Seasoned writer, videographer, creative technologist, fierce adorer of all things fintech, and recovering cryptoholic.
Show of hands: have you ever heard of software called Mosaic from Palantir (you’ve definitely heard of Palantir — the CIA can’t get enough of them). But Mosaic? I bet not. On June 12, things went bad for Iran. We were told: Iran has 409 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, which means “nine nuclear bombs” according to Bibi, who cited a fresh IAEA report dated May 31. Trump chimed in: “Severe consequences are coming.” The AI called Mosaic played a major role in this development, but let’s take it from the top. Mosaic is Palantir’s crown jewel. The company was founded by Peter Thiel and the completely bonkers “Dr. Evil” Alex Karp, who’s been bent on making his enemies “fear him” ever since I began to pay attention. In 2015, the IAEA quietly started using Mosaic as a tool for ensuring nuclear transparency. The software began processing hundreds of millions of data points, from satellite images to social media likes. Its analytics seeped into official reports, influenced sanctions and humanitarian aid decisions. Essentially, Mosaic learned to predict the behavior of states, but since its creator, Alex Karp, is a total maniac, Mosaic prefers to predict only threats. Again, the IAEA never publicized this partnership. In 2018, a $50 million contract with Palantir was extended, but there were no internal discussions at the agency. Meanwhile, Palantir’s promo materials openly stated: “Mosaic is a cornerstone of international nuclear monitoring.” The jokes ended when Mosaic began piecing together nuclear threat assessments from behavioral patterns, suspicious logistics, and metadata. The Turqozabad and Marivan sites were flagged as potential hidden labs. These exact sites were included in IAEA reports and became part of the framework of international grief against Iran. In 2025, Mosaic triggered again, flagging “anomalies” in Fordow and Lavizan. From these fragments, an image of an imminent threat was created. On May 31, the IAEA issued a report stating that 408.6 kg of uranium is “enough to produce nine nuclear bombs.” On June 6, the IAEA Board of Governors issued a formal censure of Iran. On June 12, Israel struck, all based on predictive AI. That same day, Tehran published a leak: documents claiming that Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, had personally shared Mosaic’s findings with the Israeli side. Grossi tried walking the whole thing back and gave an interview to CNN: “We have no evidence of a systemic weapons program,” but the missiles were already in the air. There’s a particularly disturbing twist in this story: Mosaic was used not just to assess facilities, but to target individuals. The killing of Professor Jari, an AI sage, may be the first case where predictive analytics generated a target list. His research was civilian, but Mosaic deemed it potentially dangerous. And that’s your portion of cyberpunk today: AI no longer just observes. Mosaic, with its closed-source, unauditable algorithms, predicts, interprets, and a human passes sentence.
