The State Department is enlisting defense tech companies Palantir and Anduril, along with the Bitcoin Policy Institute and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, to advise on digital free-speech issues under a new program that has left experts puzzled about what, exactly, the companies are qualified to contribute, according to Foreign Policy staff writers Sam Skove and Rishi Iyengar. Under the Freedom Tech Excellence Program, launched in late July, private-sector employees will take limited-term, unpaid assignments at the department working on "freedom of expression protections in the digital age," "countering unlawful digital surveillance and online scams," and "safeguarding children and other users online," among other areas, per a State Department press release. The first participant is expected to start within the year.
Palantir builds software used by militaries, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement and has drawn criticism over its data-collection practices; Anduril manufactures weapons systems including drones and missiles, and also builds unmanned surveillance towers for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Neither company responded to Foreign Policy's requests for comment on which parts of the program they would actually work on. "It isn't clear why these initial private-sector partners have any expertise on freedom of expression," said Chris Painter, a former cybersecurity official at the FBI, State Department, and White House. "When you want to talk about freedom-of-expression issues, there are a myriad of civil society organizations that do this."
Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was even more pointed: "For the Trump administration to recruit from the same firms that are under scrutiny for their surveillance practices, I find the whole thing totally head-scratching," he said, adding that neither company is a recognized leader on AI or responsible AI development. "Palantir is peddling software that is used for national security purposes, they are not developing frontier AI models. Anduril is not considered to be a leader on responsible AI," Feldstein said.
The State Department defended the lineup, saying it is "building a founding consortium of tech companies, civil society, think tanks, and the individuals and organizations who understand the cost of censorship," with partners chosen for expertise in areas "critical to our national security, including cybersecurity, emerging technologies, data privacy, child online protection, artificial intelligence, and technology policy and governance." Michelle Giuda, a State Department official under the first Trump administration and now CEO of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, framed the unconventional roster as a feature rather than a bug: "The big opportunity now is that it's no longer business as usual, and so we're going to be creative, fast-moving and agile," she said, arguing the program needs to expand toward roughly ten times its current partner count to be effective.
The program is a rebrand of a Biden-era initiative called the Franklin Talent Exchange Partnership, which drew partners like Intel, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, and the Clinton Healthcare Access Initiative. "The Freedom Tech Excellence Program (FTEP) is the new iteration of the Franklin Talent Exchange Partnership focused on digital freedom," a State Department spokesperson said, describing the rename as reflecting an "updated objective." The Bitcoin Policy Institute, which has argued there is a "foreign influence campaign against American AI" and has ties to the administration through a former senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which recently received an unusual $40 million grant from the State Department's human rights bureau, round out the program's initial roster, alongside two firms better known for surveillance and weapons than for free-speech advocacy.