Revealed: US company Palantir contributed to Israel’s 2024 'pager attacks' in Lebanon

A new book has revealed that Israel used technologies from the American AI surveillance firm Palantir in its deadly pager and walkie-talkie terrorist attacks in Lebanon in 2024.

New York Times journalist Michael Steinberger revealed Palantir's involvement in the attacks in Karp’s new biography.

In the book, The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, Steinberger writes that prior to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, “the Mossad [spy agency] had been using Palantir technology.”

The Shin Bet internal spy agency and the Israeli military, the author said, “sought to obtain Palantir’s software in the wake of October 7th.”

Israel has so far killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Palestinian resistance fighters. A shaky ceasefire deal was reached in October 2025.

“The demand for Palantir’s assistance was so great that the company dispatched a team of engineers from London to help get Israeli users online,” Steinberger said.

“Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials.”

Steinberger said, “Its software was used by the Israeli military in several raids in Gaza.”

“The company’s technology was deployed by the Israelis during military operations in Lebanon in 2024 that decimated Hezbollah’s top leadership.”

“It was also used in Operation Grim Beeper, in which hundreds of Hezbollah fighters were injured and maimed when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded (the Israelis had booby trapped the devices).”

At least 42 people, including two children, were killed, and more than 3,400 others suffered mostly debilitating injuries in the explosion of September 18 and 19, 2024.

Lebanon pager attacks ‘done under my auspices’: Trump

Donald Trump has said that the Israeli regime’s pager attacks against Lebanon took place with his nod.

Israel killed at least 3,136 Lebanese people in 2024 airstrikes on Lebanon. A ceasefire was announced in November that year, which has repeatedly been violated by Israel. 

The regime assassinated Hezbollah’s former secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and several other high-profile figures in the movement.

At the time, the United Nations said the pager and walkie-talkie attacks constituted “war crimes.” Even former CIA director Leon Panetta said, “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism.”

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, has documented Palantir’s role in the genocide in Gaza.

“In January 2024, Palantir announced a new strategic partnership with Israel and held a board meeting in Tel Aviv ‘in solidarity’; in April 2025, Palantir’s Chief Executive Officer responded to accusations that Palantir had killed Palestinians in Gaza by saying, ‘mostly terrorists, that’s true.’”

“Both incidents are indicative of executive-level knowledge and purpose vis-à-vis the unlawful use of force by Israel, and failure to prevent such acts or withdraw involvement.”

In a recent interview, the former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, claimed Israel has similar “booby-trapped and spy-manipulated equipment” in “all the countries you can imagine.”

Analysts say the involvement of a company as influential as Palantir in the terrorist attacks makes these comments all the more troubling.

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