It's one of the best programs at coordinating the vast databases accumulated by the U.S. intelligence apparatus. It's already in use in federal domestic security.

But it's also caused a massive fight inside the Army intelligence command.

Palantir is one of the first Silicon Valley companies to view the government as a customer rather than an annoyance and — after stepping into a game dominated by top contractors like Lockheed Martin, IBM, and Raytheon — it's proven controversial in both what it does and if it should be used.

What it does is assemble comprehensive dossiers on objects of interest, collated from the sprawling databases of intelligence agencies.

If that sounds over-broad, it's intentional.