Civil Liberties and National Security Can Coexist

As a former Member of Congress, I worry that some Democrats have started treating any relationship between government and national security technology companies as something to be ashamed of, rather than something that must be carefully overseen and responsibly managed. 

While the Purge Palantir campaign initiated by the American Friends Service Committee raises legitimate policy concerns, it is increasingly taking the form of a call for a public separation from the entire class of technology and defense-related companies. 

Some have demanded that lawmakers cut ties with the companies altogether. They absolutely raise some legitimate concerns regarding government surveillance, its relationship with defense companies, and immigration — all of which deserve scrutiny. My worry is regarding their calls for a public separation from the entire class of technology and defense-related companies. 

When I was a Member of Congress, I saw firsthand how data analysis, integration, and emerging technology were increasingly utilized to aid the people responsible for keeping us all safe. Local police departments, counterterrorism units, military planners, and intelligence agencies all depend on these tools, not in an abstract sense, but in ways that affect whether the right people get the right information before something goes wrong.

Many of the same companies being targeted in these campaigns are the ones whose tools show up when a fentanyl trafficking network gets dismantled, when a disaster response team is trying to coordinate in real time, or when a cybersecurity analyst is tracing an intrusion back to a foreign actor. 

Is more oversight over these companies and the technology they use needed? Yes. But oversight is different from stigmatizing the entire sector, ostracizing the engineers and thought leaders that generate innovation and challenge our understanding of what technology can do to make us better and safer.

At a moment when foreign adversaries are probing American infrastructure, fentanyl is moving through criminal networks faster than agencies can track it, and the geopolitical situation is genuinely unstable, the party should be careful not to send the message that involvement in the national security technology ecosystem is politically disqualifying. 

Democrats do not need to abandon oversight or accountability to reject this approach. But they should push back against pressure campaigns that treat any contact with the national security technology sector as inherently illegitimate. There is a difference between oversight and ostracism — and in national security, that different matters more than many know. 

Joe Garcia is a former Democratic member of Congress from Florida.