Protesters dressed as Gandalf, the wizard from The Lord of the Rings, have staged a rare demonstration outside tech billionaire Peter Thiel's home in Buenos Aires, accusing Palantir, the data analytics firm he co-founded, of enabling US government surveillance.
Dressed in pointed grey hats and long cloaks, the small group sang reworked Argentinian football chants aimed at Thiel, including one lyric shared widely online: 'You want palantirs to see the future / Look yourself at the mirror, you're gonna see an idiot.'
No formal organisation has claimed responsibility for the demonstration, and Argentinian police have reported no arrests, describing the gathering as peaceful and relatively small.
The protest drew directly on Thiel's long-standing habit of wrapping his business ventures in Tolkien references. Palantir takes its name from the all-seeing stones, or 'palantíri', in The Lord of the Rings, while other Thiel-linked entities include Lembas LLC, Rivendell One and Mithril Capital Management. Critics have long argued the branding sits awkwardly alongside Palantir's contracts providing AI-assisted surveillance and predictive policing software to American authorities.
Thiel has previously offered an unconventional reading of the books, describing Gandalf as 'a crazy person who wants to start a war' with Mordor, which he has characterised as a misunderstood, science-driven civilisation.
The Buenos Aires protesters inverted that framing. In Tolkien's novels, Gandalf refuses to use the palantíri, regarding them as corrupting; it is Saruman who becomes consumed by their visions and is ultimately manipulated by Sauron.
By casting themselves as Gandalf rather than Saruman, the demonstrators positioned themselves as a counterweight to a technology they compared to the seeing-stones' corrupting power.
Palantir has consistently defended its platforms as tools that help governments track terrorism, fraud and serious crime, insisting strict safeguards govern their use. Neither the company nor representatives for Thiel had issued a comment on the Buenos Aires demonstration at the time of writing, and it has not been possible to independently verify details of any security response at the property.
The demonstration follows other recent instances of Gandalf being invoked against arguments for unchecked technological control. Pope Leo XIV, who has previously criticised Thiel publicly, quoted the wizard in a formal encyclical warning against attempts to dominate the world through artificial intelligence.
The Pope cited Gandalf's words: 'It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.'
Una banda de Gandalfs esta tarde en la puerta de la casa de Peter Thiel en Palermo Chico. 😁 pic.twitter.com/g1Yy8PZLb8
Footage of the Buenos Aires protest circulated widely on social media platforms including X and TikTok, with much of its reach driven by the incongruity of robed demonstrators singing about predictive policing outside a billionaire's home. There is no indication that Thiel interacted with the group.
The choice of his Buenos Aires residence, rather than one of his more prominent US addresses, has been noted as a sign of how international the backlash against Palantir's surveillance work has become. For now, the episode is likely to be remembered chiefly as the day a group dressed as Gandalf arrived at Thiel's gates and began to sing.
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