Mike Gallagher talks priorities as Palantir’s new defense business chief

Palantir Technologies has named Mike Gallagher, the former congressman who led the House Select Committee on China, to lead its defense business, the company announced Thursday. 

The Wisconsin Republican left Congress earlier this year after four terms, during which he served on the House Armed Services Committee, was a lead commissioner on the Congress-mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission and frequently championed defense tech issues, including spearheading calls to ban TikTok. 

Gallagher’s move to Palantir comes as the Pentagon is learning to work with tech companies to buy what it needs for less money, and Congress navigates the best ways to oversee that tech innovation. 

The company has been aggressively expanding its reach with defense and intelligence agencies in recent years, and revealed an uptick in government business in its second quarter earnings report. Palantir recently landed a $480 million contract to bring enhanced intelligence data to combatant commands with the Pentagon’s chief data and AI office, or CDAO, to work on the Pentagon’s connect-everything efforts.

More than half of Palantir’s revenue in 2024 has come from its government business, according to a recent financial filing. In fiscal year 2023, the company’s government contracts made $1.2 billion in revenue. The majority of that is defense. 

Gallagher spoke to Defense One about how he hopes to help the tech company forge paths into new domains like space.

What attracted you to this role?

I dedicated my adult life to defense, to defending the country, first in the Marine Corps as a counterintelligence, human intelligence officer, and then in Congress as chairman of the China committee, as chairman of the Innovation Subcommittee on Armed Services. 

So I view this as an opportunity to continue that mission, the mission of defending the country, of preventing World War III, in the private sector. And I think those are the stakes. I don't think that's an overstatement. 

If you look at the geopolitical landscape, you see an axis of chaos led by communist China, but including Iran and Russia, trying to subvert, if not destroy, the free world. And I think Palantir is at the leading edge of deterrence in the 21st Century—the era of software-defined warfare, where technological supremacy defines geopolitical survival. And that was a core insight coming out of my work on the select committee on China, just how high the stakes are in the technological domain of competition. 

And on the modern battlefield, I believe that militaries that don't harness the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems are basically unilaterally disarming. It's like an army with only conventional weapons going against an enemy armed with tactical nukes. 

It was further said that Palantir is at the leading edge and really a pathfinder in revitalizing the American industrial base writ large, and the defense industrial base in particular, which helps communities like mine in Northeast Wisconsin, where we are a huge manufacturing community with a huge manufacturing legacy, but now we can leverage cutting-edge software like the kind Palantir produces in order to bend metal better. 

My experience really on the China committee showed me time and again how most of corporate America refuses to defend American values or even think of themselves as American companies, and in many cases, continually would bend the knee to China. But Palantir, on the other hand, is an unapologetic company in its defense of the West, and its belief that America is a force for good in the world, and that America is worth defending against our enemies. 

Have you seen a shift in how tech companies, startups, lean into national security spaces and a “build American” ethos? Do you think being Palantir’s head of defense will influence that?

I think that's certainly true in the venture capital community. I mean… the numbers sort of prove that out, and there is a lot of capital flowing into defense startups who now have a chance of surviving because of the trail across the ‘valley of death’ that Palantir has beaten, at great pains, over [more than] two decades. 

But we need more. We still need to make it easier for companies to compete. So my view is that if Palantir's defense business continues to grow, continues to succeed, that creates a healthier defense ecosystem that isn't just dominated by four or five status-quo-minded defense prime companies, but you have a whole new generation of companies that are able to cross the valley of death and survive. 

What are your priorities in this new role?

Obviously, I want to build upon the recent success that Palantir has had, particularly with winning the TITAN contract and being the first software company to act as a prime. I think that's a sort of a vision of what the future could be. And also, the recent award from CDAO…for JADC2 work, I think there's a phenomenal opportunity to really deploy capabilities, Maven-like capabilities across all of the [combatant commands]. 

And as you see play out in the Indo-Pacific every single day—and really what was the focus of my work for eight years in Congress—is that we want to enhance near-term deterrence at a time when we're over the long-term struggling to recapitalize our submarine fleet in these big platforms, we're going to have to deploy cutting-edge, innovative technology and get it into the hands of the warfighter as quickly as possible. And I think there's a huge opportunity to leverage pillar two of AUKUS and a lot of the collaborative efforts we have with our closest allies to do just that, and ensure that in the priority theater, in the Indo-Pacific, we are waging deterrence with the same alacrity and creativity with which we would wage actual warfare. 

Beyond that, in sort of new and emerging domains, I think space prevents presents a huge opportunity. And there's an area where Palantir's business is growing, and I think can grow even further. So I think there's going to just be a lot of opportunities, not only for Palantir's core defense business to grow, but for the entire defense industrial base to be revitalized. 

On the industrial base, you mentioned earlier about Palantir being a prime on a major contract. What’s your plan to engage startups, VCs, and non-traditional defense companies?

Well, luckily, I've spent almost a decade now immersed in that world, from the perspective of a legislator. But a lot of my work on the [House] Armed Services Committee was focused on defense innovation, how we create an ecosystem where more companies can succeed. And so my hope is to leverage the network that I built for a decade and apply it to my work at Palantir. 

And I think Palantir, prior to me joining, has obviously already forged creative partnerships, not only with different next-generation defense startups like Anduril and companies like that. But also working better with defense primes, because defense primes are going to continue to exist. And that's good for America. That's healthy. And if we can collaborate and pair cutting-edge Palantir software with some of the legacy systems or next-generation systems and hardware that those companies produce, I think that's great for not just the American industry, but again, the warfighter. And it all comes down to the warfighter.

When’s your first day and what’s the first order of business?

I've already started. I'll probably be in the office officially in a couple weeks, but I've started the indoctrination process. So my first order of business is just to learn as much as possible and really spend as much time as possible with the engineers and the core world-class talent that Palantir continues to recruit. That is the secret sauce, in my opinion, of the company. I just want to learn as much as possible then figure out what I can do to help grow the business. And again, help the warfighter, which remains my North Star in all this.

Any final thoughts?

If you look at particularly the last few years of my time in Congress, one of the things I'm most proud of is all my national security work was bipartisan. I would submit that the [House] Select Committee on China was the most bipartisan committee in the 118th Congress. And what I think is exciting about the work that Palantir does, it's just about keeping America safe and equipping the warfighter with cutting-edge technology and providing our military with a strategic advantage. And I just look forward to working with the Defense Department to strengthen and grow the work that's already underway with Palantir. And so it's a really exciting opportunity again, as I said at the outset, a way in my mind to continue the mission that's guided my service in the Marine Corps and in Congress.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.