Hundreds of people marched from Floralis Genérica and the law faculty steps on the afternoon of 29 August and stopped outside a house at Dardo Rocha 2900 in Barrio Parque. They read out an eviction notice addressed to Peter Thiel. It told him to leave the country and wind up his businesses in it, and it listed the reasons: water drawn from the Neuquén basin to cool artificial intelligence machines, land in Patagonia bought to put them on, police, health and migration records merged into one searchable file, and a bill in the Senate they said was written for exactly that.

The Catholic University's social debt observatory put poverty at 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, up from 29.9 per cent the quarter before, with indigence at 6.5 per cent against 6.1. About 1.3 million people crossed the line into poverty between the third quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. Agustín Salvia, who directs the observatory, said sustained poverty reduction requires "growth that translates into productive, protected and better-remunerated jobs".

Argentina has shed more than 266,000 registered private-sector jobs since December 2023. Over the same period the state approved 22 projects under the existing Régimen de Incentivo para Grandes Inversiones, committing US$47.073 billion in return for tax, customs and currency terms locked for 30 years. The Observatorio del RIGI read the 37 filings with published employment data and found they promise 14,240 permanent direct jobs once the plants open, plus 30,713 indirect. A Fundación Observatorio PyME survey found 4.7 per cent of small and medium firms supplying those projects at all, and 1.5 per cent supplying them directly. Those firms carry roughly double the tax burden of the companies inside the regime.

The Súper RIGI would raise the entry price to US$1 billion and cut the tax rate again, for artificial intelligence, data centres, semiconductors, lithium batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, low-emission hydrogen, small nuclear reactors, the uranium value chain and copper refining. The Chamber of Deputies passed it on 24 June by 130 votes to 106, with seven abstentions. The stability clause lasts 30 years from the day a project joins, which binds the governments elected in 2027, 2031, 2035 and after.

Senators were to vote on 10 September. They did not get that far. A joint plenary of three committees met on 2 September and failed to produce a signed report, and the government now hopes for a floor vote on 17 September at the earliest.

Maximiliano Abad of the Unión Cívica Radical, Martín Goerling Lara and María Cristina Huala of the PRO and Carlos Espínola of Provincias Unidas withheld their signatures. They want a price preference written in for Argentine suppliers, so that a domestic bid wins where it costs no more than 15 per cent above a foreign one at equal quality, and they want industry bodies consulted before the state may declare that no local supply exists. Patricia Bullrich, who leads the La Libertad Avanza bloc in the Senate, gave them a 20 per cent floor for locally bought tradable goods and a rule that electricity-intensive projects must show grid capacity and their own generation or storage. On the 15 per cent margin she said: "Si el Súper RIGI tiene tanto problema, nos quedamos con el RIGI."

Thiel bought the house on Dardo Rocha through an Argentine company owned by two US entities and, above them, a Delaware holding. A year later he disclosed a US$75.9 million stake in Argentina's largest independent oil producer. Neither transaction is unlawful.

The march on Dardo Rocha

The Coordinadora Plurinacional Basta de Falsas Soluciones called the march. Reporters from lavaca walked with it and counted the crowd. Motorcycle police rode alongside and nobody was arrested. A drone filming the column failed in mid-air and dropped into a neighbouring garden. Ezequiel, of Basta de Falsas Soluciones, said: "Estoy seguro de que fue una interferencia que le hicieron al dron, se rompió un poco, pero por suerte pude meter la mano bajo la verja y recuperarlo."

Demonstrators wore Anonymous masks, Spider-Man costumes and pointed hats, carrying placards reading "fuera Palantir" and "desalojo express a Peter Thiel". Palantir Technologies, which Thiel co-founded and chairs, takes its name from the palantíri, the seeing stones of The Lord of the Rings.

To the tune of Siga el baile they sang: "Siga siga el desalojo, al magnate Peter Thiel, este es nuestro territorio, no vas a poder vivir." To a Bad Bunny melody: "Quieren el Súper RIGI y quedarse el agua, quieren los data centers y expulsar comunidades." Over the YMCA riff: "El que no salta es dueño de Palantir, y en Argentina no va a poder vivir." The column also chanted "Los territorios y el agua no se venden", and "Los buitres a Silicon Valley, la biodiversidad se queda acá."

The eviction notice accused Thiel of expanding his holdings while the government loosens the rules on land purchase and glacier protection. It said the Súper RIGI was written for artificial intelligence and data centre projects. It accused Palantir of integrating police, health and migration records to target migrants and activists. It cited Próspera, the Thiel-funded private jurisdiction in Honduras, over blocked coastal access and diverted community water.

Palantir has a US$30 million contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to build a system called ImmigrationOS, with a prototype due on 25 September 2025 and the contract due to expire in September 2027. The American Immigration Council says it uses passport records, Social Security files, tax data and licence-plate reader data.

Twelve days before the march a smaller group had gathered at the same address in Gandalf costume, calling itself the Gandalfs del Sur, holding a banner reading "you shall not pass" and chanting "vos tenés palantires para ver el futuro". Thiel withdrew from Vientos de Cambio two days later. The think tank Libertad y Progreso staged the summit at the Sheraton in Retiro on 1 and 2 September with the US-based Reason Foundation and Archbridge Institute. Organisers said he could not travel for reasons of agenda, logistics and transport outside their control. Milei closed it on 2 September, alongside Luis Caputo, Federico Sturzenegger, Bullrich, Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, deputy economy minister José Luis Daza, the Nobel laureate James Heckman and Jane Street co-founder Tim Reynolds.

Deputy Juan Marino, who convened the congressional hearing on Thiel the day before the march, wrote that technofascism has to be met with "unidad, organización y movilización popular".

Where the water would come from

Liliana Romero is lonko of the Mapuche community Fvta Trayén, in the Vaca Muerta zone of Neuquén where the 500MW data centre is meant to go. "Ya no tenemos la misma tranquilidad," she told La Nación. "Acá hay mucha contaminación, hay polvo en suspensión, el campo está reseco, no hay pasturas para los animales. Ya no nos queda territorio."

Diego Rosales, the community's werkén, described how they get water now: "Dependemos de pedirle agua a la industria. A veces nos dejan alguna toma o válvula para conectarnos. Llenamos charcos y transportamos agua a los puestos. Pero es agua pensada para la industria."

Neuquén's environment secretariat told La Nación in March 2026 that the province has no specific regulation for data centres, no local norms and no announcements. La Nación put electricity generation at 7.1 cubic metres of water per megawatt hour, more than 2.5 million litres a year for every megawatt, against fracking's 60,000 cubic metres a year per well across 17,300 wells nationally in 2025. No water permit has been granted to Sur Energy, OpenAI, Tesla or YPF Luz by the province or by the interjurisdictional authority for the Limay, Neuquén and Negro rivers.

Alan Rocha, a researcher at Observatorio Petrolero Sur, said: "Esquemas legales como el RIGI ofrecen fuertes beneficios impositivos, cambiarios y regulatorios. Pero esto puede ser regresivo en términos de control ambiental, uso del agua o supervisión financiera." Beatriz Busaniche, president of Fundación Vía Libre, said: "El RIGI es una regulación hecha a medida de los grandes inversores. Elimina cualquier obligación de contratar trabajo local y de regulaciones ambientales."

Rubén Etcheverry, secretary of Neuquén's planning body Copade, wants the projects. He called the province "un microclima ideal para industrias tecnológicas que requieren confiabilidad energética, baja latencia de conexión, capacidad de refrigeración natural y un contexto previsible".

Observatorio Petrolero Sur marked 13 years of fracking in Vaca Muerta on 3 September and counted more than 158 wells in the La Angostura Sur and Lindero Atravesado blocks, some of them along the edge of the Mari Menuco reservoir. It recorded 5.6 environmental incidents a day across the formation, hundreds of induced earthquakes felt at Sauzal Bonito, Añelo and Rincón de los Sauces, eviction proceedings against the Mapuche communities Lof Kinxikew and Melo, dozens of worker deaths and two men killed recently at Rincón del Mangrullo. A Pan American Energy and YPF spill covered 50,000 square metres of the Mari Menuco lake in October 2025. Mari Menuco and Los Barreales supply drinking water and irrigation. Water for the data centre and for the fracking would come out of the same basin.

The deed

Escritura 167 was signed on 20 August 2025 before the notary Claudia Beatriz García Cortínez and records the sale of Dardo Rocha 2924/28 for US$13.5 million. Revista Anfibia obtained it and published the chain on 27 August 2026, in an investigation with Reporters Without Borders. The buyer is Birkdale Emprendimientos S.A.U., incorporated seven weeks before the sale with 30 million pesos of capital, later raised to 236,275,000. Birkdale Emprendimientos belongs to Birkdale Haven LLC, formed in the United States in February 2025. Above that sit Ceylon Holdings LLC and Lorien Holding of Delaware. Lothlórien is the elven forest of the same books that gave Palantir its name.

David Wheelock, general counsel of Thiel Capital, and Will Tipton, its chief financial officer, appear as officers in the chain. Two Argentine lawyers front it locally. Martín Rodrigo Quintanar spent 20 years as a partner at Baker & McKenzie and gave 4 million pesos to Juntos por el Cambio in July 2023. Marcos Cardoso was legal director for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Southern Cone from 2010 to 2018.

La Nación and Infobae had told the story differently in April 2026: a US$12 million purchase, brokered by the agency JdC Propiedades, sold by the financier Juan Ball. The registered deed gives a different date, a different price and a company rather than a man. Thiel is not named as titleholder on any document in the file. His representatives have said nothing publicly about the purchase, and Newsweek reported that an approach through Palantir drew no response.

What Thiel Macro bought

Thiel Macro LLC filed its Form 13F on 14 August 2026 for the quarter ended 30 June, listing eight positions worth US$418,666,506. Amazon is the largest, 495,000 shares at US$117,978,300. Vista Energy is the second, 1,189,792 depositary shares at US$75,908,730, close to 1 per cent of the company and the only holding outside the United States.

Every other position is in power. Vistra at US$59,130,126, American Electric Power at US$42,221,892, DTE Energy at US$40,294,247, FirstEnergy at US$39,901,225, CMS Energy at US$39,559,986 and the small modular reactor developer X-Energy at US$3,672,000. Seven of the eight sell power, nuclear fuel or oil. Thiel Macro had disclosed no US equity holdings at all for the two previous quarters.

Vista shares jumped about 5 per cent when the filing was reported on 17 August 2026.

Vista Energy

Miguel Galuccio spent his career at Schlumberger before Cristina Fernández de Kirchner chose him to head YPF in May 2012, months after the company was renationalised. He left in 2016 and floated Vista as a Mexican-listed blank cheque company in 2017, raising about US$650 million with Riverstone behind him. Vista now pumps more than 160,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day out of the Vaca Muerta shale and exports more than 70 per cent of its crude.

Galuccio owns 5.604 per cent of the company. Equinor has 5.584 per cent, JPMorgan Investment Management 4.959 per cent, Capital Research and Management 4.159 per cent, T. Rowe Price International 4.112 per cent, the government of Malaysia 3.274 per cent, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council 2.595 per cent and Baillie Gifford 2.448 per cent.

On 21 July 2026 Vista asked the state to admit Bandurria Norte to the existing RIGI: US$5.8 billion, 332 wells across 10,700 hectares that produce nothing today, a target of 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. No resolution granting it has appeared in the Boletín Oficial. Thiel Macro's position in the company was dated 30 June, three weeks before Vista lodged that application, and was made public 24 days after it.

Who is already inside the RIGI

Argentina had approved 22 projects by 27 August 2026, committing US$47.073 billion against 95,950 direct and indirect jobs promised, with 20 more worth US$110.883 billion under evaluation. More than 95 per cent of the money is in oil, gas, copper and lithium. Neuquén has 11 of the projects, San Juan six, Río Negro five.

Marcelo Mindlin is the largest single beneficiary. Pampa Energía's Rincón de Aranda, 259 horizontal shale wells at Añelo, was approved at US$4.521 billion under resolution 1025/2026 on 21 July 2026. TGS won US$550 million for the first stage of the Perito Moreno pipeline under resolution 676/2026 on 13 May, and a US$2.7 billion urea plant at Bahía Blanca. Mindlin's construction arm SACDE is also a member of the Vaca Muerta Sur pipeline consortium. He said the regime's legal and tax stability is what lets his company reach external financing.

Pan American Energy, the Bulgheroni family company, leads the Southern Energy floating liquefaction project at US$6.878 billion with YPF, Pampa Energía, Harbour Energy and Golar LNG, and holds the San Matías export pipeline at US$1.3 billion under resolution 873/2026 of 26 June 2026. Alejandro Bulgheroni had campaigned for the original regime while the Senate was still weighing it, saying the country was moving at full speed.

Vicuña Argentina, the BHP and Lundin Mining venture that owns the Josemaría and Filo del Sol copper deposits in San Juan, is the largest approval so far: US$9.737 billion under resolution 1154/2026 on 30 July 2026. First Quantum Minerals has Taca Taca in Salta at US$5.25 billion. Rio Tinto has two lithium positions, Rincón in Salta at US$2.744 billion and a Fénix expansion in Catamarca at US$530 million. Ganfeng Lithium and Lithium Argentina expanded Cauchari-Olaroz in Jujuy alongside the provincial company JEMSE. Zijin Mining owns Tres Quebradas in Catamarca. Posco was admitted for Sal de Oro II at US$207,936,427 in computable assets under resolution 1157/2026 on 31 July. Barrick Gold and Shandong Gold hold a Veladero expansion. Rob McEwen's McEwen Copper won the first mining approval in the country, Los Azules, on 26 September 2025.

YPF, Eni and XRG, the international arm of Abu Dhabi's ADNOC, applied on 14 August 2026 to bring Argentina LNG into the regime at US$51 billion, US$29 billion of it by 2031. That single application is larger than everything approved in the regime's first two years combined.

Paolo Rocca's Techint belongs to the Vaca Muerta Sur consortium and receives the same benefits, and the president attacks him by name. Milei amplified a post on 29 January 2026 accusing Rocca of playing all-in for the government to fall, adding the word "Dato". On 28 April he wrote of Rocca and the aluminium producer Madanes Quintanilla: "¿Por qué debería beneficiar a corruptos ineficientes?"

What the state gives up

Nobody in the government has published a number for what the regime costs. The Centro de Economía Política Argentina did the arithmetic on the 12 projects then approved and put it at US$1.813 billion a year, in a range of US$1.307 billion to US$2.362 billion, of which US$851 million is forgone export duties and US$545 million the gap between the RIGI's 25 per cent income tax rate and the general 35 per cent. Deputy Guillermo Michel, head of the customs agency until 2023, put 13 approved projects at US$1.837 billion a year, 0.27 per cent of gross domestic product. Chequeado and the Observatorio del RIGI both record the executive failing to answer transparency requests on the fiscal cost.

Net foreign currency inflow through the regime to March 2026 was US$762 million, US$1.205 billion in against US$452 million out. The government's own projection is US$4.252 billion of disbursement in 2026 and US$3.485 billion in 2027, against US$47.073 billion approved.

Eight companies inside the regime imported US$284.3 million of goods between May 2025 and June 2026, and 87 per cent of it was metalworking, the trade association ADIMRA found from customs records. China supplied about US$74 million of that, South Korea US$57.7 million, the United States US$45.2 million. China sent virtually all the photovoltaic panels and power transformers, 94 per cent of the steel chains and about 64 per cent of the large-diameter steel tubing, which is the core product of Techint's own pipe business. Metalworking supply into oil and gas fell 5.4 per cent in early 2026.

Leonardo Brkusic, executive director of the Grupo Argentino de Proveedores Petroleros, said some member firms are already suspending staff and close to 16 per cent report layoffs, that more than 75 per cent of the sector works at least 25 per cent below capacity, and that the regime makes it easier to ship in complete modular plants than to build them locally.

What the Súper RIGI adds

A company needs US$1 billion in computable assets to enter the new tier, five times the existing threshold, with at least 20 per cent committed inside two years. Income tax drops to 15 per cent. Depreciation is 60 per cent in the first year with unlimited loss carryforward. Dividend tax starts at seven per cent and falls to 3.5 from the fourth year. Export duties go to zero on day one and imports of project goods, intermediate goods and parts included, are exempt. Employer contributions on new hires fall to 10 per cent. Access to foreign currency phases in at 20 per cent after a year, 40 per cent after two and 100 per cent from the third, and the obligation to sell export proceeds on the local market disappears at the start. Provinces that sign up must cap gross income tax at 0.5 per cent, drop stamp tax and give up any new royalties.

Article 74 calls the 30-year stability an acquired right comparable to property rights. Articles 109 and 110 send any dispute to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the International Chamber of Commerce or the Permanent Court of Arbitration, with the tribunal seated outside Argentina and arbitration available after 60 days of failed talks. Article 103 removes any requirement to exhaust Argentine remedies first. Projects count automatically as protected investments under bilateral investment treaties. Letra P reported that environmental penalties are capped at about US$400,000.

Enrique Viale, who presides over the Asociación Argentina de Abogados Ambientalistas, said the bill "traslada la lógica del extractivismo a la era digital" and "busca transformar a la Argentina en una plataforma de sacrificio para las grandes corporaciones tecnológicas", without demanding quality employment, technology transfer, national scientific development or environmental protection. He said: "Mientras el mundo discute cómo regular el poder de las Big Tech para proteger el interés público, Argentina les ofrece un cheque en blanco y blinda sus privilegios frente a cualquier control futuro."

Fundar examined the bill article by article on 9 June 2026 and compared it with other countries. Chile grants 10 to 20 years of stability at rates higher than its general regime. Brazil conditions data centre benefits on 100 per cent renewable energy, reservation of 10 per cent of capacity for domestic users and 2 per cent of revenue for research, on five-year terms. Norway staged its supplier localisation from the start. Fundar's sixth recommendation is that a company be made to exhaust Argentine remedies before it goes to international arbitration.

Martín Lousteau told the Chamber of Deputies on 24 June: "Estamos votando un régimen inédito, el más generoso con renuncia de soberanía, con la pérdida fiscal monumental." Mario Manrique of Unión por la Patria, giving the minority report, said: "Este proyecto, no es una ley, es un negociado entre particulares para estampar la firma como si fuéramos escribanos." Agustín Rossi called it "un traje a medida para los nuevos amigos del presidente Milei, que son las empresas de Inteligencia Artificial". Miguel Ángel Pichetto said it concentrates incentives in capital-intensive sectors without compensation. Bertie Benegas Lynch, giving the majority report, said: "Es un incentivo a las grandes inversiones de nuevas industrias, ¿quién puede estar en contra de esto?"

More than 1,000 academics and researchers, the CONICET Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas among them, wrote to senators on 18 August 2026 calling the bill the abandonment of the right to regulate strategic sectors for an entire generation. Science and technology budgets fell 33.5 per cent between 2023 and 2025 and CONICET funding by 41 per cent.

Who wrote it

Luis Caputo and the energy co-ordination secretary Daniel González co-ordinated the drafting, Letra P reported on 28 July 2026, and the text reached Congress with less legal filtering than the original. Demian Reidel and Emiliano Kargieman pushed the initiative in meetings with González. Milei announced it on 8 May 2026 and sent it to Congress on 26 May, alongside a bill to regulate lobbying, an activity that had no register at all while the original RIGI was passing. Opposition senators demanded on 5 August that Caputo and Sturzenegger come and explain the bill. Neither has appeared.

González told the Chamber of Deputies on 3 June that there was no lobby behind the bill and that he does not know Peter Thiel.

The project that never arrived

Milei's office announced on 10 October 2025 that OpenAI and the Argentine firm Sur Energy would build a 500MW data centre in Patagonia, an investment of up to US$25 billion, two weeks before the midterm elections. OpenAI's own statement describes a letter of intent under which it would buy compute capacity. It names no figure and no megawattage.

Economy Ministry officials later told the Buenos Aires Times there was nothing behind the statement of intent and that the project had never been formally presented. It appears in no Boletín Oficial resolution and on no RIGI list. OpenAI told Infobae in June 2026 that it is a complex long-term project and that the company maintains its intention. Sites have been narrowed to Senillosa and Arroyito in Neuquén. All 13 data centres currently operating in Argentina add up to 32 megawatts. The largest facility in Latin America, in São Paulo, has 61 megawatts.

Sur Energy was founded by Kargieman, chief executive of the satellite company Satellogic, and Matías Travizano, who died in a mountaineering accident in California shortly before the announcement. Satellogic is chaired by Steven Mnuchin, whose Liberty Strategic Capital led a US$150 million investment in January 2022 alongside CF Acquisition Corp V, the Cantor Fitzgerald vehicle that listed the company. General Joseph Dunford, a Liberty Strategic Capital senior managing director, is a director. Howard Lutnick left it on becoming US commerce secretary.

Demian Reidel led Milei's advisers until July 2025, then became president of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina and led a nuclear plan whose third phase he described to Rest of World as a nuclear city in Patagonia feeding data centres. He resigned on 9 February 2026. Internal complaints had been lodged against two managers he appointed, Marcelo Famá and Hernán Pantuso, over software services alleged to have been priced 1,000 per cent above budget, a cleaning contract at 140 per cent above market and 880 million pesos of accumulated debt settled in 18 days. Reidel voted against removing them. Diego Chaher, who heads the state company transformation agency, voted to remove them. CAREM, the small reactor designed in Argentina, was defunded in December 2023 at about 85 per cent complete, with roughly 470 workers laid off.

Meitner Energy proposed on 2 July 2026 to spend US$1.2 billion on an ACR-300 small modular reactor at the Atucha complex, aimed explicitly at the Súper RIGI rather than the existing regime. The Ansari Group, controlled by the Iranian-born businessman Hamid Ansari, owns 60 per cent. Black River Technology, controlled by the state technology company INVAP, owns the rest. Engineers who worked on CAREM have moved across to it. Tesla is in talks with YPF Luz over a gas-fired data centre in Neuquén, with a possible Súper RIGI application behind it.

Palantir on paper

Palantir Technologies holds no publicly documented contract with the Argentine state. Revista Anfibia searched the Boletín Oficial and the state procurement system and found nothing. What exists is a trademark, registered with Argentina's intellectual property institute on 6 June 2022 under Alberto Fernández, through the firm Berton Moreno IP Law, declaring software for the analysis of geospatial, cartographic and location data for governmental, corporate and institutional users.

Palantir bid for the contract to digitise the archive of the AMIA bombing in 2017 and lost. A Palantir director demonstrated the product at the Ministry of Modernisation on 13 April 2017, four months after Argentine officials were hosted at the company's Soho Square offices in London between 7 and 12 January. Mario Cimadevilla, then head of the AMIA special investigations unit, confirmed the meetings. Federal judges Jorge Ballestero and Leopoldo Bruglia ruled that the prosecutors' unit had to keep exclusive control of the archive. The digitisation was done in-house. The Cámara Federal de Casación Penal ruled on 11 April 2024 that Iran decided and Hezbollah executed both the 1994 AMIA bombing and the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The files now sit at the former ESMA, 475 inventoried boxes of declassified intelligence material, 451 of them still waiting on asbestos testing, custody with the prosecutors' unit UFI-AMIA.

Palantir announced a strategic partnership with Israel's defence ministry on 12 January 2024 and held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv to mark it. Globes reported on 29 January that the product is AIP, the company's artificial intelligence decision platform, that the work covers logistics and manpower management, and that Unit 8200 and the Shin Bet turned it down. Palantir said on 21 April 2025 that allegations of involvement in Gaza targeting are "not true", that it has nothing to do with the Lavender database and did not build Gospel. Thiel was asked at the Cambridge Union in May 2024 about Lavender and said: "my bias is to defer to Israel. It's not for us to second-guess every, everything."

Milei signed a memorandum on artificial intelligence with Israel on 19 April 2026, four days before he received Thiel at the Casa Rosada. El Destape published the text. It covers rapid model development and the establishment of Israeli technology companies in Argentine technology parks, and says of itself that it "no podrá ser interpretado ni ejecutado como una obligación o compromiso jurídico o financiero" and cannot be submitted to any judicial or arbitral court, national or international. A company entering the Súper RIGI gets the opposite: three named tribunals abroad, reachable without an Argentine judge.

Decree 941/2025 created the Comunidad Informativa Nacional, pulling data from multiple agencies together for the intelligence service SIDE. The Ministry of Security set up a unit for artificial intelligence applied to security in July 2024, facial recognition included, and has not disclosed its suppliers. Argentina signed a reciprocal trade and investment agreement in February 2026 recognising the United States as an adequate jurisdiction for personal data transfers, then adhered in June 2026 to Pax Silica, an agreement on artificial intelligence, semiconductors and energy infrastructure whose architect, Jacob Helberg, is a US State Department official and a former Palantir adviser.

Perfil reported in April 2026, from trascendidos, that Thiel had discussed mass data analysis systems with the presidential adviser Santiago Caputo, covering modernisation of SIDE, digitised border security and the unification of cross-agency databases. La Política Online reported on 24 April that Thiel offered Milei a surveillance architecture in November 2024 and that Bullrich pursued a Palantir contract through the migration agency, citing the telecommunications engineer Ariel Garbarz.

Milei announced the Gemelo Social Digital, a predictive social policy system, by video on 22 May 2026. No decree, resolution, budget line or supplier has been published since. Officials at the Ministry of Capital Humano told La Nación in August there was nothing behind it. Ámbito examined the asserted link to Thiel and to Palantir's digital twin products and found it forced.

The hearing Thiel skipped

Deputy Juan Marino of Unión por la Patria convened a hearing in the Chamber of Deputies on 30 August lasting five hours, which heard 32 academics, journalists and civil society representatives on Thiel's presence in the country. Thiel was invited. So were Milei and the executive branch. None attended.

Natalia Zuazo, a digital policy specialist, told the hearing: "Para Thiel la IA es ante todo una tecnología militar." Diego Fernández Slezak, the Conicet researcher who directs the applied artificial intelligence laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires, said: "Para hacer negocios tradicionales no hace falta viajar, instalarse y estar presencialmente conversando con presidente, ministros y otras personalidades", and raised the prospect of Argentina serving as a test bed for systems that meet regulatory resistance elsewhere. The lawyer Pablo Serdán described the country's rules as a sandbox. Agustino Fontevecchia, digital director at Editorial Perfil, said: "Yo creo que está acá porque tiene afinidad ideológica con Milei." Marino said: "Se compró un pedazo de las acciones de Vista Energy, entonces evidentemente sus intereses por la Argentina continúan."

Thiel had spent the week of 19 April in Buenos Aires. He flew in on a Gulfstream G550 with his husband Matt Danzeisen, a former BlackRock executive, and their children, and Infobae reported him in the country on 21 April. He lunched with Santiago Caputo on the Monday, dined at Sturzenegger's house on the Wednesday with Quirno and the economist Lucas Llach, watched River play Boca from a box at the Monumental, and met Milei at the Casa Rosada at 2pm on Thursday 23 April for about an hour. Milei called the meeting wonderful and said they discussed taxes, culture war and politics. Matías Van Thienen, a Founders Fund partner, was at the April meetings. Alec Oxenford, the OLX co-founder now serving as ambassador to the United States, first brought Thiel into the presidential palace. Gabriel Delgado Ayau, a co-founder of Próspera, met Reidel there for nearly two hours on 7 July 2025. Thiel met the opposition deputy Juan Grabois in June 2026, who said afterwards they had talked about artificial intelligence, the Antichrist, universal basic income and Argentina as a beachhead.

Caputo, Sturzenegger, Eurnekián

Argentina scored 36 out of 100 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, published on 13 February 2026, ranking 104th of 182 countries. That is one point and five places down on 2024 and the worst score since 2019.

Luis Caputo, who co-ordinated the Súper RIGI, is named in two criminal complaints over the pricing of state assets. The aeronautical workers' union filed at federal court number three in May 2026, naming Milei, Caputo and the former BICE director Maximiliano Voss over the US$45.1 million base price set for Intercargo, a company the complaint says holds more than US$55 million in current assets. Fundación Soberanía filed before judge Hugo Greca in General Roca on 10 August over the sale of the Alicurá, Cerros Colorados, El Chocón-Arroyito and Piedra del Águila dams, a package worth about US$2.3 billion, naming Caputo, Santiago Caputo, the tribunal of valuations president Julio Villamonte and Voss, and naming Edison Inversiones of Patricio and Juan Neuss, Central Puerto and MSU Green Energy as the beneficiaries. Ámbito reported on 29 June 2026 that the Tribunal de Tasaciones de la Nación had been sidelined and a valuation unit set up inside the state bank BICE under Caputo, producing secret valuations for Nucleoeléctrica, Intercargo, Transener, AySA, Belgrano Cargas and the Comahue dams. No official has been charged in any of it.

Sturzenegger, who opposition senators want alongside Caputo to explain the bill, was named in a criminal complaint on 16 February 2026 over a 114,044,133 peso Foreign Ministry contract for language training with the Asociación Argentina de Cultura Inglesa, whose director, María Josefina Rouillet, is his wife. Quirno said the process was lawful, that the contractual relationship predates 2018 and that the state audit office and the Anti-Corruption Office were consulted. No charge has followed.

Milei worked for Eduardo Eurnekián from 2008 until 9 December 2021 as chief economist at Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, resigning hours before taking his seat in Congress. The airports regulator ORSNA and AA2000 signed an agreement on 26 September 2025 extending the concession from 2028 to 2056 with an option to 2066, guaranteeing a return of 14.3 per cent, admitting the company to the RIGI and privatising the state's 15 per cent stake along with its board seat. The board ratified it on 23 October 2025 in a meeting classified as secret. ORSNA president Facundo Leal was arrested on 28 May 2026 on drug trafficking charges and the agreement was voided on 10 June. Negotiations continued in August 2026.

Policing the street

Resolution 943/23, issued by Bullrich as security minister in December 2023, lets federal forces clear road blockades. The Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales counted 1,399 people injured under the protocol, 750 in 2024 and 649 in 2025. Federal judge Martín Cormick declared the resolution null on 29 December 2025. The government appealed and it was reinstated pending review. Sala III of the federal administrative appeals chamber, judges Sergio Gustavo Fernández and Jorge Eduardo Morán, revoked the nullity on 31 March 2026 and upheld the protocol as a valid administrative act.

Bullrich moved from the security ministry to the Senate, where she now leads the governing bloc steering the Súper RIGI. Federal forces police the marches against that bill under the protocol she wrote. The Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, in its annual report published on 2 May 2026, recorded reports of repression at peaceful protests in Argentina and setbacks in social security for older people, people with disabilities and pensioners.

What happens next

Senate committees reconvene in the week of 15 September. Bullrich needs 25 signatures across the three of them to send the bill to the floor and fell two short in each on 2 September. Because the Senate is amending the text, it goes back to the Chamber of Deputies before it can become law.