Rep. Mike Gallagher Speaking During Hearing - Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
GREEN BAY, WI (WSAU) – Soon-to-be former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher has decided on what’s next after he leaves Congress on April 19th.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Gallagher is set to accept a job with the Colorado-based data analytics and software company Palantir. His exact role with the company remains to be announced, as the company is involved in major contracts with both commercial companies and government agencies.
Palantir was originally founded by high-profile billionaire Peter Thiel, who is best known as one of the co-founders of PayPal and one of the first outside investors in Facebook. When he started Palantir in 2003, he said he hoped the company could help the U.S. with foreign affairs issues, saying, “The approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism.”
During the WikiLeaks events of 2010 and 2011, documents uncovered that Palantir was working to “serve as the foundation for all the data collection, integration, analysis, and production efforts” for the U.S. government, and the company was accused of “disrupting” reporting efforts by independent journalist Glenn Greenwald who was and remains a strong supporter of Wikileaks architect Julian Assange. One email that was sent to Palantir’s former Head of Business Operations Matthew Steckman in 2010 and was later given to Salon.com (Greenwald’s former employer) discussed the “Strengths/Weaknesses and a spotlight on Glenn Greenwald…” which provided details on how to discredit Greenwald.
In 2013, media outlet TechCrunch came in possession of another leaked document detailing how influential Palantir had become in Washington, D.C., with software and IT contracts with at least 12 governmental agencies, including the CIA, NSA, DHS, FBI, and CDC. The report detailed how Palantir had become so intertwined with U.S. spy agencies, saying, “As of 2013, the U.S. spy agencies also employed Palantir to connect databases across departments. Before this, most of the databases used by the CIA and FBI were siloed, forcing users to search each database individually. Now everything is linked together using Palantir.”
Palantir declined to comment when contacted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and a Gallagher spokesman declined to confirm the report.
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