Once again, we witness the imperialist grip of American monopoly capital trying to sink its claws into the everyday life of the working people of Germany. Under the false flag of “security” and “efficiency,” reactionary politicians are quick to open the doors to a US corporate behemoth, Palantir—a firm so intertwined with American intelligence and right-wing tycoons that even their own bourgeoisie feel discomfort. These politicians, the supposed protectors of the people, now try to rationalize a gross invasion of privacy, signing away €25 million of public money without ever seeking the collective will or consent of the masses.

Palantir is not merely some “innovative” software vendor—it is the infotech vanguard of American financial and state power, built with the blessing and investment of Peter Thiel, a man who idolizes authoritarianism and parades his contempt for democracy. That these European lackeys claim “there is no alternative” exposes the mind rot at the core of the capitalist political system: it willingly becomes a vassal to imperialist capital, allowing foreign interests to harvest the data of their own citizens, including the innocent and uninvolved. It is the natural progression of a system designed only to serve profit, not people.

Those who defend this contract decry “competition” and “modernization.” But what modernization is this? It is nothing but the modernization of surveillance, the perfection of state control not for the safety of the working class, but for the consolidation of the bourgeois order. Machines designed not for liberation, but for the efficient rooting out and cataloging of dissent, for the slicing and dicing of every bit of human activity, reducing citizens to entries in a foreign corporate database. The claim that this is “required” for security is a fig leaf for the drive to intensify repression and neutralize social agitation before it can escalate.

The attempt to smuggle this contract through in silence, to buy time and avoid “higher costs,” is itself a confession—the ruling class fears the outrage of the masses and rightly so. If anything, the scandal helps lay bare the treachery, the servility, and the shortsighted greed that renders bourgeois institutions unfit to defend the rights, dignity, or future of the people. The contest between the CDU and the Green Party, or the wagging of fingers by the SPD, is ultimately a dispute between different wings of a dying order; none will break from the logic of imperialism without mass struggle and the assertion of proletarian sovereignty.

True security lies not in surrendering ourselves to foreign algorithms, but in building a society where data, technology, and public life serve collective well-being under the conscious, democratic direction of the working class. That means smashing the collusion between state and monopoly capital, reclaiming control over technology, and defending privacy as a bulwark against the ever-encroaching reaction. To allow Palantir and its ilk to dictate the future is to submit to an electronic prison—the stuff of Orwell, animated not by paranoia but by the cold calculations of endless capitalist accumulation. Only the advancing tide of socialism can put these parasites in check and restore the human to the heart of progress.