The Eye 01: Palantir's bid to run the West

Welcome to The Eye—our weekly guide to the shifting relationship between Big Tech and the state. We dig beneath the headlines, connect the dots, and follow the power to reveal how technology is reshaping our public institutions.

This week: The secret networks, the self-fulfilling prophecies, and the growing resistance behind Palantir’s bid to become the operating system of the West.

Manufacturing necessity

Peter Thiel is an empire builder. He doesn’t just build companies, he sets the narratives that make them inevitable and indispensable.

For two decades, he has argued that liberal democracies are entering an age of permanent instability: geopolitical conflict, technological upheaval and institutional decline. In his book - governments need AI, surveillance and defence tech. Conveniently, those are the products he sells.

His companies are portrayed as islands of coherence in a sea of chaos. It’s hard to see, from dry land, that Thiel is the one making the waters rise. Palantir is the clearest expression of this strategy. Born with backing from the CIA’s venture arm, it has spent years embedding itself inside the US national security state. Having become central to America’s military and intelligence apparatus, it is now seeking to do the same across the West.

Palantir’s expansion depends on more than good software. It relies on cultivating a permanent state of crisis, convincing governments that the world is becoming too dangerous to rely on anyone or anything else. Every geopolitical warning of an AI arms race or an inevitable Third World War reinforces the idea that only Palantir can keep democratic states safe. By framing global instability as an existential threat, the company creates the political demand for its own permanent solutions, positioning itself as a fundamental force for good.

When these are called out, Palantir gets nasty, launching lawsuits and attacking critics through the media - terrified of losing its grip, especially as public backlash intensifies over its close proximity to the Trump administration, ICE and Israel.

Here’s what that looks like:

1/ The secret networks

A recently reported leak revealed attendees and agenda topics of a secretive organisation, the ‘Dialog’ society, a networking retreat for influential tech billionaires, high-profile politicians, journalists, authors and members of the intelligence community worldwide.

Dialog was co-founded by Peter Thiel and angel investor Auren Hoffman, and the leak exposed that more than 200 of the world’s most rich and powerful individuals registered for the exclusive getaway - described as a kind of ‘Bilderberg meets Silicon Valley’ phenomenon - with topics ranging from sex lives and cult-building, to “Bringing Back Nuclear”, “Battlefield Technologies” and, strikingly, “Navigating WWIII”.

Palantir, of course, has been the tip of Trump’s spear. They helped him find and capture Maduro, provided intelligence that reportedly aided in the bombardment of Iran and built AI tools for both bombing and managing the infamous aid delivery stations in Palestine. For companies whose fastest-growing markets are in defence, intelligence and national security, a world defined by permanent geopolitical emergency is also a world of permanent commercial opportunity.

Some of Dialog’s listed attendees are US military leaders, as well as foreign senior defence politicians like NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe General Alexus Grynkewich and former UK security minister Tom Tugendhat, as well Matt Clifford, who currently chairs the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) - the UK’s answer to DARPA. Both NATO and the UK’s Ministry of defence are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on Palantir’s AI war tools.

2/ The self fulfilling prophecies

Among Silicon Valley elites, the prospect of WWIII, something they frequently cite, often circles back to more investment in AI and resurrecting America’s military industrial base, perhaps unsurprising for a series of individuals who would stand to, and already have, gained substantially from militarism. Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar even includes the term “WWIII” in the subtitle of his recently published book.

The CEO of Thiel-backed military tech company Anduril, Palmer Luckey, has stated that the firm has a strategy that guides everything it does; “China27”, whereby “anything we are working on, anything that we are investing in, needs to be built with the assumption that sometime in 2027, China is going to move on Taiwan”

On Monday, Anduril and Palantir were announced as the architects of a new program called Next Gen C2 - intended to act as the foundational data layer for all battlefield decisions.

But while their stranglehold on the US seems almost total, the future of these firms elsewhere is less certain. The erratic nature of Trump’s second term and reported controversies surrounding Palantir and its efficacy are spurring on calls for increased digital sovereignty.

3/ The growing resistance

Attempts to resist Palantir’s push into European states, are however increasingly being met with pushback; sometimes rhetorical, sometimes legal, sometimes thinly veiled threats.

As reported last week, France’s domestic intelligence agency is now ditching Palantir’s AI tools from the US, in favour of a domestic provider, to avoid “strategic dependency”, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said.

In response, Palantir’s executives lashed out against the decision, claiming “normally, we never react, but hearing this from the prime minister on social media, I never imagined that could happen. You can’t do this on Instagram. This isn’t a Hollywood spat between an actor and his girlfriend. This is a very serious matter.”

In Germany, a similar situation played out, where a top Berlin official said that the country doesn’t plan to award military contracts to the company. Palantir CEO Alex Karp hit back, criticizing the country’s decision, saying “I don’t understand how Germany believes it can afford this” and that “Every serious battlefield in the world uses parts of Palantir. There’s a reason for that”.

In England, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan, recently blocked a deal between Palantir and the Metropolitan Police, citing an alleged breach of procurement rules. His spokesperson said that Londoners wished to see public money being spent on firms that “share the values of our city”.

In this instance, Palantir was even more aggressive, and is now reportedly suing Khan over the block of the £50m contract. Its UK lead, Louis Mosley, has hit out at the Mayor, accusing him of “putting politics over public safety“.

But opposition to Palantir’s expanding influence is nevertheless becoming more pronounced at both a national and local level, as exposure to and scrutiny of the company increases.

On Thursday, the FT published NHS England’s acknowledgement that some of the claims the public body made regarding the benefits of Palantir’s now infamous Federated Data Platform contract are not ‘causationally robust’, something which has prompted MPs to call for an audit of the system, as ministers are reportedly considering ending the contract next year.

Louis Mosley has spent weeks, true to Palantir form, repeatedly claiming that Palantir has provided huge savings, increased efficiency and saved lives. He has appeared on TV and written articles in national papers calling Palantir’s detractors “ideologically motivated campaigners” and casting concerned NHS staff as a “noisy minority.”

Yet, two petitions calling on ministers to end NHSE’s Palantir contracts have attracted over 250,000 signatures while the cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology committee warn that Palantir has expanded its presence across the UK despite what it called a “clear mismatch with UK values”.

The UK is by far Palantir’s biggest foothold outside of the US, accounting for, at least, 10% of their global revenue. This isn’t just about cash, it’s also a strategic outpost for Palantir to reach much of the rest of the world. Losing the UK could be a terrifying prospect for Palantir.

This week saw another backlash. In a first for a local authority, a cross-party group from Sheffield City Council have passed an England-first motion opposing Palantir’s involvement in the NHS, backed by Medact Sheffield.

In response to the passing, Medact Sheffield’s Dr Rory Gibson said that:

“This motion passing is a heartening reminder of the power of community organising. Community organising has the power to influence decisions far beyond Sheffield and contribute to the national conversation about the future of the NHS."

Sheffield is a small council. France is a major military strength. Germany is the EUs largest economy and London one of the world’s biggest cities… Perhaps Palantir is losing the argument they so desperately cultivated of themselves as an essential asset to key state infrastructure.

While the future remains uncertain, for both Palantir and its client states, calls for resistance seem to be growing louder…

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See you next time,
Max & Charlie

About The Eye: In an era where Silicon Valley is rewriting the rules of governance and unaccountable tech companies are capturing our public services from the inside out, The Eye exists to follow the power, connect the dots and reveal how technology is reshaping our state.