The Palantir manifesto and why you should care

The US tech firm is increasingly hooked into NHS, defence and education in the UK

Alex Karp is chief executive of Palantir Pic: UK Government/Flickr

“Supervillain” rhetoric belongs in films – or, increasingly, in the speeches of certain world leaders. It should not be coming from companies entrusted with the infrastructure of the state.

And yet, when MPs described Palantir’s recent X post as “the ramblings of a supervillain”, the instinct is almost to laugh. The US data firm published its manifesto, set out in great detail on the social media app, declaring that “some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive”, calling for an end to the “post-war neutering” of major powers, and insisting that “the question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them”.

It is an extraordinary proclamation of the confidence and growing impunity of US tech firms that sit uncomfortably close to state power and military capability. And while it might be tempting to dismiss this as Silicon Valley tech-bro provocations, a little overwrought, ultimately harmless, it becomes harder to laugh when you follow the money — and the access.

Palantir is not a distant object of eye-rolling. Rather, it is wiring itself deep into the infrastructure of the British state, having secured more than £500m in UK public sector contracts across the NHS, defence, policing and financial regulation.

And at the very moment Palantir’s worrying ideological posture is becoming more explicit, scrutiny is shrinking. Today, political attention is consumed once again by Westminster drama, as yet more unfolds about who knew what, and when, about Peter Mandelson.

But in the background: a legal challenge, backed by Democracy for Sale and the Good Law Project, over the government’s refusal to release key ministerial briefings on Palantir’s NHS contract. These are vital internal assessments that informed decisions about handing one of Britain’s most sensitive data systems to a private company, and yet, the government is asking the public to accept the deal based on trust, while denying them access to the evidence.

Palantir’s tightening grip on UK democracy should worry us all. The core issue is not only what its executives believe in, but the scale of its access, the opacity of its contracts, and the depth of its roots.

Start with access. The NHS data platform is designed to pull together huge volumes of patient information from across the system into one place. While this might increase efficiency, it is not without risk. Centralisation of such important data raises the stakes of any security or privacy violations, and makes it easier for data to be repurposed in ways patients never expected.

While Palantir maintains it does not “own” this data, it inevitably controls it because it decides how the data is organised, prioritised and analysed, shaping how that information is understood and used.

Then there is opacity. The government has a troubling track record here. When Palantir’s NHS contract was first published, hundreds of pages were heavily redacted. Now, ministers are keeping further briefings secret, arguing they fall under “policy development”. But the system is already being rolled out: these are not hypothetical plans.

And finally, dependency. Once a company like Palantir becomes embedded, it is extraordinarily difficult to unpick. Systems are built around their software, staff are trained on its platforms, and entire workflows depend on its architecture. Even governments that grow uneasy find themselves locked in, politically, financially and technically.

This is what makes the UK’s approach so alarming. Other countries, like Switzerland, have taken a more cautious line, rejecting Palantir after concluding there was a possibility that sensitive data could be accessed by the US government. That caution looks increasingly wise in the context of Donald Trump and his devil-may-care approach to diplomacy, where the use of economic pressure and political coercion against close partners is no longer unthinkable.

In Britain, we have accelerated. We now have a situation in which a company with deep roots in US defence and intelligence — and an increasingly explicit worldview about which societies are “vital” and which are “regressive” — is being handed responsibility for the UK’s civilian data infrastructure, while the public is denied sight of the documents that justify that decision.

Palantir’s defenders may argue that the UK has little choice; that there are few domestic alternatives, and global tech giants dominate this space. But dependency does not have to become an inevitability, and the more sunlight on these systems, the better our chances are of preventing dependency and control.

The real danger is not just how sinister Palantir sounds, but that Britain is giving this company such deep, durable access to the inner workings of the state, without meaningful transparency, robust public debate, or a credible exit strategy.

Even now, the government is reluctant to fully explain its decision. By the time the public gets a clear picture of what has been signed away, it may already be too late to take it back. ■

About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

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