--- title: "USA Today Partners With Palantir to Gain “Actionable Intelligence” On Its Audiences" description: "USA Today announced a new partnership with Palantir to use its AI-powered platform to gain \"actionable intelligence\" on readers." date: "2026-08-09" modified: "2026-08-09" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/usa-today-palatnir-reader-intelligence" categories: - "Future Society" - "Privacy" --- # USA Today Partners With Palantir to Gain “Actionable Intelligence” On Its Audiences ![Exterior of the Palantir office in Tokyo.]() *Hiroshi-Mori-Stock / Shutterstock / Futurism* When you read the newspaper, does it read you back? On Thursday, USA Today Co — formerly known as Gannett, the publisher of its eponymous newspaper *USA Today*— announced that it was partnering with the AI surveillance firm Palantir to monetize and gain "actionable intelligence" on its audiences, [*Nieman Lab* reports](). The largest newspaper publisher in the nation's partnership was revealed in its second quarter earnings call. After extolling Palantir's AI-powered platform, USA Today CEO Mike Reed said that it would allow the paper to "build a common intelligence layer" on the data it collects on its readers. "Every visit, every session, and every moment of attention creates a signal," Reed told investors Thursday morning, as quoted by *Nieman*. "When we connect those signals, they become actionable intelligence that allows us to engage users more effectively and monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value." The optics of partnering with Palantir — a company that provides military targeting software and wields a vast surveillance panopticon — are undeniably touchy. It's worked [hand in hand with ICE](), secretly providing the agency a tool that scours citizen's Medicaid and other government data to create a map of people it could potentially deport. It also [supplies the Israeli military with an AI]() battlefield decision-making tool that can analyze enemy targets for elimination. Still, it's unclear how much more invasive the USA Today's partnership will be compared to the routine data gathering and audience analysis that websites typically perform. One example of what Palantir's platform could do, according to president of USA Today Media Kristin Roberts, was automatically identify partnerships to make money through affiliate links. "Historically, much of our commerce business has relied on manual processes to connect affiliate opportunities with our content," Roberts added. It's the latest deal Palantir has struck with media outlets as they struggle to bring in traffic from search engines in an [increasingly AI-dominated web ecosystem](). It's also partnered with Axel Springer, the publisher which owns *Politico*, *Business Insider*, and the German newspaper *BILD*. Thomson Reuters' partnership in particular is a case study in the dangers of letting online brands act as data brokers: *404 Media* [found]() that the *Reuters* publisher had supplied personal data to ICE, and some employees [are protesting its $125 million deal to sell the agency voter data](). USA Today, it's worth noting, has spent the past few years shoving AI into its operations and ruthless monetizing its content. It was [caught using the tech to generate parts of its articles](), and published [automated sports stories that served up heaps of targeted gambling ads](). **More on privacy:** [*Flock Is Losing Dozens of Contracts as Controversy Grows*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()