The private US AI surveillance and security firm Palantir is notorious for its complicity in the Gaza genocide. The company also provides tracking tools to the US immigration service ICE. Its AI technology was used by Israel in the 2025 pager attacks that killed dozens of people in Lebanon, including two children and injured thousands more, as well as by the US military to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro at the start of 2026. Its systems are also being used against Iran. One of its founders, US venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, has stated the organisation’s purpose was ‘to kill communists’. Another, Peter Thiel, is an authoritarian who has said he ‘no longer think(s) that freedom and democracy are compatible’. He is also a supporter of the Trump regime with extensive connections to the high-profile sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
This monstrous corporation already has access to millions of people’s health records in Britain, after being awarded a £330m contract by the NHS in 2023 for federated data platform (FDP) services. Small wonder opposition is growing to prevent the renewal of that contract in 2027.
Britain – lucrative contracts
The British government is Palantir’s biggest customer after the US government. Palantir has lucrative contracts with Britain’s Ministry of Defence, police and now the Financial Conduct Authority as well as the NHS. It is able to use what is essentially spyware to expand its ‘data scraping’ operations, the ability to aggregate a vast amount of information that allows it to build a sprawling network of surveillance and control.
In February 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with Palantir CEO Alex Karp at Palantir HQ in Washington DC. Global Counsel, the company connected to former British ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, who was sacked following revelations about his friendship with Epstein, had Palantir as a client. Palantir is increasingly deeply embedded in global and domestic power structures.
An investigation in January 2026 (The Nerve) found at least 34 contracts with Palantir across ten government departments, local councils and police authorities, including management services for Britain’s nuclear capabilities – contracts that are not on the government’s official contract-finder website and which the Ministry of Defence refused to either confirm or deny.
Palantir’s current and historic deals are worth £388m with the Ministry of Defence and more than £244m with the NHS. Coventry city council, Leicestershire police, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Homes for Ukraine scheme also have smaller contracts with Palantir. Its systems support the British state as it pledges to target and deport migrants and criminalise benefit claimants on a mass scale, promising to use its powers to ‘share data between the Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and the police’.
NHS data systems
Palantir first entered the NHS in the Covid-19 pandemic under emergency coronavirus legislation, providing FDP software to help manage resources including intensive care beds and PPE. After an initial derisory £1 agreement, they won £60m in non-competitive pandemic contracts. Concerns regarding Palantir technologies and NHS data systems is a briefing document by the health justice charity Medact published in March 2026. It warns of the dangers of adopting Palantir and FDP, including the facts that local capability is sufficient without what the FDP is offering, and outlining the risks to patient trust, staff privacy, data privacy as well as the risks of complicity in Palantir’s human rights abuses.
Health charities, unions, human rights groups and Palestine activists are uniting against the use of Palantir software in hospitals in England. For more details on how to join them go to nopalantir.org.uk
