Palantir contracts have become 'an unacceptable point of weakness', UK politicians warn

The British bipartisan group of politicians sounded a wake-up call about the country's cooperation with Palantir, a data analysis company.

In a report released on Tuesday, 11 members of the Parliamentary Committee on Science, Innovation and Technology warned that the country's increasing reliance on Palantir technology “is an unacceptable weakness”, which could give the company an overwhelming bargaining power in future negotiations.

“We know that with the lock-in of the suppliers, we will get more expensive and worse services over time”, Ms. Chi Onwurah, Chairman of the Committee and Member of Parliament, told Connect magazine. “It is a trap that must be avoided.”

Onwurah argued that in the worst-case scenario, deep-rooted suppliers might threaten to stop providing services as a way of imposing their will. “This could bring public services and our economy to a standstill”, she said. "This is a great risk."

Zenium Need a tip?

|--|

Do you want to talk about what's going on? We would like to receive your letter. Security contact with journalists using non-working telephones or computers via Signal at Joel Khalili.28. Zenium

Although the Commission stated that the opposition to Palantir was not ideologically motivated, the report also described “a clear mismatch with British values”. It points to the political discourse of the co-founder of Palantir Peter Thiel - In 2023, he described the British public's preference for the NHS as “Stockholm Syndrome” — and a recent 22-point declaration based on the Chief Executive Officer, Alex Karp, which advocated the primacy of loyalty to the United States and its interests.

“We have a major supplier who says that they will use technology in accordance with their political mission,” said Onura. “If what Britain is trying to do in our NHS or in our defence field is incompatible with Palantir's political objectives, it is clear that we cannot rely on them as suppliers.”

In order to minimize risk, the Commission recommends that Palantir's National Health Service, one of its major partners in the United Kingdom, initiate a clause in its contract to terminate the partnership early next February.

The British government started using Palantir technology in 2020 to map the spread of the Covid-19 virus and transport medical equipment throughout the country. Since then, Palantir and its partners have won contracts totalling $750 million with NHS and the Ministry of Defence, among others. The company claims its ability to achieve “innovation and quick fixes” in the British public sector.

The report provides an overview of similar reliance on the United States Clouds provider commercial Microsoft and Amazon network services and on the Japanese company Fujitung, which is at the heart of the Post Office Horizon scandal. But "Palantir worries us the most," the committee wrote.

Palantir did not respond immediately to the request for comment.

More recently, this relationship has led to increasing scrutiny as a result of the company ' s cooperation with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the United States and Israeli military. The Karp-based declaration has further raised concerns about corporate politics.

“They are not a company that should be close to the British public service,” Donald Campbell, the propaganda director of Foxglove, says. Foxglove is a non-profit organization that previously called on NHS to withdraw from the contract with Palantir. “Do you want such a company with these publicly expressed views and ideologies to play a central role in Britain, and it may become increasingly difficult to remove them from government?”

Palantir's European Officer-in-Charge, Louis Mosley, appeared before the Committee last July, stating that the company had distanced itself from Tyre's NHS comments. He said that the goal of Palantir was “to support a democratically elected Government in carrying out its elected mission”. “We represent a diverse political view, and as a company we do not take a political position.”

According to some supporters, political discontent could undermine the British Government's stated goal of transforming Britain into a “real digital country” and improving the efficiency of the troubled national health-care system.

Others felt, however, that any Government entrusting sensitive data to third-party suppliers needed to be confident that it would not take action contrary to its interests.

Eerke Boiten, Professor of Cyber Security at Demont University, said, "These companies are so big that we can't really examine what they're doing." “In 99 per cent of cases where data need to be operated, the provider needs to be able to see the data. It means you have to trust them.”