Say No to Palantir in the Nhs
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The debate rages on about whether the NHS should reject Palantir, sparking a broader discussion on the ethics of partnering with tech giants that have defense contracts. While some commenters argue that singling out Palantir is "whataboutism" and that all major tech companies are now defense contractors, others point out that Palantir's focus on federal defense contracts sets it apart. The conversation oscillates between calls for blanket rejection of all implicated companies and a more incremental approach, with some humorously suggesting that British companies could fill the gap. As one commenter noted, taking a stand against one company could have a ripple effect, potentially bringing down others like dominoes.
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Yet the big problem is of course for those being “principled” about this subject are not serious themselves as some either work there and profit from it, continue to use their products including LLMs or will concede to using them due to social inertia.
The only time this is taken seriously is when all these contracts are scrapped. (They won’t be.)
Google got their first DoD contract in 2003 from DARPA.
There doesn’t exist a serious technology company ever in the history of technology that didn’t support the state they incorporated in.
You are saying stopping new coal mine means that everyone need to stop heating now and freeze to death this winter.
I think the worry regarding Palantir is that it is explicitly and openly fascist rather than just doing fascism on the side
https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Palantir-Pa...
NHs FDP (Foundry) still has the vaccine data last time I checked.
https://www.palantir.com/offerings/health/
The bottleneck in drug development is not discovery; we have to test more hypotheses more efficiently, not generate more hypotheses. You don't need a product like foundry to have reproducibility or share pipeline templates; there are already free, scripting-language-agnostic workflow tools.
A former work colleague works in health ontologies. They are complicated and include EMT and ward staff using terms of art with inverse meaning.
Perhaps I misread your intent, belittling complexity in somebody else's information space (eg a function of multiple parallel legacy systems and organisational change) seems unhelpful. You weren't excited, maybe people on the management and health economics side were?
Like the iPod, if you are Cdr Taco it is "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." If you are a normal person struggling with meaningful data in the enterprise and see all the things packaged together tidily, then iPod economics happen.
I'm not certain that it is better equipped than any hypothetical or specifically focused system. Given any part of it, I see a lot of products that can be composed into a similar offering. That misses the point though because the problems are socio-political in nature, not technological. It is expensive, which means that if an organization adopts it, everyone from the top down better get into alignment or you will waste a lot of cash. Internal alignment like that can be achieved without spending a lot of money probably maybe, but not likely.
It is also externally aligned a little better than IBM/Oracle (saw Watson, Deloitte "data democracy" etc) as a SaaS with training and consulting.
Yeah yeah capitalism optimize for shareholders, but there are plenty of successful large companies that haven't built an entire brand out of directly enabling large entities to erode any semblance of freedom we have left.
They have a track record of failed IT projects, because they have a very high bar for handling data properly.
Palantir have a track record of successful IT projects, because they do what they want and hope there's limited blowback - they've modelled their biggest customer very well, there.
As somebody born in an NHS hospital whose life has been saved by the NHS on at least 3 occasions, I'm more than happy to defend their record.
Palantir, given what we know that has leaked about what they do and how they do it, considerably less so.
What does this mean?
I literally can't even parse what that means. Palantir works in very close coordination with their customers' leadership and while the company and product "have opinions" about how to do things, it doesn't at all wash out to Palantir "just doing what it wants to do."
Such a claim doesn't even make sense in the context of a business that works the way Palantir does.
Do you mean sometimes customers pay Palantir to do things that other people or the public disagree with?
And who do you think "their biggest customer" is that they're modeling their own approach after?
Hopefully Palantir has the necessary skillset to navigate the political environment which involves developing a platform that: 1. protects patient privacy 2. supports needs of providers (e.g. hospitals, gps, specialists, DoH) 3. allows providers to use data to support their operations 4. allows NHS to use the data to improve patient outcomes and efficiency
This Foundry demo impressed me at the time but its a bit dated now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms
Actual data analyst from a hospital talking about what the platform achieves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps47Azr2Jz0
and screwing us for licenses to run apps in "production"
Oh no!..
Data integration is literally Palantir's business.
Not saying Google isn't, but it's at least not as public or blatant, and is much less of what Google does overall.
Militaries make targeting decisions with data. That's entirely separate to whether they have been ordered by civilian government to target something, and Palantir do not control that part of decision making (you as a voter do! You did vote right?)
1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/motherhood_statement
And that the people who stand to benefit the most from another war might want to filter/target that data in a way to make that more probable?
I mean, I know it's a stretch. Especially with how benevolent our current class of billionaires are. But just imagine a guy who thinks money is more important than anything else. I know... another stretch. lol.
You're not actually suggesting that the company providing the data isn't at all part of that process, are you?
Can you, for a second, imagine a company collecting/forwarding only data that's beneficial to it's core objective? Especially one whose led by a guy who has quite literally benefits off of a war????
This arrangement is extremely conventional, but most company's hate doing it and so don't unless they're operating with the expertise to manage those types of orgs (which is usually only profitable if you have a unique advantage or specialize in seeking a lot of contracts and then navigate the data handling rules to realize - hopefully - some synergies).
I don't like Thiel, but his detractors are also very obviously ignorant as to how any of the Federal government normally works.
Yes, citizen-friend! I have upheld the Prime Directive and participated in our routine civic sports. Next month I will initiate the annual tributary credit transfer so that the oracle may see more clearly.
If so, is there any example of them ever doing this to a customer, or is it baseless speculation?
Alternatively, are you climing the NHS is giving planter data and usage rights?
At best thats wierd, at worst he's an actual fascist
(context: Oswald created and ran the british union of fascists in the UK, married the diana mitford with both Goebbels and Hitler present. )
Mosley's speeches are not common knowledge. For example if you reference "rivers of blood" someone who's vaguely knowledgable in British politics will have a basic understanding of the reference.
if you said "Hurray for the black shirts" someone might know you're talking about the daily mail's endorsement of Mosely.
But if you say "britian first speech" you'll get blank looks. Even if you're a politics nerd.
So for someone who is pretty uninterested in british politics, to memorise a speech from oswald mosley, is deeply fucking weird. Now, if that had been some politician like Lloyd George or Disraeli, you know someone who was actually a good orator, still weird, but not much else.
To memorise a speech from a fascist, who married a fascist, organised a fascist party, and was interred for being a fascist, and tell it back to the grandson of that fascist, who you employed mainly because he's the grandson of the fascist, is big fucking tell that he's a bit fascist.
The 1939 Mosley speech at Earls Court was an antisemitic, fascist, anti-parliament speech framed as a call for peace with Nazi Germany and for authoritarian national renewal. Karp quoting it in an interview isn’t evidence of sympathy; it fits his reputation for provocation rather than any shared ideology. The speech itself is a clear example of populist authoritarian rhetoric built on grievance, elite conspiracy, and rejection of liberal democracy.
Fascinating that Karp reportedly recited part of the speech to Mosley’s grandson, did some tai chi, left without a goodbye, and then hired him to run Palantir’s UK operation.
The speech text is online, but I’m hesitant to link it directly given sensitivities around perceived extremist material and online moderation in the UK.
I'm british, fuck that. Read it here:
https://www.oswaldmosley.com/britain-first-rally-1939/
Also I'd recomend reading it, rather than getting a summary. because you need to see the banality of what he's asking for, and how tame (sadly) it is compared to currently pricks like Jenrick and Farage are asking for now.
> Fascinating that Karp reportedly recited part of the speech to Mosley’s grandson
recited from memory Again, at best its deeply weird, ungenerously its a power play, at worst is someone who's fascinated by fascism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%B3spera
They want to establish cities that are exempt from most US law and regulation (or whatever host country they leech on to), giving the company that owns the city basically complete power over everything and everyone that has the misfortune to be there.
The US recently pardoned a major narco-terrorsist in the hopes of propping up the Honduran experiment.
I'll preempt anyone else: Yes I probably exaggerated a bit in how I described the idea. Still, these assholes are working to eliminate wages, labor laws, environmental regs, property ownership, etc.
I didn't see anything wrong with his little speech.
https://youtu.be/G5gC_fParbY
Palantir is proud of their work on the ICE contract.
Billionaires buying their way into the political system should be hated implicitly, no matter their political affiliation.
I won't comment on Palantir themselves, I doubt I could add anything there, but I think there is a glaring pattern to be observed there. Companies really are not people, if people don't want them, they can cease to exist. If the UK for example is really able to say no to Palantir, can they do it countrywide?
Fines aside (let's be real, they're just taxes at this point since no company goes bankrupt from fines these days), what company is facing meaningful consequence for harming society?
Vote with dollars? Ok...but back to my pessimism earlier, I guess I don't need to vote at the ballot then right? Let's just vote with our wallets instead?
If Palantir really is so evil (and I'm not saying that, I don't know enough , although I've probably used their stuff more than most), at minimum, tell me what sort of a vote will lead to their extinction. if they broke the law, tell me who I can vote for to imprison the law breakers. If they didn't break the law because one didn't exist to prohibit their actions to begin with, then who will pass the laws required so I can vote for them? Why are we not talking about whatever practice Palantir is in the habit of doing, and how to criminalize that? Maybe we can't in the US, but this is Europe, I would hope they'd have better luck.
This sort of thinking and action-taking doesn't seem to exist here in the US. I don't think we're able to function that way anymore.
To friends in Europe and elsewhere: Take heed and be warned. Being able to organize and resist companies and laws, that's something you should fight with all your strength over.
But looking at this site, it isn't very convincing. I know of more serious accusations against Palantir that aren't listed there. Enabling mass deportations and gaza, yeah.. that's Microsoft, Google and Cisco as well. Their CEO, yeah.. Elon says a lot worse things about a lot more things, are his satellites banned in the UK? at least is the UK gov banned from using them? He's been caught aiding Russia with his sats a couple of times now.
My observation is that a more holistic approach and measures are needed. A glaring lack of consequences over all.
All media is agitprop now. If the CEO of a company says things that oppose the political chorus of either side, they become subject to witch hunts such as this.
Individuals are losing their ability to reason with ideas
There isn't a single reason or idea in your previous two paragraphs. Instead it seems to be the worst of cynicism designed to encourage people to give up on reasoning and ideas.
But no, it's not illegal to provide panopticon-as-a-service to authoritarian governments, unfortunately. Especially not when you ask said governments.
As to what you can do to change this, I honestly don't know, and I say this as someone who resigned from NVIDIA recently because of this: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-palantir-ai-enterp... - but there's no shortage of people willing to work on this stuff. And in US at least I feel big tech enmeshed with the feds have such a strong lobby, neither major party is going to do anything useful about it in terms of passing laws making the business model itself illegal.
I don't think all this "lone hero" b.s. by engineers is useful. I don't need someone martyring their careers.
But to answer your other questions...
No, democracy isn't working in US right now. Arguably hasn't for a while, but it's very evident now. Fixing that would likely require amending the constitution; a bar so high that at this point I'm confident that the system is more likely to self-destruct from internal contradictions than to reform.
At the same time, there are literally millions of people in this country who did vote for this and do want it. Even if they had an honest majority, it wouldn't make any of it any less evil. Democracies aren't inherently good.
Make the data public if you want to see progress
Separately, there are some Trusted Research Environments out there for approved research projects.
Edit: I can understand not wanting to use a non-UK company for NHS health. But Palantir isn’t the all seeing bogeyman it’s made out to be. It’s just knowledge graph and AI models which run in your cloud or hardware.
The edit is naive to an extent that makes one wander if you are writing in good faith.
I don't work for palantir or own their stock. There is really no reason for me to do anything in bad faith here.
But for some reason Palantir is the bad one?
Palantir does have very strong capabilities to protect data e.g. security markings, not allowing data to be exported.
Because they pay better.
Have you seen research institutions lobbying the governments ?
Palantir helps Israel with war in Gaza/Palestine.
Friend of any enemy is an enemy. That group is asking for help cause harm to that Friend.
From what I can tell the objections are all political in nature, and whether people like what the company has done previously.
In the context of the NHS contract I've seen little to suggest the software is going to make anything worse... How could it?
Combine that with people like Peter Thiel (who has publicly stated beliefs that are deeply incompatible with free and democratic society) in positions of power/influence there, and opening up our citizens' and/or government's data to that company feels particularly risky[0].
So yes, I guess it's "political", but at some level everything is. We don't get to "just" make technology.
[0] Honestly, right now I would put most or all large US tech companies in the same bucket (though for now, less vehemently so) as large Chinese or Russian companies when it comes to sharing nationally important data or assets. We have to assume they're potentially compromised by a government that (by its own statements) can no longer be assumed to remain friendly. Palantir just happens to be both very visible and particularly risky in this regard.
I'd also say that the NHS has a proven track record of failed IT projects, so if this company can improve the situation then I can't see the issue. Unless of course the UK gov mess up the contract, which can't be ruled out.
At some point you have to look at this objectively without politics bias.
> In the 2025 book The Technological Republic, Karp and Zamiska argue that American technological dominance requires deeper integration of Silicon Valley and defense interests. Karp contends that China operates with fewer ethical constraints than American defense companies, making technological leadership essential for national security. The authors stress that deterrence through technological dominance could prevent many wars. Bloomberg noted that the atomic bomb the Manhattan Project produced was ultimately used. The New Republic called Karp's formation of Palantir an embrace of techno-militarism to advance American global supremacy through hard power and targeted violence.[44][45][46] The Wall Street Journal said Palantir had a "pro-America ethos" from its inception, highlighting
For the love of God do a modicum of due dilligence before commenting.
> I would say, in my opinion, that it's better in the US than in China/Russian hands. The US at least seems most aligned with the UK in terms of political freedom than the two communist states.
And I quoted the CEO of Palantir quite literally wanting to be more like China.
Ad the specific part about "The US at least seams most aligned with the UK in terms of political freedoms" is funny because
> he New Republic called Karp's formation of Palantir an embrace of techno-militarism to advance American global supremacy through hard power and targeted violence
doesn't sound like the US will be aligned for too much longer.
And that's not even touching the current political climate of hte US. You know we're deporting college kids for op-eds and trying to remove news licenses that are mean to the President?
A significant disadvantage of the US and UKs democracy, more so in the US, is the short term thinking. China and Russia don't have that problem. They're more stable in that respect. They can execute real long term plans. Like businesses can. Nothing wrong with seeing advantages where they exist even if the way they go about it is disagreeable.
I'm not much of a history buff either but the US has been advancing it's global supremacy of "hard power and targeted violence" since at least the second world war. Palantir is nothing new.
And none of this has anything to do with an IT system in the NHS. What alternatives are there? Personally given the choice between palantir and a russian/Chinese company I'd go with palantir. Hopefully it works.
When it came to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust, IBM also just "did the databases".
Why? Because they are getting support.
LOL I've said the same thing! Turns out I do have something in common with Peter Thiel.
The difference is he's speaking in the context of US which makes his comments on the NHS just disgusting hypocrisy.
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