The View from Afar
If ever there was a portent of doom, it would surely arrive in the form of Peter Thiel and Palantir. For those uninitiated into the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, Palantir means ‘farsighted’ or ‘one who watches from afar’ which compounds the feelings of unease when unpacked.
The Nerve published an article a couple of days ago on Palantir, one of the authors is Carole Cadwalladr who broke the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The story is a useful primer on Palantir. The business itself has been unambiguous about its ideological mission to defend America and “the west”. The article references the company’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Karp who stated openly that “we are dedicating our company to the service of the west and the United States of America”. But the addition was what stuck with me. He stated that it was at times necessary to “to scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them”. Full summary on Zeteo.
Palantir’s biggest customer after the US government is the UK government, a reliance that is set to accelerate since the UK government signed a “strategic partnership” between the MoD and Palantir last September for £240m. The Good Law Project is moving to extricate Palantir from the NHS where they were awarded a £330m data contract.
Some notable quotes from the article:
“Embedding Palantir into the UK Ministry of Defence’s systems is risky not because it’s a foreign company but because it’s a company controlled by Peter Thiel, a billionaire ideologue with far-right affiliations. Instead of seeing Palantir as a vendor, the UK would be wise to instead see them as a vector of malign influence.”
‘One European defence contractor who wished to remain anonymous pointed out that there had been articles about “kill switches” in US-built fighter jets, “but you don’t need a kill switch” in any tech defence product, “you just have to update the software to render it inoperable”.
A US national security expert who also wished to remain anonymous said that “all this BS about ownership of the data is a distraction” and asked: “Would the UK allow Russia that kind of control?”
Critics have also pointed out that Palantir’s EVP for the UK, Louis Mosley, the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, also has overt political affiliations. Last year, he appeared at the right wing Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, where he joined speakers who included Nigel Farage, Jordan Peterson and GB News co-owner (and funder of the forum) Paul Marshall.’