Frank Hansen on the threats from ultra right tech bros and their control over our data
Many people are aware of the controversy surrounding the tech company Palantir and its billionaire owner, Peter Thiel. Like Musk, Thiel is a leading “Tech Bro” on the US far-right, a supporter of Trump and well known for his elitist views and opposition to multiculturalism. The company has grown enormously rich since its foundation in 2003 and is now valued at £300 billion – much of its revenue comes via Government contracts. It specialises in AI technologies and software mainly used for surveillance, border enforcement, policing and warfare. In its early days it received funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm. The US and Israel military are two of its main clients. By providing systems that supposedly analyse and identify “potential enemies”, Palantir has been accused of facilitating war crimes in Gaza and across the Middle East, as well as supporting Trump’s draconian ICE immigration raids. In 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur named Palantir as an enabler of the “unlawful use of force”.
Palantir’s activities in the UK really began to take off in 2023 when it was controversially awarded a £330m contract by the NHS to provide a Data Platform to join up patient information. The BMA has opposed Palantir’s involvement amidst concerns about patient confidentiality and the possibility of the company monetising information for its own benefit. With public opposition to Palantir growing, Wes Streeting seems worried about the reputational risk, and there are rumours that he could invoke a break clause to end the NHS deal. This may happen given that it was left under the Sunak Government,
At the same time, Labour (as part of its famous “growth strategy”) has been more than happy for Palantir to be awarded numerous contracts and partnerships across the UK public sector, including defence, the police and financial services. When Trump visited the UK in September 2025, he signed a “world-leading Tech Prosperity Deal” with Starmer. This was soon followed by a Strategic Partnership between Palantir and the MoD to “boost military AI and innovation”. Defence Secretary Healey claimed the partnership would “identify opportunities which could be worth up to £750 million over five years.” Two months later, the MoD also awarded Palantir a £240M contract for data analytics. The contract was not subject to competitive tender.
It has been suggested that Mandelson may have played a role in facilitating these defence deals while he was ambassador to the US. Palantir was a client of Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel (he owns 24%). In February 2025, Mandelson arranged for Starmer to visit Palantir’s showroom in Washington DC to meet CEO Alex Karp. Seven months later, Karp signed the partnership deal with Defence Secretary Healey listed above. Despite the potential conflict of interest, it seems the connection Mandelson had with Palantir, via Global Counsel, had not been included in the vetting procedure when he was appointed. Nor have any notes from the meeting in February 2025 been released as part of the first batch of the Mandelson files, despite demands by MPs to do so. The Government seem keen to confine the enquiry to Mandelson’s appointment process rather than wider issues. This is why there needs to be a campaign against them keeping a lid on the issue – one that calls for a full investigation into Mandelson’s role as ambassador and the allegations concerning Palantir.
Palantir also works with the UK police and in financial services. According to Liberty, numerous police forces have been contacted via FOI requests and have refused to confirm or deny links with Palantir, citing national security. However, Liberty says that Palantir has partnered with police forces in the East of England to set up a “real-time data-sharing network” that contains details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses, along with suspects. Personal information on Trade Union membership, sexual orientation and race is also included. It is thought that these types of contracts are widespread. Police forces in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire have recently admitted working with the company. Palantir also has a trial contract worth £30k a week with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to analyse sensitive financial data with the aim of “improving fraud detection using AI”.
Starmer’s Government now faces a huge dilemma. Its eagerness to “promote growth” and bond with the Trump regime via deals with US Big Tech appears to have backfired, creating potentially serious problems and risks. It has been rushed through – without due diligence, a thorough risk analysis or full consideration of the longer-term consequences, let alone associated “reputational issues”.
With the split between the US and UK/Europe becoming ever wider because of Trump’s aggression in Iran and his words on NATO, questions are now being raised about the wisdom of allowing companies like Palantir to become deeply embedded in UK public services, providing them access to vast amounts of confidential and sensitive information to “digitally mine.” Moreover, these companies have a major influence within the Trump regime – having financed his campaign and benefited financially from deregulation in the name of “free speech”. They even managed to persuade Trump to appoint one of their key associates – J.D. Vance – as Vice President. (See “Trump and the Tech Titans” on BBC i-player for a fuller analysis of their influence).
There are stirrings that the Government may be considering a different, “sovereign tech” approach to procurement following the award of these controversial contracts to Palantir. There are clearly issues of confidentiality and national security. Speaking recently to MPs at the Common’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, science minister Lord Patrick Vallance said that deals with Palantir would be done differently in the future, emphasising investment in UK technology and UK companies. Whether this comes to very much is another matter, given the scale of current contracts with Palantir in defence and policing.
Labour certainly needs a more strategic procurement strategy, but this should flow from a more strategic economic strategy. Instead of gambling on deals with Trump and US Big Tech as a means of promoting growth, it should now focus on public investment and fairer taxes on wealth to create jobs for young people, tackle inequality, fix the housing crisis and mend broken services such as water, heating and food costs and supply.
Technological innovation, including AI, is, of course, extremely important and has the potential to improve everyone’s life on a global scale. The problem is that this technology is not under democratic control and does not automatically work in the interests of the people. It is in the hands of a small group of Tech Titans, like Musk and Thiel, who are driven by profit and dreams of self-aggrandisement and have considerable political power. These oligarchs are the Robber Barons of the 21st Century. They are using the new technology to undermine democracy and remove social controls by promoting right-wing populism and authoritarianism in many countries, including the UK. The downside of social media – which is another form of surveillance capitalism, that steals our behavioural information and monetises it without our consent – is now becoming clearer day by day, as countries attempt to protect children from its malign influence, struggle to control the kind of disinformation and fake news that fuelled the Southport riots and stem other forms of ant-social behaviour and chaos that are fanned by surveillance capitalism.
Under the false flag of “Free Speech”, Trump and Vance have stoked this up by removing any meaningful controls on Big Tech’s behaviour. A major challenge for the left in the US and across the world is to fight the rise of this oligarchy and ensure that the technology is brought under democratic control to work for the benefit of humanity. Certainly a big ask! A small (but good) start is to read Soshana Zuboff’s brilliant work The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power (2019), where she dissects Big Tech’s business model and puts forward ideas for combating what she describes as a “coup from above”. And then to help turn these ideas into political practice.