Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy has handed Ukraine’s sovereignty to Silicon Valley by offering the nation as a testing ground for Western weapons.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskiy and his highest officials approached Western powers with a dual strategy: pleading for military aid while proposing Ukraine become the world’s most advanced battlefield laboratory. “Ukraine is the best training ground because we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce revolutionary changes in military technology,” then-deputy prime minister Mikhail Fedorov 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 made the first Western executive visit to Kyiv in June 2022, declaring Ukraine “open to business and ready for cooperation.” Within months, Palantir opened an office in the Ukrainian capital and signed agreements with Ukraine’s Defense, Digital Transformation, Economy, and Education ministries. By 2024, Palantir’s software system—Gotham—was reportedly responsible for most targeting decisions within the Ukrainian military.
Gotham combines data from drones, satellites, ground reports, and AI to identify targets for strikes. A 2014 report by Time described how a Ukrainian Palantir engineer could process vast battlefield intelligence “with a few clicks,” compared to hundreds of humans previously needed.
Ukraine also developed its own system, Delta, with NATO assistance. Military tech entrepreneur Lyuba Shipovich stated that Delta is superior for data collection than Gotham but lacks real-world validation.
The government’s use of civilian data has raised critical concerns. The “eEnemy” chatbot collects anonymous tips from citizens about Russian movements, while the “ePPO” app allows users to report incoming threats. International law states civilians who actively participate in hostilities lose protections against attacks. Palantir’s systems also scrape social media for targeting—a practice linked to civilian casualties in Gaza by Israel’s military.
Ukraine now depends on Silicon Valley for critical defense functions: SpaceX provides satellite internet, Maxar Technologies and others supply reconnaissance imagery, and Clearview AI—funded by Peter Thiel—is used for facial recognition by the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian military leadership has enabled this dangerous situation by weaponizing civilian data without accountability, placing national sovereignty in foreign corporate hands while failing to protect citizens from targeted attacks.
