Governments Likely to Use Bondi Massacre to Justify AI-Powered Mass Surveillance

In the immediate aftermath of the Bondi massacre, questions turned to how intelligence and policing systems had not detected an ISIS-inspired father and son plotting a mass murder at a high-profile Jewish festival, with an arsenal of legal firearms. The response has unsurprisingly been the launch of inquiries, both nationally and at the state level, with the solution likely to be mass surveillance.

PM Anthony Albanese has appointed former prominent public servant Dennis Richardson to undertake a review of federal intelligence and policing systems in light of the terror-related mass murder. And while the Liberals seek to crucify the PM for not holding a Royal Commission, NSW premier Chris Minns has determined to hold such an inquiry to placate the intense lobbying.

Concerns around gaps in intelligence after the mass killing on Gadigal land have mirrored the panic around weaknesses found in US security systems in the wake of the 2001 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City.  And US entrepreneur Peter Thiel and other investors went on to found data integration company Palantir in 2003, in order to bridge these intel blind spots with artificial intelligence.

The far-right opposition has been applying immense pressure to the Australian prime minister to take comprehensive action following Bondi, as has been the entire mainstream media landscape, which is now completely compromised after two years of Gaza genocide hasbara. Yet while the NSW premier has been subjected to a similar campaign, he’s been served it with a smile because “he’s our guy”.

So, an obvious step is that Thiel or Palantir CEO Alex Karp contact our ministers to discuss security platforms already operating in the US, which could be applied here. And in considering Palantir’s links to the MAGA White House, this becomes much more likely, as the Trump administration has just announced it is actively surveilling Australia’s migrant population to prevent any security concerns.

The needles in the haystack

The problem that presented itself to the US post-9/11 was how could the terrorist plot have been thwarted. With most of its investment coming from the CIA’s venture capital nonprofit In-Q-Tel, Palantir was founded in 2003, with the aim of preventing further such attacks, via increasing ability to access raw data from different ‘information silos’ or disparate and unlinked databases.

Released in 2008, Gotham is the platform used to surveil the US domestically. It takes data and breaks it down into discernible and readable profiles and entities. The AI surveilling capabilities involved cannot only discern connections and patterns indiscernible to human observation, but it can in turn be used to make predictive assessments about future crime and law enforcement responses.

The correlation between 9/11 and the circumstances surrounding the Bondi massacre are clear. There was information available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies that could have served as a red flag if agencies had brought together the disparate pieces of intel, with the atrocity potentially being prevented.

The details about Bondi killers, Sajid and Naveed Akram, that have emerged following the 14 December mass killing of 15 further support a shift toward AI utilising security platforms now operating in the US, as Sajid was able to obtain a 2023-issued NSW gun licence and permits for six guns, despite ASIO having investigated his son over potential connections to a local ISIS cell in 2019.

All-pervasive AI surveillance will likely be presented as the solution to bridge these gaps. The details of the arsenal Sajid, an Indian national, owned were obviously stored on a database unconnected with details ASIO had about Naveed. And a third unnoticed detail, that the pair travelled to Mindanao in the Philippines prior to the shooting, also serves as justification for Palantir systems.

AI mass surveillance down under

Aside from Gotham, the other main security platform Palantir operates in the US is Foundry, which provides security systems for corporations. As part of US president Donald Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented migrants drive, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has also teamed up with Palantir Technologies to roll out the ImmigrationOS platform to streamline this process.

A key recent development in this country in terms of Palantir was that last year supermarket giant Coles implemented Foundry in order to cut costs and redefine its workforce operations. Coles has also incorporated Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence platform, which helps with organisation and decision-making. Other local companies utilising Palantir platforms include Rio Tinto and Westpac.

The shift towards Australian government using Palantir began in 2011. The Australian Defence Department uses Palantir’s Foundry and Vantage platforms. The Home Affairs Department’s financial transaction monitor AUSTRAC has utilised Foundry and Gotham since 2017, while the Australian Signals Directorate began using Palantir systems in 2013, and renewed its contract in 2019.

The Richardson inquiry is set to assess whether intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and in particular ASIO and the Australian federal police, performed to maximum effect in terms of and had adequate capacity to prevent the Bondi massacre. The NSW Royal Commission into the tragedy will be broader in terms of its reach in inquiring into the event and surrounding circumstances.

The ultimate outcome of any inquiry into the Bondi Beach massacre, whether it finds that law enforcement and intelligence weren’t acting effectively in the leadup to December 2025 killings or whether they’re found simply not to have had the capacity to have pieced together disparate pieces of information to foil the killers’ plot, will likely be to find the solution in Palantir.

The imperial view

The security outcomes at Bondi are not solely a concern for federal Labor. Indeed, the opposition has made it well known that it considers the PM is responsible the incident for a weak security environment in terms of “unchecked rising antisemitism”, while Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu told the globe in the wake of the killings that he’d warned Albanese of the threat four weeks earlier.

Another government to have appeared to be impacted by the Australian mass shooting was that in the United Kingdom, which began cracking down on expressions of support for Palestine, despite no clear correlation with the killings, while the United States had already expressed concerns about the Australian security environment in terms of the criminal activity of migrants just weeks prior.

The US State Department announced to global news agencies in late November that its European embassies, along with those in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, would then start monitoring local residents of a “migration background” in terms of crime and the sort of threats these local constituents might pose to US interests and indeed, to western civilisation as a whole.

An ISIS-related incident like the Bondi massacre is exactly the type of threat the White House means. US concerns will only intensify the need for the Albanese government to be seen to be cracking down on any security threats, especially as the US military presence and control in the north of this continent are increasing in terms of size and importance, due to a potential conflict with China.

Chair of the Palantir board of directors Peter Thiel has been a key investor in Donald Trump for president since his first attempt at office back in 2015, and the billionaire is also the key financial backer of JD Vance for US vice president.

Albanese will certainly be able to put to rest any disquietude from Washington and indeed, Tel Avi as well, if the conclusion that the federal inquiry comes to involves a more comprehensive local surveillance system that could be used to sweep all Australian databases to build profiles of all local constituents in order to ferret out any terrorists in our midst prior to their taking action.