The following article by Mike Morrissey was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
IN 2003, Peter Thiel set up a data analytics company, named after an artifact in a Tolkien fantasy, Palantir. Although, it took 20 years before it started to make serious profit, it has since become globally successful and is embedded in multiple government agencies, particularly in Israel and the US, that are tasked with surveillance and security activities. Thiel, its current chairman, founded the company with $30 million supplemented with smaller sums from other investors, including In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm associated with the CIA. The Wall Street Journal reported that the latter was a conduit for intelligence agencies requesting software revisions during Palantir’s first two years. Thiel once joked that the CIA was just a front for Palantir.
Its growth (now valued at $390 billion) has been phenomenal. Its predicted revenues for 2026 (announced in August) of $8 billion are twice those for 2025 and immediately led to a 17% increase in share value. It claims to help firms adopt artificial intelligence and combine/clean disparate data sets to enhance their utility. However, it has partnered with Anduril, a drone maker, to help the US military improve battlefield targeting. More ambitiously, it has joined a consortium hoping to build Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ anti-missile shield. Moreover, the company, has also been helping ICE track and deport undocumented migrants in the US. Its predictive policing tools have been accused of reinforcing racial bias (Faiza Shaheen, New Statesman, 20/04/2026) – building ‘the infrastructure of the police state’. It’s accused of embedding software in IDF targeting systems in Gaza – the company describes this as ‘misinformation’. The Economist notes ‘the growing demand for intelligence and defence technology in a world of border closures and superpower rivalry, where Palantir (more controversially) excels’ (08/05/2025) but questions whether its valuation matches its revenue stream – valued almost 50 times greater than revenue and nearly 200 times greater than profits.
It’s no surprise that this company aggressively pursues tax avoidance. The Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (ICTAR, Who Pays for the Surveillance State? July 2026), revealed that global pre-tax profits in 2025 were $1.657 billion on which it paid $22.7 million in tax – an effective net rate of 1.4%. Even though the US Federal Corporate Income tax rate is 21% (reduced from 35% by Trump), Palantir paid none in 2025 and only $2.5 million in state taxes. 96% of Palantir’s pre-tax profits are ‘booked’ in the US to take advantage of tax shelters even though 26% of its income is derived outside.
Thiel, with a net worth of $27.5 billion, has been described not just as an investor but a political activist (some say techno-militarist), obsessed with the advancement of western civilization and, indeed, the antichrist – apparently Greta Thunberg is a suspect (The Guardian, 10/10/2025). In a 2009 manifesto published by the Cato Institute, he claimed democracy and freedom are incompatible.
He appointed Alex Karp, an equally unusual character, as Palantir’s chief executive. Karp has the appearance of an absented-minded professor (perhaps deliberately cultivated), once supported the Democrats though now claims they are soft on immigration and are opposed to all kinds of racism except antisemitism. Karp was described as CEO of the Year by the Economist in 2024 – he later refused it an interview because of criticism of a book he co-authored. In March, he gave an interview to CNBC in which he opinioned that AI would disrupt most the jobs of those who vote disproportionately Democrat (women) who would then be replaced by working-class, mostly male, voters (presumably Republican).
In April this year, the company published a ‘technological manifesto’ aimed at securing ‘the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order’. It called for a national service military draft and the widespread deployment of autonomous weapons. Gil Duran, author of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy simply posted on X ‘TLDR: fascism’ (TLDR is short for ‘too long, don’t read’) and was then permanently banned from X by the ‘free-speech absolutist’, Musk (The Guardian, 05/08/2026). The Liberal Democrat MP, Martin Wrigley, described it as ‘a narcissistic rant from an arrogant organisation’ and worried about the contracts it was accumulating in the British public sector (The Guardian, 21/04/2026).
Palantir and Britain
Despite its overt political posturing and the particular areas where its expertise is normally employed, it has successfully bid for major contracts in the British public sector – an estimated £670 million. Last December, when John Healy was Defence Secretary, a three-year £240 million deal was signed with the MOD without a competitive tender. Shortly after, it was reported that Palantir had hired four previous employees of the MOD – a report in February suggested that 32 senior officials from the British civil service and public sector had been hired over a 15-year period (ICTAR report, p.19). When Peter Mandelson was appointed UK ambassador to Washington, his company Global Counsel (now defunct) was representing Palantir. Mandelson was also reported as organising Keit Starmer’s visit to Palantir Technologies in February 2025. It’s not known what was discussed since there were no minutes, no transcript and no press release (www.alchronology.com 04/02/2026). The lack of transparency about its interaction with key political actors goes back some time. Martin Wrigley used freedom of information requests to discover what went on at a 2019 meeting between Thiel, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings – the Cabinet Office decided no information could be disclosed (Private Eye, 24/07-06/06/2026).
A £50 million deal with the Metropolitan Police to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations was blocked in May by the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, on the grounds that ‘the Met did not present its procurement strategy as required and the MET only fully engaged with one potential supplier: Palantir’ (The Guardian, 09/06/2026). Palantir has indicated its intention to pursue a legal case against the mayor’s office.
It’s hard to know how much tax Palantir pays on its UK operations since a significant proportion of profits are booked in the US parent company. The ICTAR report concludes ‘UK government contracts have been growing rapidly with little tax paid on the profits earned’ (p.20). It estimates there is a tax gap (the difference between what was and what should be paid) of over £7 million.
Palantir and the NHS
Palantir’s biggest UK contract is to create a federated data platform for the NHS worth £330 million. Arguably, the data held in separate silos and in different systems by the NHS is the world’s most valuable since it contains extensive health data on millions of subjects. Creating an integrated data set that could be easily accessed and mined would be an obvious bonus in developing patient care. Camilla Cavendish, a non-executive director at the Health Department, defended Palantir’s role by saying ‘what matters is what works’. Sunday Times columnist, Camilla Long claimed Palantir’s critics were in ‘a Canute courtiers/seafoam situation’ (Private Eye, Op.Cit). The House of Commons science, innovation and technology committee disagreed claiming ‘there is a clear mismatch with UK values’ (The Guardian, 15/07/2026).
Equally, a report from Peter Geoghan and Lucas Amin suggests that Palantir’s systems don’t actually work very well (This Looks Absolutely Rubbish, London Review of Books, 13-23/07/2026). NHS England claims that two-thirds of trusts are ‘live’ on Palantir software, yet dozens of trusts had not even logged into the app in the previous year. The Cancer 360 tool was used by just 6 of 200 trusts within the first 9 months of its launch. NHS staff told the researchers that Palantir’s software was clunky, difficult to use, indeed less useful than existing software. Geoghan and Lucas also found that the total costs were greater than £330 million since each trust was given £3 million to implement Palantir’s systems and KPMG was given £8.5 million to encourage trust’s usage.
Caveat Emptor
In a world dominated by big tech run by individuals of increasing eccentricity, governments, whatever their values, should worry about being lured into vendor capture. Once propriety systems are installed, they are almost impossible to escape from. It’s like individual consumers trying to dispense with Office 365 or Virgin Media. Palantir is particularly risky. It lacks transparency, is open about its wider socio-political goals and has embedded itself via unreported meeting and the hiring of key public sector individuals. It is perhaps the most obvious example of the Nerd Reich.