It’s not often a thousand-word social media post from a US tech firm goes viral.<\/p>\n
But the post from Palantir – a 22-point manifesto of sorts – currently has over 30 million views on X.<\/p>\n
It is the work of the controversial company’s co-founder and chief executive, who has criticised the belief that all cultures are equal and called for universal national service.<\/p>\n
Alex Karp also called the disarmament of Germany and Japan after World War Two an \u00ab\u00a0overcorrection\u00a0\u00bb, backed AI weapons and condemned \u00ab\u00a0ruthless exposure\u00a0\u00bb of the private lives of public figures.<\/p>\n
Karp’s views matter – his company’s growing roster of UK government contracts include the NHS, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Financial Conduct Authority and 11 police forces.<\/p>\n
Not to mention its multimillion dollar deals with the US and other powerful governments.<\/p>\n
But as the firm increasingly embeds itself in public bodies, the opinions and influence of its leaders leave some fearful.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Every alarm bell for democracy must ring,\u00a0\u00bb Prof Shannon Vallor, chair of ethics of data and AI at Edinburgh University, told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Palantir insiders compare what they do to \u00ab\u00a0plumbing\u00a0\u00bb – joining together scattered stores of information.<\/p>\n
They say their products allow large, often incompatible sets of data to be analysed and searched easily, including through the use of commercial AI systems.<\/p>\n
To this end, the firm won a \u00a3300m contract to create a data platform for the NHS – a role that has been opposed by the British Medical Association (BMA) and provokes continuing intense debate.<\/p>\n
In the last few days, Palantir’s UK boss Louis Mosley turned to X to attack a critical cover story in the BMA’s British Medical Journal.<\/p>\n
But consultant Tom Bartlett, who previously led the NHS team responsible for delivering the Federated Data Platform – built on Palantir software – told the BBC Palantir was \u00ab\u00a0uniquely suited to the messy NHS data problems that have been accumulating over the last 25 years\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
The $400bn (\u00a3297bn) firm is also a major military contractor. Its AI-enabled \u00ab\u00a0war-fighting\u00a0\u00bb technology is used by Nato, Ukraine and by the US, including in its conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n
In the UK, the MoD has signed a similarly controversial three-year contract worth \u00a3240m for tech that it said would support the so-called \u00ab\u00a0kill-chain\u00a0\u00bb, fusing together data provide to produce faster options for attacking an enemy target.<\/p>\n
Palantir says it employs around 950 people in the UK, making up 17% of its global workforce.<\/p>\n
But some critics argue its work with US immigration enforcement and with Israel’s military should disqualify it.<\/p>\n
Others cite the opinions of Palantir co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel, a libertarian backer of Donald Trump, and Karp, as reasons to exclude it.<\/p>\n
The 22-point post is a summary from a 2025 book by Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, a Palantir lawyer, titled The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.<\/p>\n
In its review the New Yorker wrote the book’s central claim was that \u00ab\u00a0the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Karp’s politics are complex: he reportedly donated to the presidential campaigns of Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but he is also proudly calls his company \u00ab\u00a0anti-woke\u00a0\u00bb and his views will be unpalatable to many on the left.<\/p>\n
In the X post, Karp wrote that some cultures have produced \u00ab\u00a0wonders\u00a0\u00bb while others are \u00ab\u00a0regressive and harmful\u00a0\u00bb, and said the lack of criticism of other cultures has created a \u00ab\u00a0hollow pluralism\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
He criticised the West for having \u00ab\u00a0resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Protecting democracies required \u00ab\u00a0hard power\u00a0\u00bb, he said, while \u00ab\u00a0theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications\u00a0\u00bb would see the US lose ground to its adversaries.<\/p>\n
The age of nuclear deterrence is ending, he argued, to be replaced with deterrence built on AI.<\/p>\n
Karp said defending democracy was a shared obligation, and national service should be \u00ab\u00a0a universal duty\u00a0\u00bb – a claim which has already drawn criticism in the US, where Palantir holds billions of dollars of military contracts.<\/p>\n
He also criticised the post-war \u00ab\u00a0neutering\u00a0\u00bb of Germany and Japan, calling the \u00ab\u00a0defanging\u00a0\u00bb of Germany \u00ab\u00a0an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price\u00a0\u00bb – presumably a reference to Europe’s efforts to counter the threat from Russia.<\/p>\n
Karp, who has a doctorate in social theory, is one of a number of wealthy tech leaders – also including Elon Musk – to promote political and ideological theories.<\/p>\n
In point 16 of the X post, Karp wrote: \u00ab\u00a0The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Others disagree.<\/p>\n
Vallor said \u00ab\u00a0unelected men\u00a0\u00bb like Karp were \u00ab\u00a0imposing their own ‘grand narratives’ of cultural superiority, militarised control, and public power without public accountability\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne of the health campaign group Medact told the BBC: \u00ab\u00a0Every day that the NHS continues this contract with Palantir makes our health system complicit in Palantir’s violent operations, such as AI warfare, and deeply alarming ideology, which includes powering America and its allies to their ‘innate superiority’.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Medact runs a campaign called No Palantir in the NHS. Osborne was the writer of the BMJ cover story criticised by Palantir UK boss Mosley.<\/p>\n
In a statement to the BBC, Palantir said it was \u00ab\u00a0deeply proud to be helping the UK government to deliver more NHS operations, speed up cancer diagnosis, keep Royal Navy ships at sea for longer and tackle domestic violence\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health pointed us to remarks in April by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in which he defended the use of their technology but said he was \u00ab\u00a0not a fan\u00a0\u00bb of the people who run Palantir and described some of the things said by them in the US as \u00ab\u00a0abominable\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Additional reporting by Tamzin Kraftman and Richard Irvine-Brown.<\/p>\n
Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world’s top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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