Love in the time of Palantir

A few weeks ago, an ad appeared on Instagram for a singles event in New York called “Singles Dating Matching using Palantir Data.” The pitch was that attendees could find love using the same technology that supposedly helped track down Osama bin Laden. Palantir is a data analytics company best known for contracts with ICE and the Department of Defense, not for romance. The event was clearly at least partly a joke, but it drew a curious crowd. “We both work in tech and we're critical of tech but also wanted to see how we might be optimized for love,” one attendee said. Another, Jeannie Chen, was worried about her secrets being exposed but had a backup plan: her name is common, and she has a doppelgänger in New York with the same job. “I hope they find that one,” she said.

The organizer, James Steinberg, is a cybersecurity professional who hosts weird tech events as dark jokes. He spent 50 hours before the night using “Palantir-inspired” techniques—data enrichment, facial recognition, reverse phone lookups, bounty hunter databases, and leaked dark web data—to compile dating profiles on the roughly 60 attendees. He is not affiliated with Palantir and does not use their software. In fact, Palantir sent him a cease-and-desist email. “I could lose everything,” he told the crowd, “but it would all be worth it if at least two people here have a spark.”