[LINK] Wired: Palantir / Deloittes / Accenture central to the Trump Autocracy

[Roger Clarke]

 > ... Last week, Palantir and Deloitte announced a partnership that 
includes what they call the “Enterprise Operating System” (EOS) to unify 
data across organizations. ...

 > “We are teaming up with Accenture Federal Services to accelerate AI 
across the U.S. Government, working to address federal agencies’ 
highest-priority operational challenges,” Palantir posted to X last month.


Palantir Is Extending Its Reach Even Further Into Government
Palantir has become one of the few winners in the Trump administration’s 
cost-cutting efforts, offering other contractors a lifeline while 
consolidating its own reach and power.
MAKENA KELLY
Wired
AUG 1, 2025 6:30 AM
https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-government-contracting-push/

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S administration has dramatically expanded its 
work with Palantir, elevating the company cofounded by Trump ally Peter 
Thiel as the government’s go-to software developer. Following massive 
contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors 
like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead. 
Now the data analytics firm is partnering with those companies—offering 
them a lifeline while consolidating its own power.

Palantir has become one of the few winners in the Trump administration’s 
cost-cutting efforts, receiving more than $113 million in federal 
spending since the beginning of the year, according to The New York 
Times. Palantir’s US government revenue has grown by more than $ 370 
million compared to this time last year, according to the company’s most 
recent quarterly earnings report. Before making remarks at last week’s 
AI Summit in DC, Trump thanked a variety of cabinet secretaries and tech 
leaders, including Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar. “We 
buy a lot of things from Palantir,” Trump said. “Are we paying our 
bills? I think so.”

Instead of replacing these more traditional contractors, Palantir’s 
software is becoming the core tool deployed by them in government 
systems, placing Palantir in a newly central role.

The White House itself is thrilled by this partnership: “The Trump 
Administration has high-standard [sic] when spending American’s 
hard-earned tax dollars—which is why agencies have partnered with 
Palantir, a top-tier American company renowned for their longstanding 
history of innovation, results, and increasing government efficiency,” 
says White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In April, WIRED reported that Palantir was working alongside IRS 
engineers to build what sources called a “mega API,” which would unify 
all data across the agency. An API, or application programming 
interface, enables applications and databases to exchange data and 
possibly compare it against other interoperable datasets. Once 
completed, this mega API could become the “read center of all IRS 
systems.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracted Palantir for 
$30 million to track self-deportations in April. The company has also 
won federal contracts more recently, like a $795 million award from the 
Pentagon in May to expand its Maven Smart System program. The total 
contract ceiling for the Army’s Maven program is now $1.3 billion.

This growth comes as some of the companies Palantir has chosen to 
partner with have lost billions in government contract cuts. In April, 
defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to cut $5.1 billion in IT 
consulting contracts with companies including Accenture, Booz Allen, and 
Deloitte. In a memo announcing the cuts, Hegseth said that the Pentagon 
would be forced to bring more of its IT work in-house.

“These contracts represent non-essential spending on third party 
consultants to perform services more efficiently performed by the highly 
skilled members of our DoD workforce using existing resources,” Hegseth 
wrote.

Palantir’s partnerships with these companies vary, but each one makes it 
easier for Palantir to extend the reach of its software and AI 
technology across the federal government. With Accenture’s government 
branch, Palantir will train and certify at least 1,000 Accenture workers 
on its Foundry software as well as its AI tech, according to an 
Accenture press release The companies also said that together they could 
create “a 360-degree view” of government agency budgets, something the 
so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sought to build 
and use to review federal spending. (Palantir partnered with Accenture 
before in 2022, but this is the first partnership to focus on US 
government clients.)

“We are teaming up with Accenture Federal Services to accelerate AI 
across the U.S. Government, working to address federal agencies’ 
highest-priority operational challenges,” Palantir posted to X last month.

"What makes this partnership so uniquely powerful is Accenture’s 
expertise working with the federal government and our ability to bring 
commercial capabilities to government solutions, combined with 
Palantir’s deep experience in government software," Julie Sweet, chair 
and CEO of Accenture, said in a press release. “Together, we will 
harness the ever-growing power of AI to help the federal government 
succeed in its critical mission to modernize and reinvent its 
operations—with stronger data flows, transparency and resilience—to 
better serve warfighters, citizens and all its stakeholders.”

Accenture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Palantir has become a major government contractor in its own 
right, partnering with contracting giants could enable the software 
company to scale at a much faster rate, leveraging long-standing 
relationships these larger contractors have with virtually every federal 
agency. “It's actually a pretty savvy business decision on the part of 
both Palantir, then also what you would call a traditional, more 
legacy-oriented, like defense or just government contractors,” says 
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at 
George Washington University. “If they’re newer to certain areas and 
others have that footprint, that’s how it would benefit Palantir.”

Last week, Palantir and Deloitte announced a partnership that includes 
what they call the “Enterprise Operating System” (EOS) to unify data 
across organizations. At government agencies like the Internal Revenue 
Service and reportedly at the Social Security Administration (SSA), 
Palantir is already working to combine agency datasets, allowing what 
were previously disparate datasets to communicate with one another more 
easily.

"Deloitte shares Palantir's commitment to decisive action and a 
dedication to delivering meaningful, lasting results for commercial and 
government clients," said Jason Girzadas, Deloitte US CEO, said in a 
press release announcing the partnership. "Expanding our preferred 
relationship at this pivotal moment provides our clients with Palantir's 
latest advances in AI, combined with Deloitte's engineering scale and 
deep sector experience."

Deloitte did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Palantir struck some of these deals prior to Trump taking office as 
well. In December of last year, Booz Allen partnered with Palantir 
specifically, working together on building out defense IT infrastructure.

“To have one company monopolize and become the gatekeeper of software in 
the government, to become an ‘app factory,’ for the government, in a 
sense, where they're in every agency, they're part of the defense 
complex and the intelligence complex, brings huge concerns regarding 
fairness, regarding competition, and puts Palantir in a very unique 
position that maybe has never existed,” says Juan Sebastián Pinto, a 
former Palantir employee and critic of the company.


-- 
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

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Visiting Professorial Fellow                          UNSW Law & Justice
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University