Palantir’s Deepest DARKEST Secret EXPOSED

Lots of these companies are evil enough, but Palantir are just too evil.Very much seeded by the CIA.CIA's private contracting firm was one of the big investors.Peter Thiel, their famous founder of Palantir, big person in Donald Trump's world, big fan of talking about the Antichrist, said democracy and capitalism effectively aren't compatible and he's not choosing democracy.They came out of the war on terror, came to have a big role in the killing of Osama bin Laden.But actually, if you talk to people in the defence industry, they really poo -pooed that a lot.

Palantir is a company that's always understood how important buying political access is.

And a part of that story is at Global Council, Peter Mendelsohn's lobbying company.The company doesn't exist anymore.

Since the Epstein emails which showed that Jeffrey Epstein was very, very involved with the foundation of Global Council.

Alex Carper is always shouting about how much they helped the Israeli military.

I am the most publicly supportive CEO of Israel, and that's true.I think Israel is on the side of good.

Thiel has described the NHS as its anatomy.This to him is socialised medicine.How do we feel about having a company like this being so embedded in the British state?

Normally we look at Palantir, its connection to Israel, its very questionable record on human rights.But you're, at least in a way, saying something more interesting and which I think they would find even more damaging, which is essentially their really deep, dark secret is that Palantir sell themselves as the evil geniuses of the tech world, but it's their real secret that they're just not very good.UK independent investigative outlet Democracy for Sale has published a 7 ,000 -word deep dive in the London Review of Books.This looks absolutely rubbish, one senior data analyst said about the £330m data aggregation platform that Palantir built for the UK's National Health Service.Peter Thiel and fellow Palantir founder Alex Karp are more than happy to admit they work hand -in -glove with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officeand with the Israeli government.

But this is the criticism they fear above all others.We invited one of the authors, Peter Gagan, into the Double Down Newswatch studio to tell us more.So, Peter Gagan, you have a fascinating investigative piece on Palantir coming out in this week's London Review of Books.What have you discovered, basically?

When Palantir started to really expand in the UK in the early 2010s, they followed a model that they'd used in the US, spending a lot of money on lobbyists and consultants.They were looking for people, really, a really politically connected lobbying firm.And the one that they found was probably one of the best politically connected firms, which is Global Council.Global Council no longer exists.It's now an administration.I contacted administrators and asked them for comment on the story, but I never heard anything back.

So effectively, the company doesn't exist anymore.It's since the Epstein emails, the Epstein discovery and the Epstein emails which showed that Jeffrey Epstein was aware, really very, very involved with the foundation of Global Council.At one stage, I even saw this myself before it was published in the FT, his private secretary was publishing, was printing off pitch decks for Global Council's early days.And Mandelson was asking him a lot about Global Council's founding.

Mandelson sets up Global Council in 2010.

2010, just as he's leaving government, in fact.He's just left government.And he talks about this at length to Epstein.He wants to cash in on his contacts.

Yeah.

So Global Council set up with Mandelson and a guy called Benweg Prosser, who used to work for Tony Blair in Number 10.And in the early years, they worked for people like Oleg Deripasko, the now -sanctioned Russian oligarch.They worked for some Chinese state businesses, but they were struggling for business.You can see it from the Epstein file.

That's right.He's always moaning to Epstein that he's not rich enough.He's not rich enough and Global Council doesn't have enough big clients.

And frankly, along comes Palantir.And we were able to put a lot of meat on the bones of the contract and the deals that Palantir's relationship with Global Council.So we've been able to report for the first time that the size of the retainer was over £30 ,000 a month.Interestingly, actually... £30 ,000 a month.Yeah, £30 ,000 a month, which made it one of the biggest clients of Global Council.Interesting as well, there's a lot of secrecy around the Palantir contract within Global Council.

It has a codename, doesn't it?Project Onion.Why is that?

Because they didn't want people internally knowing about it.There was a concern, I think, both reputationally and there was a sense which this was kept on the down low.And this is reflected, I think, as well in lobbying disclosures.So basically, in the US, you have to you have to declare who you're working for.Who you're lobbying on behalf of.In the UK, under our current lobbying laws, they're very weak.

You only have to declare if you are contacting a minister or a very senior civil servant on behalf directly of a company with a direct, specific ask.That means there's a lot of grey areas.

What does it matter whether you're registered as a lobbyist on behalf of someone?What's the significance of that?

If you do it in the public sea, it happens.

It becomes transparent.It becomes transparent.

We had no idea that Global Council was doing it.We only found out, and again, we reveal this in the piece, we only found out that Global Council was working for Palantir when a junior member of staff at Global Council by accident emailed a senior government official.And then they had to declare them.So for years, that went under the radar.So we didn't even know that relationship existed.

So it's in 2018, I believe, that Global Council is employed by Palantir.But for four years, Global Council is effectively lobbying on behalf of Palantir, without anyone realising this?

Yeah, and they were able to do things.So they would always say that we're an advisory firm, and they did stuff like business intelligence, and they did risk analysis for Palantir, and they would do later on some media rebuttal stuff.But they were also doing things like putting on, this still happens, not just with Palantir and Global Council, but lots of other people, including Flink Global, whose former CEO, James Purnell, has just become Chief of Staff to Andy Burnham.What they would do is put on an event, and the event would be, say, a conversation around things like, say for example now, the role of AI in healthcare.And you bring along a minister you bring along senior civil servants, you have the head of Palantir, you have other Palantir people there.You can even badge it as with Palantir.

but that doesn't count as lobbying in the UK.But it gives you a huge amount of opportunity to go meet people.And once you've met somebody, you say, I meet you and you're the minister and I get your contact details, I can then contact you directly and that doesn't count as lobbying if I'm the company.So they really took huge advantage, I think, of our really lax lobbying laws, because they didn't have to declare declines.duty bound to.And what they were able to do, and it was really interesting, we have a guy called Shane Tickle, who spoke to us on the record for this story.

And he was part of another consortium that was bidding for this FTP contract.

The big NHS contract.The big NHS contract, £330 million.

And he says, look, there's nothing illegal here, but they had all the influence.They were able to talk, they had all the influence with the politicians and the policymakers.And somebody at Global Council said, and it's in the piece as well, about how effectively As a company, as a lobbyist, you're not trying to rig the tender process.You're not trying to get someone to give you the contract.What you're trying to do is influence how the tender is written.That's the key moment.

It's how it's written.And that will dictate who gets it.It's almost predetermined once the tender is published off and who gets it.

You were saying that about Palantir with the FTP contract, that they'd almost managed to write the tender for themselves.Such was their influence.Such was their influence.And that's the real power.

The FT's done some good work on this.They look at how the FT showed how the actual tender documents mirrored language of Palantir's.You know, they actually talked about stuff that Palantir does.It was like without naming the company, without using Palantir's name, it was very clear.And that's where the lobbying, the influence happens.And it's really striking.

It's very successful.The other thing that Palantir did, which is a very American thing, it happens with something I've written about a lot, the revolving door.But they hired, both Global Council and Palantir, hired a lot of people from inside the NHS who had really big connections back into the NHS, both politicalfigures and people in health care.And that, again, is how you understand.Someone walks out of one room and into another, walks out of government into business, they still have all those contacts.

And we really have almost no laws in this country about any of that.

Is it concerning the degree to which it's so easy to sort of bamboozle ministers in this country?

I think it is.And I think in some ways that is the story of Palantir.Like the ability to, you know, the kind of the lack of some sort of deep knowledge and the fact that we have so much of a revolving door between business and government means that you've got the people who are telling you about this are also the people who are advising you.six months ago.Somebody who was a trusted advisor is now on the other side of the table.And we've seen that.

I've written a lent about labor, for example, in the lobbying industry.The amount of people that went both ways, say lobbyists that went into became labor ministers or labor MPs in the last government, but also senior people in the Labor Party who then went into the lobbying industry before the new government came in.This is exactly how you end up.And you're having a conversation with someone who might be a trusted friend, might be someone you work closely with.The conflicts of interest are so strong there, and you have ministers who often don't really know all that much about it.The headline figures of Palantir, they're so scary, they must be good.

I was fascinated by the piece because, of course, normally we look at Palantir and we look at its connection to Israel, its very questionable record on human rights, and privacy is a huge issue.But your piece, in a way, is saying something more interesting and which I think they would find even more damaging, which is essentially they're really deep, dark secretists.They're not very good.

Yeah, effectively, that's what we wanted to go and find out more about.They've got this big contract.We looked at our flagship thing in the UK, which is this 330 million pound contract with the NHS, which I'm sure lots of people have heard about.It's called the Federated Data Platform, the FDP.And what the FDP was set up to do is basically kind of try and revolutionise health care data in the UK.tie together all these different bits of data that are held in hospitals and trusts and doctors and pharmacies, bring it all into one place so it could be harnessed and used, which, in theory, is a good idea.

It makes complete sense.Data aggregation.If you use the NHS, you're always amazed there isn't more data aggregation.Yeah.

Exactly.It's a problem that lots of people have in their daily lives.And lots of experts would say this is something we needed to do.But frankly, this story started when whistleblowers in the NHS started coming to us and talking.They were telling us about problems that they were having with the FTP.They were saying that the FTP was incredibly slow, like really, really, I mean, crunchingly slow.

They'd have to go off and make a cup of tea and come back and try and use it.That it was very hard to get the data that they wanted out of it.This software just isn't fit for purpose.Interestingly, a lot of trusts, these kind of NHS trusts, the most forward looking ones, they found that actually the software they'd built for themselves was much more effective.just didn't help them, actually did the opposite.But the NHS leadership, because of this big contract, they have been really pushing hard on people to take up this software.

And interestingly, we found that when you look at the headline figures that the NHS uses, so for example, it says that 137 trusts are what they call live on the FTP.So that's about two thirds of them.But actually, loads of those trusts have never logged in.They haven't logged in for over a year into any of these apps.

So people essentially aren't using the Federated Data Programme?

Many.Effectively, what we found is that The health trusts that are actually in some ways the leaders on data aren't using it.For people who are actually at the cutting edge of this, people who are really at the top of the game in the UK on this, they say that this software just isn't fit for purpose.It doesn't do the jobs that they want it to do.And that was something that came up time and time again.Effectively, though, what Palantir's FTP is, I was able to look at it.

It's not the most dramatic looking thing you see.I wanted to kind of get behind the black box of Palantir.We hear so much about it.What does it look like?So you lift the bonnet and have a look inside.

Exactly.Exactly.

And the one thing that came back time and again from talking to analysts was that it's a one size fits all approach and that doesn't really work all that well for many of them.And a key thing is it's proprietary software.That means that NHS people can't edit it.They have to ask Palantir to do edits for them which is a constant thing.So we got access to a private builders forum for NHS builders.So NHS analysts use this forum to talk about things that are trying to do on the FTP.

with things they want to happen.They'll talk to Palantir there.And at one stage, we had this one person, one analyst, who put up a problem they had that they wanted Palantir to fix.They put up the question.They said, can you help?A week went by, nothing.

They started posting a gif of a tumbleweed.And then more analysts started getting involved, too.There was one of Mr. Bean, another of, you know, a picture of a dog looking out the back of a car window.You know, just really slow, things not happening.And one of the big problems for what that means, then, is actually a lot of things they want to get done just don't actually get done, and the software just isn't really able to help them.

Palantir had no experience in this area when they bid for this.And they got the contract, I think it's November 23, isn't it?And to be clear, this is a 330 million pound contract.This is a big contract.But they had no expertise to bring to this when they did.

So what's interesting, and actually the real figures are probably bigger than 330 million, we were able to find that actually some of the top performing FTP So the trusts that are held up as flagships, like Chelsea and Westminster, which is held up very much as a flagship, the NHS cited themselves, they were given £3 million just by this one trust alone to help their FTP adaptation.The adaptation was so slow that KPMG were paid £8 .5 million for a contract to promote adaptation amongst trusts.They were given money to try and push it forward.So it almost certainly has cost a lot more than £330 million to deliver.But in terms of healthcare, this was not an area to palate here.amount of expertise and I think it's fair to say.

They're doing a lot more health care work now in the US as well.But effectively, when Palantir arrived in the UK properly in the mid -2010s, they were a company that had come out of the defense industry in the US, very much seeded by the CIA.CIA's private contracting firm was one of the big investors.A lot of defense contracts.They had some banking contracts.But effectively, actually, at this stage, when they arrived in the UK, Palantir was on its knees, really.

It wasn't doing very well.Its software was struggling.The kind of post -war on terror largesse had come to an end, really.People like JPMorgan Chase who were...

So it was war on terror stuff where they were supposedly getting work.They were big.

Very much that was where they came out of.They came out of the war on terror.You know, Peter Thiel, their famous founder of Palantir, founder of PayPal, big person in Donald Trump's world, big fan of talking about the Antichrist.

And an early partner of Elon Musk as well.

Yeah, in numerous ventures.He became very illegal.of globalization of the way the world was, and particularly of Islamic terrorism.So he was very much, when Palantir was created in 2003, that was part of its story.And a big moment for Palantir was they claimed to have a big role in the abduction of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.The killing of Osama bin Laden, yeah.

And they claimed a big role in that.But actually, if you talk to people in the defence industry, as people in the US have, they really poo -pooed that a lot.

And so this sort of mythologising and again, there's a parallel with Musk here, extraordinary capacity to self -mythologise and which people buy into for some reason.

Yeah, I think it's really true.And like one of the Big points of the piece, which I kind of put out at the end of the piece, is that I think Palantir's self -image as a scary company is intentional.I think they're intentionally selling this idea.And I've talked to people in and around the Labour government, and they effectively all say the same thing, which is, look, we don't like this.we don't like their politics, but they're so damn good.And their scariness shows how good they are.

Evil geniuses.Evil geniuses, exactly.And no one wants to hear about evil banalities.

You know, and effectively, that's the story here, really.

You know, but they are selling this idea and they have definitely done very good work.That's that's been very, very like, you know, human, like the accusations against of human rights abuses against them are legend.You know, their work for ICE, their work for the Israeli defense forces and other and other things.

They are all on the record.And they proudly proclaim this.I mean, with ICE, they're providing all that data that enables ICE.to track down supposedly illegal immigrants in America.And Alex Karp in particular is always shouting about how much they help the Israeli military.

Yeah.But what I found really interesting and they are and if you look at that big tweet thread that Alex Karp published in April where he's talking about a kind of civilizational conflict effectively and how AI driven warfare and how Palantir are going to protect the United States.The thing that is really striking is Palantir is a software company.It does not make foundational frontier AI models.It's not Antropic.It doesn't make hardware.

It's not Elon Musk, even.It's not BAE Systems.It makes software.And this is a story about software.And I think that's the thing.If you came at Palantir from the outside, I think most people would think that they are, and sometimes their software can do things like be used to target individuals for surveillance and all the rest of it.

Fundamentally, that is what they are doing.They're building on other things that are happening.their reputation and their desire to be seen as this scary, scary organisation, I think is a part of a sales pitch.Alex Karp does that, Peter Thiel does that to some extent.

Here we have Louis Moseley, who's very much a sort of English version of that, who tries to be much less scary, doesn't he?

He does.He's an interesting character.He kind of, you know, I mentioned in the piece at one of the few times where, you know, Karp talked about like raining fentanyl soaked urine on animals.who gave Palantir a bad rating.Thiel has said all manner of things, including that democracy and capitalism effectively aren't compatible, and he's not choosing democracy.

And that Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist.Yes, he's got a big thing about this.

Mosley's much more circumspect.He doesn't occasionally...One of the few comments, I think, he spoke at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship last year, which is this kind of radical a right venue, increasingly funded by Paul Marshall and with Jordan Peterson, in which he did effectively start talking about a kind of deep state.But in general, he's much more clean -cut.He's a former Conservative councillor.He's the grandson of Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists.

And talking to people who know Mosley, one thing that comes out, I think his political lineage, his grandfather, I think, Clearly, it was holding him back.He used to work for Rory Stewart, actually, as well.

But his grandfather, being Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union, a fascist.

So that was something that was always going to, frankly, count against him.He's very political.He's very ambitious.And I think it's fair to say he's got a lot more power than pretty much any Tory MP, and certainly any Tory backbencher now.He's become a real fixture on the broadcast round in the UK.

Laura Kunzberg has him on the show.And you'd never guess, really, who he is from the way he's set up on the Laura Kunzberg show.

No, he's become someone is often brought into comment.It's striking as well that Palantir has effectively become a bit of a culture war in the British press as well.The right -wing press haven't really been asking the kind of questions this piece asks.It's taken as read that Palantir is really good and it's a kind of left -right issue.The Times and the Telegraph have both spent a lot of column inches dedicated to Louis Moseley and Palantir and effectively talking them up, especially over the last few months.He is clearly, I think there's a good chance he could become a more powerful player within Palantir in general, as Karp

and Thiel, you know, as they become, I think, damaged by just how pro -Trump they've been.Both of them have donated to Trump.Both of them are very, very close to Maga.Mosley's kind of stayed outside of that.His politics, you know, the fact he was a Conservative would have helped, I think, when they hired him.I think they would have been thinking about that.

You know, I explore that in the piece.Palantir as a company, it's always understood how important buying political access is.In the early years, in the years They had John Point Dexter from the Executive State Department.They had people like General Mike Flynn.They had James Carville, who used to work for Bill Clinton.So they had a lot.

They understood that political names are really important.So when they brought Mosley in in 2016, the fact it was a Conservative government would have, I think, probably been on their minds.But Mosley's shown his ability also to engage with Labour, at least under the last administration.

In this age of engineered algorithms, if you really want to keep informed, please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and click on the bell so you never miss a video.And if you want to support the vital work we do exposing the powerful, please consider joining Double Down News on Patreon.Now, I just want to stick with their basic competence for a moment, because as we've said, this is what they really sell themselves on.We're meant to take it as given that they're evil geniuses.The other interesting thing you talk about in your piece is the homes for Ukrainian refugees, the software they develop on that, which also turns out not to be very good.Tell me about that.

Yeah, I think this is a very good example of just how Palantir work in general and very similar with the NHS contract.So what they did was when the Ukrainian, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it was a huge a lot of Ukrainian refugees coming to the UK, the government needed to do something about it quickly.And Palantir offered to build, for free, software that the then Department for Leveling Up could use to do this work.And this is the exact same thing that happened with the NHS.The first contract with the NHS wasfor free too.

It's called land and expand.

Land and expand, exactly.Parallels with drug dealers, aren't they really?You're getting somebody hooked.

Well effectively, especially because as I mentioned earlier, it's a proprietary software.So you get people in, they have to use the software, they're starting to use it and actually it's very hard for them to move off.So with the NHS data deal, the first contract was for free.Then there was one for 23 million.Then there was one for 330 million.With the Homes for Ukraine, it was free.

Then there was another contract for, I think it was 10 million in total.It was two more contracts.Interesting, if you look at the National Audit Office, which is basically the watchdog for these things, looked at it, and they found there wasn't value for money.So it's quite important that the National Audit Office looked at it and said, you're wasting money here.And a lot of councillors then stopped using it.Councillors found it confusing and hard to use.

They're using their own software now.It's cheaper and it works better.

Now, that's very interesting, isn't it?Because as well, you kind of find yourself looking at this story and thinking, gosh, there seems to be no one who can do what Palantir does.But frequently, and I think you talk about it with the Federated Data Program in the NHS, Greater Manchester Health Trust simply develop their own and it's sort of tailored to their needs and it's much better.

Yeah, and it's something that comes out really strongly from talking to people, the experts in this space, exactly that.And there's lessons from what they've done.And the big key in some ways is open source.So they're using open source software.They're not using proprietary software.That allows it to be adapted.

That allows it to be changed.It allows it to work differently in different contexts for what's required.The problem, effectively, with the FTP really is that it's trying to suck everything up into a centralized platform.If you talk to experts in the space, they will say, actually, what we need is a reversal.reverse.We don't need something that sits on top of everything and creates a kind of new layer in which everything gets pulled in.

We need something that allows us bespoke to develop the tools and the things that we need to do.And what you're left with, of course, you say with panelliststhere's about a dozen tools that are on this platform.One example is Cancer 360, which Keir Starmer has set up in Parliament, so this is going to revolutionise cancer care.Just six trusts have logged into that in the last year, according to the data that we have.

And that's out of somewhere around 300 trusts.Something like that.There's a lot, yeah.In your piece, you talk about vendor lock -in.What is that exactly?

So effectively, vendor lock -in is when you buy something.Apple is a great example, actually.If anybody owns Apple products, it's quite hard to stop using Apple products.And it's quite hard.So your iPhone works really well with your Mac, which works really well with your other Apple products.And if you try and move, it's quite hard.

You buy an Android phone, and you realize, actually, loads of stuff doesn't work now.My data doesn't come across properly.I'm kind of struggling with this.That's an example of vendor lock -in.It's one of the reasons Apple are so successful.When it comes to Palantir, what it means is you've got this proprietary software.

So you've all these people, all these data analysts, who are using the platform.And people are using it.I shouldn't pretend that nobody is.It's not that nobody's using it.Some people are getting some benefit from it.They're using Palantir.

They're using Palantir's products.If and when we were to try to move off Palantir, they would find it really hard, because the work they've done exists in the FDP, and the FDP is owned by Palantir.

This is the Federated Data Program.

The Federated Data Platform runs on Foundry.So Foundry is Palantir's proprietary platform.So the FDP effectively is Foundry.And so it's a Palantir product.So if we were to end that and go with another provider, all of that information effectively would be, it's very, very, very hard to recover.So that's the lock -in aspect of it.

It was interesting.I spoke to a former health secretary who I won't name, but who worked with Palantir closely and would have been seen as a supporter of Palantir.And even they admitted that that is something that they were concerned about.Their concern was that actually other people, they wanted, they weren't worried about Palantir winning contracts, but they were worried about Palantir winning all of the contracts.And so they're sort of stuck with Palantir and there's nothing they can do about it.

Are we at a point nowwhere Palantir is perhaps at its peak and there's only one way for it to go from here?Has it invested almost too much in this evil genius thing?

I think there's a really interesting question about whether it has happened.Has Palantir, as you say, invested too much in their kind of self mythology as the evil geniuses?They have been very happy to be front and centre of some of the worst of the work of ICE in the US, attacks on, almost random attacks.They've seemed very happy.They took out a big advert, I stand with Israel, after the Hamas attacks.

And Al -Aqsa is a very aggressive champion of Israel.

Very much so.And two things are happening.One is they're losing staff.They're losing staff to other companies because other companies are going to hire them.They've a lot of experienced staff.They're big.

Why are staff leaving parties?It's the politics.People are saying in Silicon Valley they can't get a date.If you've got Palantir, and lots of these companies are evil enough, but Palantir are just too evil.It's a bit of a rogue's gallery, but even amongst that, Palantir are kind of beyond the pale.Their secret sauce is what are called forward engineers.

So basically, what Palantir do, and it's where they make a lot of money, is they put people into companies who work for Palantir, who are able to basically lead the software.And so they're working hand -in -hand, which is quite a clever idea.And they will charge companies, say the software engineer costs them a quarter of a million dollars, they will charge $500 ,000, and the difference is their profit.But part of the problem with that, that's also very replicable.Other companies can do that.Again, they don't make foundational models.

So in some ways, the limits of their own work is part of it, too.But also, as you say, the company is incredibly overvalued.The Economist earlier this year said, is this the most overvalued company in history?Their earnings, it's about $100 ,000.earnings, which is hugely, you know, companies sometimes sell for three or four times earnings.

They're valued on the stock exchanges.What is this?Hundreds of billions.I think the last time I looked at about $325 billion.

Yeah.

Of course, this was the same with, it's fake it until you make it.This was true of Amazon for a long time.It was true of Tesla for a long time.I mean, it does happen, though, that companies are massively overvalued for a long time.

Yeah, it does.I think the problem with Palantir is, and they would point to the fact that they've started making money for the first time in the last while.The big problem for Palantir is, and something I've always thought about, and this story really brought it home to me, is unlike Amazon, for example, it is a public contract play.So they hate the state.CARP and Thiel hate the state in many respects.They hate the social state anyway.

They hate the welfare state.described himself as a social democrat, but I think most people wouldn't see that in his positions.But effectively, they are a state contract play.They have some private business, but the bulk of their business is in state contracts.And that requires relationships with politicians.It especially requires you not to be so toxic that politicians can't deal with you.

So you saw recently the Met police, that he can said they weren't going to sign this 50 million pound contract with Palantir.And Palantir are now suing them, effectively, taking out a judicial review.And they might be successful on that.But in America, Palantir has become a proper culture war issue.The Democrats are having to disown them en masse.They're saying, if we get into office, we'll rip up these deals.

Countries across Europe have disowned Palantir.ripped up deals with Palantir and said that we're not going to renew contracts.

The Danish have.

The Danish, the French.There was a big.

The French intelligence services.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.A lot, especially because Palantir have come out basically and said we are an arm of the US security state.That's a problem for other countries.At the root, I think of my story as well as a sovereignty question.How do we feel about having a company like this being so embedded in the British state, in the British welfare state, and actually, frankly, in the delivery of something that its own founders disagree with?Thiel has described the NHS.

I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it's anathema to him.He calls it, this to him, is socialized medicine.So the idea that a core function - We should trust them with the data.I think it's a genuine, in an era we are now in, in terms of protectionism and of sovereigntists, that's a big question.But also the future of American politics.America was to go Democrat again, I think Parliament would be in a really difficult place.

This article has been published in the London Review of Books, but you wrote it for Democracy for Sale, which is your website.Tell me a bit about that.

Effectively, Democracy for Sale, we're a newsletter.We're an organisation that is all about dark money, hidden influence in British politics, and effectively how power works.I think that if we say anything about what we do, it's all about power and who has power and how to use it and how to control it.We publish a newsletter, a frequent newsletter, that goes out to over 55 ,000 people.We've had some big hits, I think.We've done quite a lot of, yeah, we've had, it's been an interesting kind of 12 months.

We're quite a new organisation, but I think we definitely punch a bit above our weight.Yeah, but it's the sort of thing we're definitely interested in.I'm sure we'll be having you on again.Peter, thank you very much.much for joining us.Thank you very much.

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