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What would J.R.R. Tolkien think of Palantir?
What would J.R.R. Tolkien think of Palantir?
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So, being a nerd, I started noticing something about the names of big tech companies over the
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past few years. Anduril, Erebor, Mithril, Narya...these are all names straight out of
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J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series. And it turns out a lot of the "tech right" from
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Elon Musk - "the hobbits in the Shire" - to JD Vance seem proud of their Tolkien fandom.
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One of the more well-known Tolkien lore-droppers is Peter Thiel.
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Like, Denethor the mad steward in Lord of the Rings where you can light your own
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funeral fire and set the hour of your death. One way to think of the Weimar period was,
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I don't know it's like, the dwarves in Moria where they dwelled too deep and you know finally they
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they awakened the nameless terror of the Balrog. Several of the companies he's involved in
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are named after objects, places, and concepts from The Lord of the Rings.
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And the granddaddy of them all is this mysterious software company: Palintir.
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Palintir Technologies is one of the most secretive and powerful companies in Silicon Valley.
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A palantir is a magical object in The Lord of the Rings that's not inherently evil, but is mostly
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used by the bad guys for deception and evil plots. So, why would Peter Thiel and Palintir CEO Alex
1:17
Karp want to name their company after something that evil forces use to dominate Tolkien's world?
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I went on a quest talking to Tolkien scholars, tech journalists, and even a former Palintir
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employee to find out the story behind Palintir's name, what the link to The Lord of the Rings
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reveals about the company, and what Tolkien might think about how his words are being used.
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First, a quick primer on The Lord of the Rings and what a palintir is.
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The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy of epic fantasy books written by British author J.R.R. Tolkien.
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They're sequels to The Hobbit. In the 2000s, director Peter Jackson made The Lord of the
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Rings into a blockbuster film series, which grossed almost $3 billion in total and won
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17 Academy Awards. Not bad, right?
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They tell the story of the hobbit Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring,
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a group of heroes made up of Frodo and three other hobbits, a wizard, two men, an elf,
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and a dwarf. All of them embark on a journey to destroy a powerful magic ring in order to
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prevent a dark lord from taking over the world. A palintir is kind of like a crystal ball or
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a "seeing stone" as they're referred to in the story.
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One leader could talk to another over great distances by looking into them or maybe even
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possibly see into the future. When the War of the Ring begins in The Lord of the Rings,
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there are three people in possession of a palintir. Sauron, the big bad guy. Saruman,
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an evil wizard. And Denethor II, a ruler and a good guy who's...sort of losing his marbles.
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The palantiri are not evil in and of themselves, but the uses to which
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they're put often lead to bad results. We mostly see them used by evil wizards
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and dark lords to have a sort of telepathic conference call, see across Middle Earth,
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and mess with the heroes. There are a few times when the heroes manage to use
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a palintir to trick the villains, too. Whoever is in control of them,
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they're mostly used in The Lord of the Rings to dominate or deceive somebody.
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So, what does all of this have to do with Palintir the company? Let's get into it.
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What exactly Palintir does can be hard to pin down.
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It develops software that can quickly analyze massive amounts of data. It's used by government
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agencies, the military, and major corporations. It all started in 2003 with chairman Peter Thiel,
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CEO Alex Karp, and the CIA. The CIA was actually the
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only investor in the company for the first four years of its experience.
4:01
Its mission to use modern technology to support defense and intelligence
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institutions was a response to 9/11. It's able to take whatever data an institution
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has, be it like a private company or, you know, a publicly funded company like a police department
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or the IRS or what have you and pull it together and analyze it in the way that you want to.
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In other words, Palintir is a sort of seeing stone that uses data to make decisions.
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Its biggest customer is the Department of Defense. So that includes all branches
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of the US military. And I think most people might be most familiar with Palintir because
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of the long-standing relationship it's had with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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And reports have indicated that Palintir's AI tech is being used in military efforts from Ukraine to
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Gaza to the current war in the Middle East. Government agencies like the FBI, NSA,
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the Department of Health and Human Services, and even the IRS use Palintir's tech,
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too. But there's also plenty of businesses and nonprofits that work with them.
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In terms of what its private sector clients do, it's essentially everything. Power plants,
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fast food restaurants, clothing chains, anything that has to deal with sales and distribution,
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as well as anything that has to do with energy. I mean, you name it.
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The idea of having an all-seeing or magical technology that can apply to just about anything
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- Walmart, Lowe's, AT&T, Airbus, General Mills, even Wendy's - is a key part of their pitch.
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A lot of its marketing language does take advantage of this idea that it is this mysterious,
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maybe magical thing that can interact with a company, interact with an agency,
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and make it significantly more powerful. I know it just looks like it's me and my
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crystal ball out here, but producing stories like this one takes a whole team, reporters, editors,
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fact checkers, animators, and more. All working together to make journalism that's accurate,
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nuanced, and fun to watch. If high-quality independent journalism is important to you,
6:05
then you would love our Vox community over on Patreon. For a few dollars a month, you can get
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access to exclusive video reporting, new shows we're developing, and a chance to chat directly
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with our journalists. And if you're not able to support financially right now, you can follow us
6:19
on Patreon for free to stay connected and see what we're working on next. Now, back to the video.
6:25
Palintir's Palo Alto office was at one point known as the Shire. The Virginia office was
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Rivendell and the London office was Grey Havens. Individual employees,
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they're sometimes called hobbits. Just check out the branding for
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their latest convention. Someone owes the Tolkien estate a royalty check.
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And this obsession with The Lord of the Rings goes beyond just event branding and
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cute office names. It's a way for Palintir to create their own fellowship, rouse
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their workers, and reinforce their worldview. That culture is honestly one of the strongest
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aspects of Palintir. It's what allows Palintir to continue doing its work without its employees
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questioning too much of you know the engagements it participates in. This is Juan Sebastián Pinto,
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a former content strategist with Palintir, who had a seat inside the mysterious company.
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Making your workforce imagining that they're continuing sort of the mission,
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a bigger mission, sort of a world mission as represented in Lord of the Rings.
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Save the Shire was a pretty common refrain. And I guess by the Shire, they just mean the homeland.
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How Alex Karp defines the West, it means the US and its allies. And by save the Shire,
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it means solving the most difficult problems that it's facing and about doing good for warfighters.
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Palintir is here to disrupt and make our the institutions we partner with the very
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best in the world and when it's necessary to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them.
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This idea that Palintir talks a lot about of going from the battlefield to the boardroom
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is very appealing to CEOs and executives that really are willing to do whatever
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it takes to gain a competitive edge. If Palintir sees itself as a powerful
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all-seeing network that can peer into the future, influencing governments and military operations,
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that's even spookier than how I pictured the palintir of Tolkien's books.
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And it's exactly the kind of thing that Tolkien was afraid of in the real world.
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In his letters, he writes that the machine and the corrupted motive
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of dominating could bulldoze the real world if we aren't careful.
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Tolkien is, if nothing else, very anti- tech. He's anti-surveillance. He's anti all
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the things that these companies are doing. The idea that Tolkien-esque stuff would be
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associated with industry or government, he would have been utterly mortified.
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Just about everyone who tries to use a palintir in the story is deceived by it. Saruman is pushed
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further onto team Sauron. Denethor abandons all hope after false visions. And even Sauron,
9:02
the most powerful baddest dude of all, gets tricked into making a crucial strategic mistake.
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Even the good wizards or elves armed with powerful magic aren't the ultimate heroes of the story.
9:15
Spoiler alert, it's the hobbits who save the world. That's because they aren't epic
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adventurers or war fighters. They're brave, loyal, regular people who are willing to rise
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to the occasion to protect the things they love. Tolkien identified more with the hobbits than any
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other character. He preferred a rural, quiet life run by a local decentralized government.
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He even said in a letter from 1958, "I am in fact a hobbit (in all but size)."
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In Tolkien's world, being all-seeing is not something that we necessarily want to celebrate.
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Tolkien himself had very much imbued this object of the palintir stone with ideals related to the
10:00
rise of technology and industrialization and the what that meant for people who had power.
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In 2025, Juan Sebastián Pinto was one of 13 Palintir alumni who penned a letter called
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The Scouring of the Shire, raising concerns about the direction the company was headed.
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What we see today is big tech co-opting this kind of revolutionary fantasy logic
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that is really running contrary to the main messages of Tolkien, which were all about,
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you know, fellowship from working to develop shared understandings through journeys.
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Whoever is in control of big data tech companies like Palintir is going to wield
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serious influence for the foreseeable future. Palintir can essentially be an amplifier of a
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human's intentions. So at an institutional level, if you're something like ICE,
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you could use it to detain more and more people. But let's say if you're a hospital, it could also
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help allocate vaccines to impoverished areas. It really depends on what the user is giving to it.
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Like my boy Sam says in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film,
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"There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
