Palantir Technologies Incorporated, based in Denver Colorado, was founded by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp and associates in 2003 and it received its initial funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (Greenberg 2013). Palantir centralizes public and private data that are now being analyzed by AI algorithms to target the domestic and foreign markets of the United States which is currently under the leadership of Donald Trump. A Palantir client can connect “a Nigerian internet protocol address, a proxy server somewhere in the US, and payments flowing out from a hijacked home equity line of credit.” (Greenberg 2013)
The founders of Palantir have extreme views on how America should be administered by emphasizing zero-sum outcomes with the goal of achieving complete dominance in defense and commerce. They want to monopolize planet earth (Thiel 2021), with the aim of employing AI technologies to advance Donald Trump’s America First agenda. This requires that information on domestic and foreign citizens be put under total control, i.e., totalitarianism.
Palantir has access to all GPS information (see Footnote 1), all internet information as it pertains to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google, etc., and all US federal government information as furnished by the Department of Government Efficiency. It is known that such information is being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hunt down immigrants currently working in the United States without legal status (Rosenblat 2025).
Likewise—despite denials—some believe that Palantir has been central to the recent assassinations of top military and scientific personnel of Iran (Minhas 2025), as the United States dropped 15-ton bunker buster bombs (the GBU-57s) on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. By tracking the individuals through GPS, WhatsApp, and Instagram, the movement patterns of the to-be-assassinated individuals can be tracked to a volume of 2.7 x 2.7 x 4.9 m^3 of spatial resolution at a latency of 40 nanoseconds. Once an AI algorithm has computed a probability map on an individual’s location, missiles are sent to specific locations to execute an assassination.
The forgoing provoked the Iranian government to disable the US GPS system, and have it replaced by the China-based GPS network of a constellation of satellites called the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (Zhang Heqing 2025), which has been under development since 1991 due to America’s success at using GPS to aerially administer Gulf War I. BeiDou has a comparable spatial and temporal resolution to that of GPS. The system allows for the navigation of ghost ships who are in violation of US economic sanctions, and it has become a spearhead in the advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative which aims to provide the BRICS countries (composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates) with a competitive (and independent) advantage over the United States and its NATO allies.
Since China is a totalitarian society (and America is fast becoming one) it seems that regardless of whether you anchor your economy to BeiDou or GPS, you will need to select between the hegemon of least villainy. Much has been made of China’s relatively permissive foreign policy as compared to America’s overly aggressive approach over the past 100 years (Sachs 2024). But the ‘realist’ political scientist, John Mearsheimer, posits that at the end of the day China will need to become as ruthless and violent as the United States if it wants to remain hegemonic (Mearsheimer 2001).
Footnote 1: Navstar GPS (Global Positioning System) is managed by a collection of American military satellites that achieved full operation (at the highest spatial and temporal resolution) in 2000 and was made available as such to the entire world—for free.
At present, the vast majority of high - end navigation devices support multiple constellations (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo) to improve positioning accuracy, reliability and anti - interference capabilities. Advantages of BeiDou: Civilian openness, regional short - message communication, and close cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road. Regarding geopolitical considerations: The "authenticity" and "encryption" of navigation signals are related to the security of a country's critical infrastructure and military operations. Many countries remain vigilant about the source and integrity of GNSS signals. Conclusion: Completely "abandoning GPS and using only BeiDou" is not realistic in the foreseeable future, and there is also a lack of motivation at the technical and application levels. A more feasible approach is to promote the integrated application of multiple constellations on the premise of ensuring system redundancy and autonomous control. This can not only disperse geopolitical risks but also maximize the improvement of navigation and positioning accuracy and reliability. In this way, BRICS countries can not only benefit from the cooperation of BeiDou but also avoid being passive due to the risks of a single system at critical moments.
Meanwhile, I'm from an academic institution dedicated to computer systems and navigation. If you need to cooperate on academic journals, we can have in - depth communication.
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BRICS countries are seeking to reduce their dependence on the U.S. GPS system by expanding the use of China’s BeiDou constellation, as part of a broader drive for digital sovereignty and to avoid Western technological dominance. With BeiDou’s technical capabilities now mature, these nations increasingly view it as a strategic alternative, especially in civilian and commercial domains.
Yet a complete abandonment of GPS faces legal, technical, and financial hurdles—chief among them the need to upgrade infrastructure and adhere to new international standards. Country positions vary: Russia is moving toward a strategic partnership with BeiDou, India maintains a cautious stance, and Brazil and South Africa pursue a pragmatic approach that balances economic and technological interests.
The general trend is not a wholesale replacement of GPS but the creation of a multi‑source navigation architecture (Multi‑GNSS) that provides strategic flexibility and mitigates the risks of reliance on a single system. Thus, BRICS nations are not entirely discarding GPS; rather, they are working to erode its monopoly and gradually enhance their bargaining power and digital autonomy.
First of all, it sounds somewhat arbitrary to classify China as a totalitarian society and to compare it to the decline of United Statesian democracy. China has its own instruments of social participation which are founded on republican principles with popular strategies for the implementation of public policies. Unlike in the United States, the Chinese political system is in no way facing decline.
That said, it is unlikely that BRICS countries would immediately abandon the American GPS completely. Most likely, the gradual incorporation of various systems for geolocalization will happen in similar dynamics as it happened with GLONASS, for example. In most BRICS countries, civil devices are able to utilize multiple satellite systems, making use of a wider range of tools, since digital blocks and sanctions by Western countries and coalitions will often result in users migrating to national or regional alternative technological systems. In that sense, I do believe there is a tendency for BRICS+ countries to rely less and less on European and Global North-based services, as they are susceptible to political interference and result in instability.
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