New report exposes how Palantir is taking over the British war machine

AI firms are pushing hard for a bigger and bigger slice of the UK war machine, namely Palantir. Watchdog Drone Wars’ new briefing paper sheds light on how these powerful tech companies, often led by far-right bosses, have inserted themselves into the UK military.

The new report is titled ‘The Datafication of War‘. It is the first part of a series of briefing called ‘Killing By Code: New Briefing and Dataset on UK Military AI Programme‘. The NGO also published a breakdown of key military projects currently working to integrate AI.

Drone Wars warned of a revolutionary shift in warfare:

Today, with the rise in geopolitical uncertainty and intense competition for military technological supremacy; private technology companies working alongside states, are pushing towards a new technological transformation on the battlefield: the development of military AI and Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems that promise to reshape the methods of war.

As private firms start to work closely with states on AI, and:

With algorithms, Large Language Models, and autonomous systems permeating throughout the military domain, modern warfare is becoming increasingly reliant on data sets.

This first briefing “explores Palantir and their algorithmic and data systems”:

It examines the company’s origin and leadership; their footprint in different institutions within the UK and elsewhere; its key software and data analytic platforms and ends by looking at their involvement with the Israeli and Ukrainian governments during times of profound violence and war.

Palantir: far-right AI bosses

The report captures the worldviews which drive Palantir’s leadership in the US and UK. It describes how founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp:

co-founded Palantir in the aftermath of 9/11, partly using funding from Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA.

The name, Palantir, is a reference to the all-seeing orbs in the Lord of the Rings books and movies. The leadership:

openly embraces the language of warfare, crisis and existential threat to frame the company’s public image.

Thiel is described as a ‘techno-libertarian’:

with a strong aversion to progressive politics and a pronounced scepticism of democracy.

While Karp’s politics speak to a hard-right, ‘civilisational’ worldview, which:

argues for the abandonment of ‘frivolous’ consumer products in the pursuit of ‘national projects’ that strengthen ‘Western civilization’ to the detriment of its perceived enemies.

UK boss Louis Mosley – the hyper-privileged grandson of aristocratic fascist Oswald Mosley – is described as:

descended from a highly politicised, aristocratic lineage whose legacy has played a visible role in Anglo-American history. It seems he will go onto to have greater influence albeit a very different role in shaping the country’s future trajectory.

And Drone Wars points out:

His relationships with the higher echelons of the labour government are clear.

Palantir’s footprint in the UK

Palantir are active in the US, Canada, Australia, Israel and Ukraine. And the firm is increasingly powerful here at home:

According to MoD figures, in the financial years of 2020/21 – 2024/2025, Palantir’s UK subsidiary received £190m from the Ministry of Defence. Within this range one of their most lucrative contracts worth £75m was an ‘Enterprise Agreement’ which integrated ‘Palantir[‘s] software tool-set to accommodate…
MoD demand’

Typically:

these operations are shielded by national security exemptions and so are opaque to the outsider – most of the details of these contracts are not in public view or incredibly vague.

Thiel is a major donor to US president Donald Trump, which means that the UK taxpayer is helping fund a far-right presidency with violent global ambitions.

In this way, the British taxpayer is helping to support an administration that makes Britain less secure – antithetical to the very reasons used to justify the British state’s relationship with Palantir.

A movement that under Trump has threatened Denmark over Greenland, struck Iran de-stabilising a region and the wider global economy with a complete disregard for international law, and norms.

As Drone Wars also point out, Palantir has interests in the National Health Service, UK police and even the HS2 rail project. Their project isn’t just about war – it is about governance and state power.

Palantir’s hunger for war

Drone Wars surveyed the Palantir systems currently in use in the UK. These include military targeting  systems like Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP),Gotham, Foundry, MetaConstellation and Palantir Edge AI. Palantir’s ideology and business model hunger for war and crisis. But the firm also views wars as a laboratory to sharpen and develop their for-profit killing technology.

Drone Wars said that Ukraine and Israel are two of the prime examples:

For companies like Palantir, armed conflicts are prime opportunities to test their technologies under real-life conditions. This dynamic is acutely visible in the war in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing wars in the middle eastern regions where Palantir has embedded itself within state and military institutions.

Adding:

In both conflicts, the company uses warzones as laboratories for refining their data analytics, surveillance and AI-driven decision-making systems.

A new way of war

Drone Wars’ conclusion paints a chilling picture of a rapidly emerging shift away from even basic accountability in warfare:

Palantir’s ascendence illustrates the value of data, algorithms and software not just in the governance of everyday life, but as a core foundation of contemporary military and social power.

The NGO said that Keir Starmer’s government:

is courting the company guided by the notion that they can deliver AI innovation and institutional regeneration.

This is a naive, technocratic approach – because Palantir promises something much darker than simple efficiency. The end result of reducing populations into “statistical trends” is profound dehumanisation, and:

in the case of war, to reduce combatants to data points does not recognise their humanity, it is a form of abstraction that lowers the threshold of violence; they are no longer persons but numbers to be killed.

The new way of war isn’t just coming, it is here. But Palantir’s vision is much broader than simply speeding up targeting processes. Palantir is driven by a far-right worldview in which democracy is a threat. Its leaders think ‘Western’ civilisation is under under threat and only profound, often racialised violence, authoritarianism and surveillance can rescue it. The firm’s increasing influence over British politics must be opposed tooth and nail.

Featured image via Getty/Eugene Gologursky

By Joe Glenton

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