Politico\u2019s parent company is bestowing its highest award on Peter Thiel, who serves the same globalist agenda<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s Axel Springer media monolith is about to award its highest honor to Palantir founder Peter Thiel, in a ceremony illustrating the incestuous relationship between the mainstream media, the defense tech industry, and the US-Israeli order.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Wired for War: Palantir rewards its best Ukrainian salesman<\/p>\n
Thiel will receive the \u20182026 Axel Springer Award\u2019 at a ceremony in Berlin on Thursday. According to Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner, Thiel \u201cis one of the rare entrepreneurs who does not merely found or finance companies but helps determine the direction of technological development.\u201d
\n\u201cHe reminds us that progress requires courage and nonconformism,\u201d Dopfner added.
\nPrevious recipients of the Axel Springer Award include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. None of these laureates have proven as controversial as Thiel, however.\u00a0
\nAccording to Status News, employees at Politico and Business Insider \u2013 both of which are owned by Axel Springer \u2013 have pushed back against the decision. In a letter to management on Tuesday, 120 staffers argued that Thiel, who funded the lawsuit that destroyed Gawker, should not be honored by a company which, in the words of Dopfner, \u201cstands for freedom of speech and a culture of open discussions.\u201d
\nThey\u2019re missing the point. Palantir and Axel Springer are cogs in the same machine. They share an almost identical world view, marked by a devotion to US-Israeli hegemony, a belief that private companies must serve the interests of this hegemony, and a common parent: the CIA.
\nThe CIA connection
\nDuring the Cold War, the US saw strategic control of media outlets as key to preventing the rise of socialism and communism in Western Europe. Axel Springer, the anti-communist press baron who gave his name to the company, was a natural ally in this fight. Springer received $7 million in funding from the CIA in 1957, two former agents told The Nation in 1982. Adjusted for inflation, the donation would be equivalent to more than $80 million today.<\/p>\n
(L) Axel Springer stands next to the Berlin wall in an undated archive photo; (R) A 1982 letter introducing Springer to CIA Director William Casey<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 Getty Images; \u00a0CIA <\/p>\n
Although the agents claimed that Springer ended his relationship with the agency in the mid-1970s, declassified documents show that he was still in contact with the United States Information Agency (USIA) \u2013 which funded pro-American news outlets \u2013 in the early 1980s. In 1982, Springer was introduced to CIA Director William Casey as \u201ca strong supporter of the United States\u201d who \u201cis doing all he can to strengthen the ties between the United States and Europe.\u201d
\nThiel, who co-founded PayPal, launched Palantir in 2003 with the stated goal of taking \u201cthe approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud\u2026into other contexts, like fighting terrorism.\u201d The CIA took notice, and invested $2 million in the company in 2005 via its in-house venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel.<\/p>\n
A reply by Peter Thiel from a 2014 ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on Reddit<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 Reddit; \u00a0Getty Images; \u00a0Alex Wong <\/p>\n
\u201cI wish I had Palantir when I was director,\u201d former CIA chief George Tenet \u2013 who set up In-Q-Tel \u2013 told Forbes magazine in 2013. \u201cI wish we had the tool of its power.\u201d
\nThe Axel Springer investment pays off
\nIn both cases, the CIA\u2019s investments paid off. Axel Springer is now Europe\u2019s largest publisher, and owns Politico, Business Insider, Bild, Die Welt, The Telegraph, and nearly a dozen other outlets. The American deep state continues to finance its operations, with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department\u2019s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) pumping just under $34 million into Politico between 2016 and 2025.
\nIn return, Axel Springer has openly pledged fealty to American neoliberalism. Whereas Springer himself described his first newspaper, the Hamburger Abendblatt, as \u201cgeared to the underdog and the little man,\u201d staff at Axel Springer publications are today required to adhere to the following code of conduct:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand up for freedom, free speech, the rule of law, and democracy\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe support the right of existence of the State of Israel and oppose all forms of anti-Semitism\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe advocate the alliance between the United States of America and Europe\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe uphold the principles of a free market economy\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reject political and religious extremism and all forms of discrimination\u201d<\/p>\n
In practice, this means that Axel Springer publications will feature lively debate over \u2018red versus blue\u2019 politics in the US and Europe, but will never question key tenets of US foreign policy, including America\u2019s alliance with Israel, its dominance over Europe through NATO, and the legitimacy of its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
\nThe world according to Palantir<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Wired for War: Silicon Valley\u2019s military AI Ukrainian testing ground<\/p>\n
More than two decades after taking CIA money, Palantir is now the largest of the Silicon Valley defense kingpins, and a synonym for the burgeoning surveillance- and military-tech sector as a whole. Palantir is valued at around $427 billion, a figure bolstered by lucrative contracts with the US\u2019 defense and intelligence agencies, including all six branches of the US military, the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DIA.
\nPalantir\u2019s flagship product is an operating system called \u2018Gotham\u2019, which is essentially a data analytics platform for military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies. Gotham pulls together and analyses existing data that may otherwise take days to sift through. For example, if US Central Command is planning a missile strike in a foreign country, Gotham can combine maps and satellite footage from that country, data from other agencies, including human intelligence from the CIA and signals intelligence from the NSA, and local surveillance data to present CENTCOM with potential targets for military strikes.\u00a0
\nPalantir\u2019s international customers include the British, Israeli and Ukrainian militaries, NATO, domestic intelligence agencies in France and Germany, and police departments in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, among others.\u00a0
\nHowever, Palantir is not a mercenary company selling its products to anyone with money. According to CEO Alex Karp, Palantir is inseparable from the US deep state, and \u201cwas founded to strengthen US national security, to protect Americans and their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because we get asked a lot.The Technological Republic, in brief.1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.2. We must rebel\u2026\u2014 Palantir (@PalantirTech) April 18, 2026 <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Karp set out Palantir\u2019s world view in a manifesto, which RT already covered in depth in our \u2018Wired for War\u2019 series. In the 22-point bulletin, Karp argued that \u201cthe engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation,\u201d that \u201cfree and democratic societies\u201d must pursue AI superweapons to preserve the hegemony of the US, which \u201chas advanced progressive values\u201d more than \u201cany other nation on the planet.\u201d\u00a0
\nIn separate comments, Karp has described pro-Palestinian protesters as a \u201ccancerous\u201d influence on American politics, while Palantir describes its work with the Israeli state as \u201cin line with our global support of US allies and liberal democracies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics called Karp\u2019s manifesto \u201ctechnofascist,\u201d but it differs little in substance from Axel Springer\u2019s code of conduct. Karp\u2019s remaining points wade into US-centric culture war territory, but the core argument of both documents is the same: the US and Israel are a benevolent force and the private sector has a duty to aid\u00a0their foreign policy goals; by argument, in the case of Axel Springer, and by force, in the case of Palantir.
\nThe incestuous security state<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Wired for War: What\u2019s in Palantir\u2019s \u2018Technofascist\u2019 manifesto?<\/p>\n
Back in Berlin, the guest speakers at Thursday\u2019s ceremony further illustrate the incestuous relationship between Axel Springer, Palantir, and the US-Israeli order. Before Dopfner hands him his award, Thiel will be lauded by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, a self-described \u201cZionist fanatic\u201d who was appointed head of the network following its acquisition last year by billionaire and pro-Israel megadonor David Ellison, whose family has donated more than $26 million to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since 2014.
\nBefore the acquisition, Weiss repeatedly complained about CBS\u2019 supposedly \u201canti-Israel bias.\u201d Once in control of the network, she set about hiring pro-Israel editors and reportedly intervening personally in stories concerning the Jewish state.\u00a0
\nThursday\u2019s ceremony will also feature a questions-and-answers session with PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, a vocal defender of the NSA amid Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations of warrantless wiretapping.
\nThe award is equivalent to an \u2018Employee of the Month\u2019 prize from one department of the same company to another. It\u2019s like USAID and CIA agents meeting for after-work drinks, or Weiss congratulating the IDF for its service.\u00a0
\nDopfner, Thiel, Weiss and Levchin understand they\u2019re all on the same team. Anyone who\u2019s followed RT\u2019s \u2018Wired for War\u2019 series will grasp this. The only people yet to figure it out, apparently, are the Politico and Business Insider staffers complaining about the threat posed by Thiel to \u201cAxel Springer\u2019s own commitment to freedom.\u201d
\nThursday\u2019s ceremony might help them understand the true nature of the power they serve a little clearer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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