The Seeing Stones and the surveillance state

There is something almost too on-the-nose about a company named Palantir releasing a manifesto that reads like a love letter to centralized power.

Palantir Technologies does not exist in isolation from American political power. It is one node in a broader ecosystem shaped significantly by its co-founder and long-time financier Peter Thiel, whose investments and political influence have helped shape a generation of Silicon Valley-adjacent political actors. That network now includes figures like JD Vance, whose rise in national politics has been heavily supported by Thiel’s funding and mentorship.

In The Lord of the Rings, the palantíri — the “seeing stones” — promise clarity, mastery and control. But what they actually deliver is distortion. They do not simply reveal reality; they shape it, bending perception toward the will of whoever holds the greater power.

The fallen wizard Saruman the White believes he is using the stone. In truth, he is being used by the demonic Sauron. The steward of Gondor, Denethor, peers into one and despairs, convinced defeat is inevitable. Entire kingdoms fall not because the stones are inherently evil, but because they tempt their users into the oldest lie: That knowledge without wisdom is enough, that vision without virtue can save us.

“They tempt their users into the oldest lie: That knowledge without wisdom is enough, that vision without virtue can save us.”

It would be difficult to design a more fitting metaphor for our present technological moment if we tried.

The manifesto

Palantir Technologies’ recent “manifesto” leans hard into a familiar — and far more troubling — story. It frames technological dominance as a moral imperative, elevates national strength over democratic restraint, and casts dissent as weakness. This is not neutral language. It is the vocabulary of power consolidation. And historically, that vocabulary has a trajectory.

Let’s be clear about where that trajectory leads.

When a company argues that vast data integration, predictive surveillance and AI-driven decision-making must be accelerated in the name of national survival, it is not simply making a business case. It is normalizing the architecture of a surveillance state.

When it implies that democratic hesitation — public debate, regulatory caution, ethical scrutiny — is an obstacle rather than a safeguard, it is eroding the very mechanisms designed to prevent abuse.

And when it suggests only a select class of technologists and institutions are capable of wielding such tools responsibly, it is reinforcing a hierarchy that places immense power in the hands of the few, shielded from the accountability of the many.

That is how fascism grows in the modern world — not always with boots in the street, but with systems that make such boots unnecessary.

Fascism, at its core, is not merely a set of symbols or slogans. It is a pattern: the fusion of state and corporate power, the centralization of authority, the elevation of strength over justice, and the suppression — whether overt or subtle — of dissent. It thrives on the belief that security requires control, that unity requires uniformity and that the complexity of human life can be managed through force, whether physical or informational.

What Palantir’s manifesto offers is a technologically updated version of that pattern.

Imagine a world …

Imagine a world in which governments, empowered by companies like Palantir, can aggregate real-time data on entire populations — movements, communications, financial transactions, social networks. Imagine predictive systems that flag “risk” not based on actions but on patterns, correlations, probabilities. Imagine decision-making increasingly outsourced to opaque algorithms that cannot be meaningfully questioned by the public.

“In such a world, dissent does not need to be crushed dramatically; it can be quietly preempted.”

In such a world, dissent does not need to be crushed dramatically; it can be quietly preempted. Opposition does not need to be outlawed; it can be managed, nudged or rendered ineffective before it fully emerges.

This is not speculative dystopia. These are the logical extensions of the tools being built and the philosophy being articulated.

And this is where the manifesto’s vision becomes not just misguided, but dangerous.

It assumes the problem is speed and scale — that we simply need more data, faster systems, stronger integration. But the real problem, as both history and theology insist, is the human heart. Give unformed people more power, and you do not get a better world. You get a more efficiently controlled one.

Christian tradition never has been particularly impressed by raw knowledge or power. Scripture consistently redirects our attention to formation:

• “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans 12:2)
• “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
• “We have this treasure in jars of clay.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)

The issue is not access to information but the kind of people we are becoming in relation to it.

“The issue is not access to information but the kind of people we are becoming in relation to it.”

And that raises a pressing question for the church: Will we quietly accommodate a world being reshaped by surveillance, control and concentrated power, or will we resist it through a different way of life?

Christian formation

The call of Christian formation is not abstract. It is political in the deepest sense — not partisan, but a public witness. It means forming communities that refuse to baptize domination as wisdom, that tell the truth about the dangers of unchecked power and that stand in solidarity with those most vulnerable to systems of control. It means pastors and congregations willing to name what is at stake, to advocate for limits and accountability and to embody an alternative rooted in humility, neighbor-love and the image of God in every person.

The kingdom of Palantir is bleak. There is no account of limits — only expansion. No acknowledgment of human fallibility — only confidence in systems. No sense that power might corrupt — only the assurance that it must be exercised. It is a vision of the world that is profoundly unformed, even as it claims to be hyper-rational. It assumes because we can build tools that see everything, we are therefore capable of using them rightly.

But that assumption is not just optimistic. It is, to be blunt, reckless.

What’s in a name?

The irony, of course, is that Tolkien already told this story. The palantíri do not fail because they are broken. They fail because the people who use them are not what they ought to be. They are impatient, prideful, fearful. They grasp for certainty and control in a world that resists both. And in doing so, they become instruments of the very forces they believe they are resisting.

“Seeing without formation is perilous.”

That is the deeper caution embedded in the name “Palantir.” Not that seeing is bad, but that seeing without formation is perilous.

For we Christians, this should ring familiar. We are heirs to a tradition that insists power must always be questioned, that the last shall be first, that true authority is revealed not in domination but in self-giving love. We confess a Lord who refused the shortcuts of control, who rejected the temptation to seize the kingdoms of the world, and who instead walked the long road of suffering, service and sacrifice.

Against that backdrop, a manifesto that exalts power, speed and technological supremacy does not just feel out of step. It begins to look like a theological failure — one that risks underwriting a political one. Because when Christians (or anyone else) accept the premise that safety requires unchecked surveillance and that strength justifies consolidation of power, they are no longer resisting the logic of fascism. They are accommodating it.

And that is how it takes root.

Not all at once. Not always violently. But steadily — through systems that concentrate power, narratives that justify it and people who convince themselves that this time, it will be different.

The palantíri did not destroy Middle-earth overnight. They did so gradually, by convincing their users they were in control.

We would do well to pay attention to that warning.

Especially when it arrives under a name that already has told us exactly how the story ends.

 

Tyler Tankersley serves as senior pastor of Ardmore Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., and is currently pursuing a doctor of ministry degree in leadership and spiritual formation from George Fox University.