As we watch and worry about the dismantling of our democracy, the tools of empire are being built.

The foundations were laid quietly, in the early months of the Trump administration. As Elon Musk wielded a public chainsaw, a small group of technologists and financiers stitched together databases under the guise of “efficiency.”

What they built were the bones of a tool with unimaginable reach—linking tax records, identity files, law enforcement databases, travel logs, and financial data.

From Efficiency to Empire

Venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s Palantir, led by Alex Karp, has built a flagship interface — called Gotham — that accesses and makes sense of all these databases, allowing a God’s eye view. Gotham and its cousins are now deployed in ICE (April 2025, $30m contract to build “immigrationOS”), the US Army (July 2025, $795m to use “Maven Smart Systems” AI tools), and most recently across the entire Department of Defense War (July 2025, up to $10b to massively consolidate all procurement).

Add to this the recent efforts to consolidate and privatize government research in crypto, research in AI, and the nearly-complete takeover of the space by SpaceX and other private companies.

Personnel complete the circuit. Key figures who had been at the top of Palantir, Anduril (autonomous warfare), and Thiel’s VC firm are leading government policy as undersecretaries and CIOs. Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI officials were commissioned as lieutenant colonels.

The Stack of Control

In technology, engineers use the term “stack” to refer to the series of technological layers that are independent and also interoperate, allowing control of the device. All of our devices have a tech stack.

The Trump administration has built an authoritarian tech stack.

What could be done with this authoritarian stack once it is fully built?

• Predictive law enforcement (“precrime” from Minority Report)
• Individual-level targeting for ICE deportations
• Targeted IRS and regulatory enforcement
• Loyalty-based credit scores
• Total exploitation of space, far from view of earth oversight
• Voter sentiment profiling
• Education and employment screening
• And on, and on . . .

The coming empire may have its military parades on the ruler’s birthday.

But its power and reach will also come from a stack of servers that has already been wired.