Joe Lonsdale, a cofounder of weapons-tech company Palantir, shared some of his thoughts on America’s AI-assisted warfare at a Reuters-hosted event late last week—and one statement stands out as being particularly alarming.
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statement → share → event
The US strike on a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, in February was tragic, he acknowledged—but, he argued, “It’s very easy to judge things from the outside
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It → acknowledge → outside
“It could be the case that somebody made 99 really good choices and then one bad choice and it led to a horrible thing,” Lonsdale told Reuters Global Defense Editor Joe Brock on Friday, in a talk aimed at investors.
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Lonsdale → make → investors
He also argued that Iran might have deliberately lured the US military into the AI-assisted targeting of two Tomahawk missiles at an elementary school on the first day of the the Trump administration’s war in Iran.
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Iran → argue → Iran
The attack killed more than 150 people, most of whom were children.
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most → kill → whom
Pentagon officials later told Bloomberg News that overreliance on Palantir technology contributed to the school strike.
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overreliance → tell → strike
Iran’s leaders “might have purposely disguised some of these things to make them look like targets, the same way the Palestinians and others do,” Lonsdale said.
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Lonsdale → disguise → targets
“They’re getting global sympathy by getting us to hit things,” Lonsdale went on.
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Lonsdale → get → things
“And so, it’s very unclear to me the facts
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it → ’ → me
exactly what happened
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what → happen → ?
Obviously, it’s terrible what happened to those children.”
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what → ’ → children
Last week, a UN committee report suggested that the US attack on the school could be classified as a war crime.
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attack → suggest → crime
At one point, Lonsdale was asked how technology companies should be held accountable “if things go wrong.”
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things → ask → point
“Maybe there should be some laws about companies that operate here and, like, what you’re allowed to do with them,” Lonsdale said.
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Lonsdale → operate → them
But the billionaire colleague of Peter Thiel has some obvious financial reasons not to push harder to regulate or hold accountable defense and technology companies.
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companies → have → reasons
As managing partner of the venture capital firm 8VC, he has $6 billion invested in high-tech defense companies, Forbes reported.
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Forbes → have → companies
He’s also increasingly involved in lobbying on industry issues.
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He → ’ → issues
His conservative think tank, the Cicero Institute, and its lobbying arm Cicero Action—best-known for being a major force behind the Trump administration’s push to criminalize homelessness—are also connected to hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense-lobby spending.
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tank → know → spending
That lobbying, as Sludge reported, touches on companies in Lonsdale’s 8VC portfolio—and could be paying big dividends.
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Sludge → report → dividends
“Palantir is seeing a surge in federal revenue under the Trump administration,” Sludge said in August, including an Army contract worth up to $10 billion.
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Sludge → see → contract
Anduril, a Thiel-funded company also backed by Lonsdale, “is similarly on the rise, including an Army deal awarded in March with a ceiling of $20 billion.”
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Anduril → fund → billion
Lobbying and war-profiteering aside, Lonsdale wrote on his blog in 2025 that it is apparently possible to be a “perfectly moral” person in the weapons business.
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it → write → business
Society, he wrote, suffers from a “default assumption of evil by people who make weapons.”
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who → write → weapons
But, he argued, “If we didn’t have talented people willing to do the “dirty” work of defense, we’d be speaking German. Or Russian. Or Chinese.
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we → argue → German
We’d have experienced many more 9/11’s.
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We → experience → 9/11
You get the idea.”
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You → get → idea
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