir has created a virtual monopoly with software that scans huge amounts of data for patterns, draws cross-connections and sometimes also creates forecasts for the future. With this unsavoury baggage, Thiel’s software called “ImmigrationOS” is arriving in Germany.

Worse, Palantir software is designed for total surveillance and therefore incompatible with democracy. This has never bothered the apartheid-loving Thiel.

That Palantir is threat to democracy is one of the many warnings that German experts have aired. One of these warnings was aired in a recent episode of a highly regarded and longstanding public-TV documentary called “Panorama”.

Still worse, Thiel’ AI-driven hyper-surveillance software will be used by Germany’s secret services, its police, its military and other state authorities. The nationwide introduction of Palantir’s ImmigrationOS by German police is currently being discussed.

Yet, the Orwellian spy software produced by an US Big Tech corporation might even pursue its – or Thiel’s – own political or ideological agenda.

Worse, ImmigrationOS might become “the” central population control instrument for virtually all of Germany’s so-called “security-relevant” agencies – the euphemism for an AI-turbo-charged surveillance super-police state.

More worryingly, Germany is likely to become dependent on an American Big Tech company whose co-founder – Peter Thiel – is known for his anti-democratic statements, has close ties to the Trump regime, and an insalubrious outfit known as “the CIA”. 

Meanwhile, the German public is worrying that nobody really knows whether being dependent on Thiel’s Palantir means pressure can be put on Germany’s democratic institutions.

To make matters worse, German politicians have comprehensively failed, in recent years, to set up European software companies that are able to provide alternatives.

In Germany, three states are already using police surveillance software based on an Palantir application. These are, appropriately, called Gotham – the dark, menacing, fear-inducing, and crime-ridden city of Batman movies. There are there are three examples of its use in Germany:

1. In 2017, the West-German state of Hessen has already tested what it labelled so innocently – “hessenDATA”. The conservative party (since 26 years run by the CDU) run state had put Thiel’s software into real operation in 2018.
2. In neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia a system – inauspiciously called “cross-database research and analysis” (DAR) – has been supporting polices since May 2022. 
3. An in the southern state of Bavaria, the “cross-procedural research and analysis System” (VeRA) has been running, in tests, since 2022 and in real surveillance operation since the end of 2024. Bavaria’s police had already used the tool when it was still in its testing stage.

Thile’s Palantir software pulls together huge amounts of data from:

• The police itself.
• Other internal and external sources.
• Police related databases.
• Files on foreigners and migrants.
• Weapons registers.
• Telecommunications monitoring.
• Evaluations on mobile phone call, and 
• Social networks. 

The program assembles puzzle pieces, visualises cross-connections and networks. This not only creates dense personal profiles, but also new suspicions. The Thiel surveillance software can be used:

• To make inquiries that used to have to be made painstakingly by individual queries in a decentralised manner, at different points, and through various applications – sometimes, this took several days.
• It makes them by means of automated, parallel research in several applications as well as nationwide searches – overcoming the shortfalls of a state-based police force.
• It allows for the comprehensive monitoring of information – this can be obtained after just a few minutes. 

While this saves time, the really important factor is that it makes surveillance so much more efficient, invasive and controlling. 

This comes on the fact that Germany’s police force have been working for two decades on the modernisation and unification of its IT landscape. This digital transformation has made only slow progress. Thiel’s Palantir, so the hope goes, will change that.

Prior to Palantir’s arrival in Germany, the IT architecture of the German police was characterised by localized, so-called in-house developments, specific solutions, different file formats and individual rules for data collection.

Accordingly, data findings of Germany’s police authorities – that is “federal-to-state”; “state-to-state”; and between Germany’s ordinary police and intelligence services (read: secret police) – were, so the official version says, not sufficiently integrated.

On these deficiencies, little had changed. The police force’s “Polizei 20/20” (P20) program, for example, was intended to merge IT systems and data processes into a unified interconnected system that facilitated real-time data exchanges.

In 2019, Germany’s federal and state governments were funding this to the tune of €300 million ($350 million). It was designed to modernise Germany’s police IT infrastructure.

Fancying the power of the state, conservatives like Friedrich Merz and Alexander Dobrindt have been campaigning for years to make Palantir software available, nationwide, and as part of the P20 program.

Yet, in 2023, a then social-democratic minister had stopped the initiative. Shortly thereafter and winning Germany’s federal election in early 2025, the subsequent conservative government under Merz brought the Palantir acquisition back to the table.

Under the new conservative government, Germany’s ministry of the interior became so much more open to Palatir’s Gotham spy software. 

Around that time the southern state of Baden-Württemberg was on the verge of introducing Gotham while neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate had passed a law for advanced AI-based police investigations using big data analysis.

East-German states like Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt are also not far away from making, as it was called, “a pro Palantir decision”. 

Worse, Germany’s Bundesrat (the council of Germany’s 16 states) were also calling for a shared and automated data analysis platform. However, it was not all smooth sailing for Thiel.

Several German states opposed the use of the Thiel’s Palantir software. States like Hamburg and the East-German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania stressed that,

The central requirement of digital sovereignty of Germany must apply to every IT product of automated data analysis. This applies to the use of products from the US provider Palantir for the future – as a standard application. 

The goal of the state’s objection was that potentially negative influences by foreign states and Thiel’s Big Tech corporation, for example, would have to be ruled out.

All in all, Germany’s states are powerful players in this as Germany’s police force is run by individual states – not by the federal government.

However, each state still has the option of purchasing Thiel’s software, independently. The state of Bavaria, for example, had negotiated a so-called “framework agreement” with Thiel in 2022. Other states as well as Germany’s federal government were offered to join. 

This did not mediate or eliminate the fear that Thile’s Palantir can install a “software backdoor” in its system. This would allow Thiel to secretly tap into sensitive police data held by Germany. 

Big Tech corporations like to excuse their “monitoring of the monitor” (read: extracting data from German police sources) rather deceptively, “for AI training purposes”.

In 2023, Bavaria’s police force had their software tested by Germany’s prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology – located in the city of Darmstadt. The institute analysed the source code and provided an analysis that did not find any secret access doors.

Yet, their evaluation remains classified with reference to the ultimate excuse of “security concerns” as well as so-called “Palantir trade secrets”. 

In other words, the democratic state – and worse, the public – is excluded. Wasn’t unaccountability the hallmark of Hitler’s Gestapo and East-Germany’s Stasi. Both operated in the dark and could spy on people in secrecy, willy-nilly.

Worse, Thiel’s AI regime for Germany’s police will be hosted locally – in Germany. However, and even in the case Thiel’s system does not have access to the Internet, it cannot be ruled out that it makes mistakes. 

It can also not be ruled that – in a worst case scenario – there is a risk of backdoors or leaks. This is particularly the case as Thiel’s Palantir cooperates with secret services and in secrecy.

Yet, it can still get worse. As a “market leader” (read: monopolist), Thiel’s Palantir has a lot of so-called “creative freedom” in terms of pricing for their service. 

As a monopolist, it can almost charge whatever it wants. Paradoxically, it is Theil’s much hated taxpayer who forks up the money for Thiel.

Of course, additional licensing fees, training, consulting, maintenance, updates, and the provision of new functions can (and will be) added to the original purchase price. In other words, the costs is set to explode over time.

Beyond all this, Palantir’s surveillance software is still introduced without sufficient legal basis lacking the democratic legitimacy of an appropriate law that has gone through parliament. 

On the surveillance side, Thiel’s data analysis includes a large amount of data (Big Data) from people who themselves have not given any reason as to why they got into Thiel’s Big Data analysis. Individual self-determination over one’s own date seems to end with Thiel.

In short, if you become a victim of a crime, file a complaint or give a tip to the police, this information will be included in Palantir-based data analyses. 

With the right access to Palantir – by corrupt or other means – criminals as much as a future far right government can, for example, identify a snitch and political opponents deal with them.

At the same time, those negatively affected by Thiel’s AI software regime may well be those who are already in a marginalised or discriminated social group.

Almost by the very nature of the algorithm – one of which is known as the White Guy Problem – such systems tend to focus on minorities and discriminated groups disproportionally. 

This applies to traditional police databases but perhaps even more so to Thiel’s AI-driven Palantir. Worse, many of those effected have next to no way to defend themselves since they do not even know that Thiel’s Palantir is after them.

Meanwhile, in the state of Hessen, such a software was initially used for serious and organised crimes as well as terrorism. Very soon it mutated into investigating simple burglaries. 

Eventually, the system was also applied to the evaluation of accident witnesses. Simply being a witness can mean entering the cagey AI-world of Thiel’s super-surveillance.

Bavaria has also uses such software and the state did so no longer only for serious crimes.

However, in 2023, Germany’s supreme court found that laws for the use of data analysis software by the police in Hessen and Hamburg were unconstitutional. Another court case against the police in North Rhine-Westphalia is pending. 

It gets worse. Palantir also sells AI components and scoring methods intended to calculate the willingness of people to commit violence, future crimes, and the likelihood of someone to relapse into criminality.

Germany’s police have “not yet” used Palantir for this purpose. However, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt justify the use of their analysing software by alluding to people with mental abnormalities who have appeared as perpetrators of violent acts. 

The interest of the state moves from helping people with mental illnesses toward surveillance, stigmatisation, and punishment.

In order not to assist people with mental illnesses but instead, to be able to recognise, record, and evaluate the “mental-illness-to-crime” prejudice even better, personal behaviour patterns and potential risks of Germans are now identified, analysed, and evaluated by Thiel’s AI surveillance software.

To make matters so much worse and move away from care, help, and cure, a central register for mentally ill people – supposedly for, as it is called, “the prevention of violence” – is also currently being discussed.

Under Thiel’s algorithmic surveillance, mental illness is no longer a medical condition but a policing issue. It is defined by an seeming “objective” algorithmic and math-drive software system.

Who can argue with maths? It is the use of the supposedly “objective” algorithmic “Weapon on Math Destruction” against the mentally ill.

Palantir is also selling “risk scoring methods” in Europe. According to the EU’S recent AI Act, these methods should only be used within very narrow limits, if at all. 

Thiel has already offered the British government surveillance software to predict the probability of relapse of detained people.

Meanwhile, Palantir is advancing the integration of “large language models” (LLM) – the more correct and more appropriate name for what became known as artificial intelligence (AI).

It is very likely that Germany’s police will acquire Thiel’s AI-driven “Gotham” programme. Gotham is likely to become the preferred solution for Germany’s police simply because its in-house surveillance AI software development is not progressing. 

The idea behind Palantir has been explained by its CEO, 

Palantir’s interest is in arming the USA so that the USA’s defence (read: military) and intelligence services (read: CIA) software capabilities are far more powerful than those of their adversaries … we were expelled from the Silicon Valley and written off … however, it looks as if the Valley has made the U-turn and has started to follow us.

Yet, the Palantir CEO is generally treated as a kind of ideological counterweight to the right-wing extremist Peter Thiel. 

He used support the Democrats but today openly praises President Trump. Now, he demands that the West must show military strength. Perhaps the representatives of Big Tech capitalism follow only one sort of politics: the politics of money.

Accordingly, Palantir’s revenues from the public sector – in the first three months of 2025 –increased by a whopping 45% to €373 million ($435 million). 

It came because of Palantir’s planning and implementation of special operations and other military operations and for the evaluation and selection of targets of the American military sector. 

Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” is alive and kicking – now powered by AI surveillance software.

Worse, “our product is occasionally used to kill people”, the Palantir CEO once admitted. Is that what Germany’s police had in mind when signing up to Palantir’s software? Thiel’s software is a very powerful AI-surveillance tool. It is a security risk that threatens to undermine democracy and freedom – not only in the hands of right-wing populists.

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