In a report published Tuesday, 11 members of parliament’s science, innovation and technology committee warned that the country’s growing reliance on Palantir’s technology “represents an unacceptable point of weakness” that could give the company enormous bargaining power in future negotiations.
“We know that with vendor lock-in, over time, we will get more expensive and worse services,” committee chair and Member of Parliament Dame Chi Onwurah tells WIRED. “This is a trap that must be avoided.”
Onwura believes that in a worst-case scenario, a deeply entrenched supplier may threaten to stop service to impose its will. “It could bring public services and our economy to a halt,” she says. “It’s a huge risk.”
Although the committee says its objections to Palantir are not ideologically motivated, the report also describes a “clear mismatch with UK values”. It points to politically charged comments by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel – who described the British public’s affection for the NHS in 2023 as “Stockholm syndrome” – and a 22-point manifesto based on CEO Alex Karp’s recent book, which advocates extreme loyalty to the US and its interests.
“We have a major vendor that is saying they will use the technology in line with their political mission,” Onwurah says. “If what the UK is trying to do in our NHS or our defense does not align with Palantir’s political objectives, then we clearly cannot depend on them as a supplier.”
To mitigate the risks, the committee recommended that the National Health Service, one of Palantir’s primary partners in the UK, activate a clause in its contract next February that would end the relationship early.
The UK government began using Palantir’s technology in 2020 as it sought to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus and route medical equipment across the country. Since then, Palantir and its partners have won contracts worth a combined $750 million with the NHS and the Ministry of Defence, among others. The company has promoted its ability to enable “innovation and rapid problem solving” in the UK public sector.
The report outlines a similar reliance on US-based cloud providers Microsoft and Amazon Web Services and Fujitsu, the Japanese company at the center of the Post Office Horizon scandal. But “Palantir concerns us most,” the committee wrote.
Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This relationship has recently come under increased scrutiny over the company’s work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the U.S. and Israeli militaries. The manifesto, based on Karp’s book, further raised concerns about company politics.
“They are not a company that should be anywhere near British public services,” says Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, a non-profit that has previously campaigned for the NHS to withdraw its contract with Palantir. “Do you want to give a company like this – with openly expressed opinions and ideologies – a central role in the UK state, making it harder and harder to remove them?”
Appearing before the committee in July last year, Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir’s European business, distanced the company from Thiel’s comments about the NHS. Palantir’s purpose is “to support democratically elected governments in fulfilling the mandate they have been elected to deliver,” he said. “We represent a variety of political views and do not take political positions as a company.”
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