NY Democratic House Candidate Worked for Palantir Partners Pushing AI Border Surveillance

A Democrat running to pick up one of the party’s top target House seats recently worked for two defense contractors looking to help the federal government use artificial intelligence for border surveillance and military projects. 

Cait Conley, a Special Operations combat veteran and former national security adviser under former President Joe Biden, is running in the crowded Democratic primary to challenge incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Her candidate financial disclosures show that she earned more than $80,000 between January 2024 and July 2025 from two companies, Primer AI and Hidden Level.

Both companies partner with far-right billionaire Peter Thiel’s surveillance tech firm Palantir to help government agencies use AI. Both are military contractors; Hidden Level holds an active contract with the Department of War, and Primer’s most recent one was paid out last year. Primer has also praised President Donald Trump’s AI policy and advertises on its website that it “helps” the Department of Homeland security with data and intelligence work and that “Primer AI platforms support DHS missions,” but it does not appear to have an active deal with the department in a federal contracting database. 

“Cait believes AI can be both an opportunity and a risk to the middle class and is determined to shape AI policy so that it grows and strengthens middle-class New Yorkers, rather than being used to further enrich billionaires,” said Conley campaign manager Emily Goldson in a statement to The Intercept. “She’ll be a leader in Congress, ensuring working Americans are included in the growth created and aren’t left behind.” 

Running in a swing district north of New York City, Conley has walked a fine line on matters of immigration and the national security apparatus, blasting Trump for deploying the military to U.S. cities and criticizing immigration agents for killing protesters. On her campaign website, she pledges to “stand strong on our national security priorities,” including “defending the homeland, fighting crime, and fixing our broken immigration system.”

Conley’s close ties to companies at the intersection of AI and national security policy aren’t a surprise given her military background. But her connections to the firms raise questions about how she might approach those policy sectors in Congress, said Albert Fox Cahn, a civil rights attorney who previously led the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and is a lifelong resident of New York’s 17th District. 

“At a time when we see so many Silicon Valley companies having their technology weaponized against immigrant communities, these sorts of consulting roles raise questions about what exactly she did and what lines were drawn,” Cahn told The Intercept. 

It’s unclear what exactly Conley did at the companies, according to her candidate disclosure filed with the House Clerk. She started consulting for Primer at some point after January 2024, when she left her previous job as an adviser for the Department of Homeland Security under Biden. In the period ending in July 2025, she earned $12,500 for her consulting work.  

Touting the candidate’s military service, Goldson said that Conley “has worked with a range of private and public sector entities, either through her work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) or as a consultant, to help keep American families and American infrastructure, like stadiums and other public spaces and our energy grid, safe from terrorist attacks.” The campaign did not comment on The Intercept’s questions about whether Conely was still employed by either firm.

Between January 2024 and July 2025, Conley earned $68,000 from Hidden Level, which works in radio-frequency sensing and airspace security, including monitoring unauthorized drone activity. Hidden Level’s data is used in Palantir’s Maven platform, which Trump’s Pentagon awarded a $480 million contract in May. When Trump announced his plan to build a “golden dome” missile defense system  — described by one critic as “more of a political marketing scheme than a carefully thought-out defense program” — Hidden Level released a statement applauding his plan and saying it “stands ready to support this mission today.” Of a White House directive to cut waste in commercial technology in April, the company said the “policy shift doesn’t just validate the model Hidden Level was built on, it demands it.”

Both companies have received lucrative contracts from the federal government under previous administrations. Primer has won at least $7.2 million in contracts from the Department of Defense since 2021, according to federal spending records. Hidden Level earned just under $3 million in Pentagon contracts to monitor airspace and bolster the federal system that manages drone traffic between 2022 and 2024 under former President Joe Biden.

“We’ve seen just how brazenly people can manipulate the label ‘national security and counterterrorism’ and the ways it can mask government efforts aimed at people who never pose a threat to our country. As a civil rights lawyer and activist, I get very nervous when people are quick to invoke the language of national security and counter-terrorism,” said Cahn, the civil rights lawyer. “It raises more questions than it answers.”

The seat in suburban New York, which includes north Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, and Dutchess Counties, is a top priority for Democrats. It was one of four New York House seats the party lost to Republicans amid a slew of upsets in the 2022 midterms. The winner of the June Democratic primary will take on Lawler, a Republican who flipped the seat that cycle after a combination of redistricting and Democratic infighting helped him beat former Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. 

Conley is one of six candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Other contenders include local official and tech founder Peter Chatzky, who has funded his own campaign with more than $10 million; Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson; lawyer and former television reporter Mike Sacks; nonprofit executive Effie Phillips-Staley; and Air Force veteran John Cappello. 

Conley has campaigned on her military experience and highlighted the fact that the Russian government banned her from the country because of her work on Biden’s National Security Council. She said she hopes voters in the swing district will see her lack of traditional political experience as a positive. “We need people who take public service seriously, who are not politicians, who are actual leaders and problem solvers,” Conley told the New York Times in March.

Her campaign originally focused primarily on issues of affordability and improving Hudson Valley infrastructure, including criticizing Trump’s economic policies. As the campaign progressed, Conley has become more aggressive in criticizing Trump’s intensifying attacks on cities around the country and his nationwide crackdown on immigrants. 

Goldson said that Conley believed in holding ICE accountable, investigating the officials responsible for the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Congress must pass legislation ensuring ICE operates lawfully like local law enforcement, including banning masks and requiring judicial warrants for arrest, and sending CBP back to the border where it belongs,” she added. 

Lawler, meanwhile, has urged immigration agents to “reassess their current tactics,” while refraining from criticizing Trump.

Conley has faced criticism throughout the campaign — much of it from Republicans — for not voting in recent midterm elections and registering as a Democrat just before she launched her campaign. Critics attacked her for moving to the district in January from Virginia, though she grew up in the Hudson Valley. 

Her detractors have pointed out that many of her donors come from outside the district, several of them from the defense and tech industries.

Conley has received $10,000 in contributions from Matt and Kimberly Grimm, the former of whom is the co-founder of Anduril Industries. Anduril, which was heavily backed by Thiel, builds autonomous drones, systems to surveil the border, andsurveillance towers powered by AI.

“There’s a lot of questions to answer, and I think that this is true for candidates across the country who have worked for these companies in the past or who you know are receiving large donations from their employees,” Cahn said. “There’s a growing recognition that many of these tech firms are carrying out a mission that is fundamentally at odds with the values that Democrats hold and most Americans hold.”

Conley’s donors also include a vice president and other employees at the top Washington lobbying firm BGR group, which has represented the Saudi government – until it cut ties with the country in 2018 – and companies like defense giant Raytheon and the energy behemoth Chevron, as well as big pharmaceutical firms. BGR vice president Joel Bailey gave Conley’s campaign $500 in July, while BGR principals Syd Terry and Fred Turner each also gave Conley’s campaign $250. BGR senior director Hai Peng has given Conley’s campaign $5,500 to Conley’s campaign since May. None of the BGR donors listed residences in New York. 

In a statement to The Intercept, Peng said he met Conley at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill close to two decades ago and made the contribution in his personal capacity. “I genuinely believe she is the kind of leader our country needs right now,” Peng said. 

Conley has been endorsed by several political action committees including MD PAC, previously known as Majority Democrats PAC, which has given $90,900, VoteVets, Equality PAC, and Giffords PAC. She’s also endorsed by several local officials and political leaders, as well as Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y. 

Cahn said he wasn’t sure who, if anyone, he would vote for in the primary. But he sees the race as an example of the opportunity voters have to hold Democrats to a higher standard of accountability than in the past, particularly when it comes to policy issues like technology, surveillance and artificial intelligence. 

“We’re at a new moment of accountability within the tech sector more broadly, as we start to recognize that so many tech companies are part of the apparatus that is powering ICE’s attacks,” Cahn said. “This is especially notable for someone who’s running based off of their time in military defense roles.”