AI Endgame: The AI "kill chain"

Newsletter #29

Apr 11, 2025

https://debbiecoffey.substack.com/p/ai-endgame-the-ai-kill-chain

April 11, 2025

By Debbie Coffey, AI Endgame

As I continue to do research for AI Endgame newsletters, I find that I’m finally connecting the dots. For example, I recently posted a newsletter about Palantir, one of the biggest data gathering and surveillance companies in the world.

Then an article on Substack about Palantir caught my attention. Juan Sebastian Pinto, who worked for Palantir Technologies at its headquarters in Denver, CO, wrote “The Guernica of AI,” an article that discusses both Palantir and the implications of AI warfare.

Pinto’s job was in marketing at Palantir, and he had to “sell” (convince companies and governments to buy and use) Palantir’s software. Pinto prepared marketing for Fortune 500 companies, civilian government agencies, and even foreign governments. He also had to tout the advantages of AI warfare to U.S. defense departments.

The AI “kill chain”

While at Palantir, Pinto developed written materials and diagrams about the AI “kill chain” used in planning AI warfare. In AI warfare, the phases of the AI kill chain (the plans to execute or destroy targets), include “find, fix, track, target, engage and assess.”

Pinto warns us that the AI kill chain used by the military in AI warfare is similar to the data gathering and uses that are directed at us by commercial AI companies.

In other words, AI companies employ the same surveillance and massive data gathering that the military uses to target enemies.

Pinto explains the phases of the AI kill chain and the similarities to the data gathering done by AI companies:

Find and fix Military operations use data collection to identify subjects as targets or threats. AI companies use invasive surveillance, and your data and social media activities to psychologically profile you.

Tracking Military operations use surveillance to follow a target’s real-time movements. AI companies constantly monitor us online using cookies, algorithms, and trackers, to manipulate and influence our future actions.

Engagement and assessment Military operations attack threats, and analyze their lethality. AI companies control consumer behavior and aim for our dependency.

Both military and private AI companies use continuous feedback, machine learning, and AI improvement.

AI companies help nations, militaries and corporations gain a competitive advantage by knowing everything about their “targets” (us).

We’re now all victims of the commercialization of military AI and the surveillance technologies used by private AI companies.

AI giants market their AI to every industry and government

Big AI tech companies including Palantir, IBM, Oracle and hundreds of new startups, are establishing their AI infrastructures, including surveillance, proprietary knowledge, and information, to control every industry and government.

Deceptive marketing and exaggerated claims by AI companies

Pinto points out that AI companies, including Palantir, use deceptive marketing and exaggerated claims to keep the public confused and feeling helpless. AI is embedded in everything. AI companies don’t want you to consider the consequences of their technologies.

Most importantly, AI companies want you to believe there is no alternative to the relentless advancement and use of AI. [1]

Total Information Awareness (to a more dangerous extent)

In the AI Endgame newsletter about Palantir, I discussed Total Information Awareness (TIA), the 2003 plan by John Poindexter to integrate all government databases into one big, centralized database, and to develop data mining and profiling technologies to analyze the data.

In 2003, Congress was so outraged by TIA’s threat to our privacy that it dismantled the TIA program. [2]

On March 30, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order that actually creates a total information awareness database.

A New York Times article titled “Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You” lists hundreds of your personal details that will be on this merged database. This article also lists your personal data held in systems that DOGE is trying to access.

President Trump’s Executive Order grants access to this merged database for anyone designated by the President or “agency heads.” However, there are no new cybersecurity requirements to prevent misuse or breaches.

Elon Musk has pushed the plan to merge agency databases into one database. So, at this point it’s clear that DOGE has already violated the Privacy Act and cybersecurity laws. [3]

Labor leaders are worried that Elon Musk and DOGE will gain access to whistleblower files. [4]

The New York Times article notes privacy experts and others are concerned that merging all data into one government database “would give the government too much power, including potentially to punish critics and police immigrants. It would create a national security vulnerability that could be targeted by hostile nation states.

And it would break a longstanding covenant between the federal government and the U.S. public rooted in privacy laws — that Americans who share their personal data with official agencies can trust that it will be secured and used only for narrow purposes.” [5]

Fortunately, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent auditing, research, and investigative agency for Congress, is conducting an audit to examine DOGE’s handling of data at federal agencies. [6]

Merging government databases isn’t about “efficiency,” it’s ultimately about the government, at the behest of an AI mogul, taking the last shreds of your privacy.

Have the 20-year-old DOGE minions even signed confidentiality agreements?

I wonder what AI company will own the AI software that will contain the merged government database.

We’re not draining the swamp; we’re filling it up

Besides AI companies embedding their technologies in government agencies, they’re also embedding their leaders and personnel.

Former Palantir employees and individuals linked to Peter Thiel (co-founder of Palantir) or Elon Musk, are infiltrating federal agencies, either as members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) or as leaders within these agencies. [7]

Thiel and Musk’s fellow “PayPal Mafia” member David Sacks, a Palantir investor, is Trump’s crypto and AI czar. [8]

Gregory Barbaccia, a 10-year employee at Palantir, now serves as the Chief Information Officer within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Clark Minor, a software engineer for Palantir for 13 years, now oversees data and IT security for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Ryan Riedel, who reportedly worked as a lead network security engineer at Musk’s SpaceX, now serves as the Chief Information Officer of the Department of Energy (DOE). [9]

DOGE has been recruiting young, male, SpaceX and Palantir workers. [10]

Even if Musk seems to step away from DOGE, he has embedded its personnel and will likely continue to exert influence.

Big AI companies want it all

Embedding the technologies and personnel of private AI companies into our government agencies creates an unfathomable concentration of their power and wealth.

Representative Mikie Sherrill (NJ) has asked the inspectors general at eight federal agencies to open investigations into Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) conflicts of interest.

Rep. Sherrill said, “Elon Musk is not only the world’s richest man but also one of the federal government’s largest contractors - handing the keys of our government over to him reeks of corruption and vast conflicts of interest.” [11]

It’s important to remember that AI remains an unproven technology, with few restrictions, and is controlled by the richest and most powerful men in the world. There is nothing to hold them accountable for their actions.

Except us.

Please ask your Congressional representatives to support Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s efforts.

Find links to all past AI Endgame newsletters HERE.

What you can do

Be sure to contact your congressional representatives and ask them to support Rep. Sherrill’s investigations into Elon Musk and DOGE. Ask them to keep the power of the AI oligarchs in check.

Find out how to contact your Congressional representatives here:

https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Find out how to contact your Senators here:

https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1