Volunteer editors work on Wikipedia's arms industry pages
Volunteer Wikipedia editors held an arms industry "wikithon", a themed editing event, in a classroom in central London in the week before 21 October. Two dozen volunteers took part, according to a Guardian feature published that day.
Wikipedia is written and maintained by volunteers. The Guardian reported that roughly 270,000 active volunteers decide which subjects get pages.
The arms industry wikithon was started by fellows of the n-Space programme at Somerset House Studios. Agnes Cameron and Hannah Cobb are co-founders. Wikithons are held monthly, and the event's stated goal was to put better quality, better organised information on the arms industry into the public domain.
Among the pages the event targeted were those on Palantir, Project Maven and Nitro-Chem.
Wikipedia's rules prohibit original research, meaning material an editor has produced or analysed personally, as well as drawing conclusions. The event therefore aimed to compile information that is publicly available from other sources.
The subject matter has a public background. Project Maven began in 2017 as a Pentagon drone-imagery labelling programme, and Palantir developed its artificial intelligence system to serve it, according to Reuters. Reuters reported in March 2026 that the Pentagon, the US Defense Department, plans to adopt Palantir's AI as a core US military system, according to a memo.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has written that Palantir stepped in shortly after Google withdrew from Project Maven and has remained the programme's primary industry partner.
