{"text":[[{"start":21.28,"text":"Palantir is perhaps the most controversial tech company in the world."}],[{"start":23.904,"text":"To some it's a formidable provider of software solutions that can turbocharge data analysis. To others it's a tool that can enable surveillance and human rights breaches."}],[{"start":34.02,"text":"Either you're deeply against them because they're undermining civil liberties."}],[{"start":1215.702,"text":"There is a serious resistance building against Palantir."}],[{"start":1465.832,"text":"What we need is people to reject the surveillance state. It will take a movement."}],[{"start":1466.332,"text":"Or you're deeply for them, because this is vital technology."}],[{"start":1466.832,"text":"Palantir is offering something completely unique that's not available in other software."}],[{"start":1467.332,"text":"This is also a story about public procurement, how big companies get themselves embedded within governments."}],[{"start":1467.832,"text":"Palantir is a company that turns raw data into power - corporate power, government power, military power."}],[{"start":1468.332,"text":"The story matters because Palantir's battle cry is really to capture as much of the market as possible."}],[{"start":1468.832,"text":"It is coming under fire from politicians across the spectrum, from civic groups, from data specialists, from human rights activists. The big question is whether this company that has been around for a couple of decades now is running out of societal permission to exist."}],[{"start":1469.332,"text":"Let him through."}],[{"start":1469.832,"text":"He was just using his First Amendment. Are you actually defending the Constitution?"}],[{"start":1470.332,"text":"Palantir has begun, to many, to seem like an arm of the Trump administration, partly because of its work for ICE immigration enforcement in the US. And its detractors say that that contract and the software platform that Palantir is providing is helping Donald Trump carry out his ruthless immigration crackdown."}],[{"start":1470.832,"text":"They are deeply connected with Trump's mass deportation regime that is happening right now. They have a tool that got a lot of publicity called ImmigrationOS. They say that it will track the near real-time locations of people looking to self-deport, as well as increase the surveillance capacities of ICE."}],[{"start":1471.332,"text":"The company, of course, says it only helps the government make sure it's getting to the right people, people who are genuinely in the US illegally, etc. Then there is the company's robust support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Those on the right are also suspicious of Palantir's work, and of a corporation having so much power in Washington. It has somehow managed to upset people on all parts of the political spectrum."}],[{"start":1471.832,"text":"Political candidates running for office, especially in the upcoming midterm elections, and especially Democrats, are having to disavow any financial links with the company, are having to divest any shares they may have held, are having to return donations from people linked to Palantir, under pressure from a very well-organised group of activists."}],[{"start":1472.332,"text":"We hope that things will change past the midterms in the United States. What we need right now is on both sides of the aisle people to reject the surveillance state, people to reject state violence. That's really the goal of the Purge Palantir campaign. We want to let Palantir know and we want to let the world know that their activities with ICE and the Israeli military costs them access to these political circles. It costs them access to recruiting the top students. It costs them access to industries. It will also cost them access to large shareholders."}],[{"start":1472.832,"text":"Many of the things that Palantir is accused of doing are things the company has repeatedly been on record denying. But nonetheless, their general posture and the support of many of the Trump administration's politics has made the company a lightning rod for these kind of criticisms."}],[{"start":1473.332,"text":"All of us are out here today because we believe that it doesn't have to be this way, right?"}],[{"start":1473.832,"text":"Hey, hey, ho, ho, Palantir has got to go."}],[{"start":1474.332,"text":"They need to be held accountable for the fact that they don't seem concerned that much of their profit comes from the dehumanisation, the deportation, the detention, the caging, the kidnapping of our immigrant neighbours. I think we have to see Palantir as the product of its time. After 9/11, there was a real crisis in the US intelligence services. Nobody worked out that there was a real threat, despite all the warnings. The Defense Department came out of this thinking we need to build a technology platform that will give us complete awareness. But they call this total information awareness."}],[{"start":1474.832,"text":"And there was a huge political reaction against this, and the project died. In the wake of this, the idea for Palantir was born. Palantir as a private sector company, tried to do what the US government couldn't do, connect all the information that could prevent future terrorism."}],[{"start":1475.332,"text":"Palantir is simply a software company. It's a provider of different software solutions that pipe data together, that allow their clients to conduct data analysis in order to gain greater insights."}],[{"start":1475.832,"text":"It's plumbing, but that is an incredibly powerful idea, and that's still almost unique in being able to do this in very large organisations."}],[{"start":1476.332,"text":"It operates mainly four distinct software platforms. Gotham, Foundry, AIP, and Apollo."}],[{"start":1476.832,"text":"They started out with Gotham, which is a platform for combining different data feeds. They did this for the Pentagon and the CIA."}],[{"start":1477.332,"text":"It's used by the Pentagon to power something called Project Maven."}],[{"start":1477.832,"text":"Think of it as a huge dashboard to bring in data from everything from social media to battleground information, to aggregate this information and make it intelligible at a rapid speed."}],[{"start":1478.332,"text":"Which helps the military with things like tracking terrorist networks or battlefield targeting. AIP is an artificial intelligence platform which integrates AI, LLMs. Apollo and Foundry are often used by corporations."}],[{"start":1478.832,"text":"Palantir was famously arrogant. They tried to hire the smartest engineers in the valley. They sent these engineers into all their big customers with the express mission of saying, whatever these companies are doing, just rip it out and we'll build something better. Where are you really making money? What isn't working? What is? It's all hidden in the data."}],[{"start":1479.332,"text":"It's important to note that they are not the database. Their platforms sit on top of existing databases."}],[{"start":1479.832,"text":"But what they all have in common is they are designed to give the end user a better picture of what is actually going on in a health service, within a police force, within the CIA, or within Airbus or BMW."}],[{"start":1480.332,"text":"Palantir was the brainchild of Peter Thiel and Alexander Karp."}],[{"start":1480.832,"text":"Peter Thiel, a libertarian who later became a Trump supporter. Alex Karp, a philosophy student, soft Democrat."}],[{"start":1481.332,"text":"Together, they created this company and built this thing that the government couldn't build itself."}],[{"start":1481.832,"text":"Karp is unlike any S&P 500 CEO you will encounter. Karp said that analysts betting against the company ought to be sprayed with light fentanyl laced urine. They believed that they had a technology that could save the West, and that they could make billions of dollars while doing so."}],[{"start":1482.332,"text":"We've come to think of tech companies, or at least we did, as friendly, consumer facing. They want to change the world and make it better for us. Palantir from the beginning was a defence contractor."}],[{"start":1482.832,"text":"My name is Brandon Tseng. I am the president and co-founder of Shield AI. Our mission is to protect service members and civilians with artificial intelligence systems. I was a US Navy SEAL. Palantir organised all the classified information within the intelligence community. It was probably 1,000 times better than any piece of software."}],[{"start":1483.332,"text":"Previously, they were asking us to write intelligence reports on, like, literally handwritten notes. 100 per cent Palantir saved lives. That was my experience with it in Afghanistan, and I'll forever be grateful for the Palantir product. I've told Alex Karp this. 100 per cent saved my guys's ass on deployment. It's extremely unusual for a Californian company, especially at the beginning of the 2000s, to be so keen on working with the military. In fact, for decades after Palantir was founded, some of the biggest names in American tech shied away from working with the Pentagon."}],[{"start":1483.832,"text":"You can hear the current CEO, Alex Karp, talk about how they are involved in almost every conflict in the world right now. This company, it's intertwined. It's absolutely intertwined with the military industrial complex. And it is really a sign of what's to come in terms of what big tech's relationship is to the government. Palantir's goal is to become the operating system of the US government and governments broadly."}],[{"start":1484.332,"text":"Palantir's largest customer remains the Department of Defense in the US. It works with the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community, in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency."}],[{"start":1484.832,"text":"Palantir has really made a huge foray into many countries, providing services to well over 100 countries in the world."}],[{"start":1485.332,"text":"Mostly western governments, including the UK."}],[{"start":1502.96,"text":"From the NHS, financial regulation, defence."}],[{"start":1503.46,"text":"It works with the Israeli Defence Forces."}],[{"start":1503.96,"text":"Palantir has also worked in Ukraine and provided services to the Ukrainian forces."}],[{"start":1504.46,"text":"It works with Japan, it works with Taiwan, and then it has a growing commercial business. Airbus, BP."}],[{"start":1504.96,"text":"Axel Springer, the media company. Merck, the pharmaceutical company."}],[{"start":1505.46,"text":"Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Saudi Aramco, a host of other household names."}],[{"start":1505.96,"text":"Palantir issued on its X feed what a lot of people have referred to as a manifesto."}],[{"start":1506.46,"text":"A manifesto for Palantir and also for America. And some of the points in this manifesto are really striking. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the United States."}],[{"start":1506.96,"text":"It says it has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defence of the nation. The company has picked a side in a way that other companies just don't do."}],[{"start":1507.46,"text":"When manifesto says forget soft power, let's just think about hard power. Software is taking over from nuclear weapons as the very heart of defence. You're hearing this kind of realpolitik that he's been preaching."}],[{"start":1507.96,"text":"There should be national service for Americans. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan needs to be undone, and those countries need to be rearmed. Silicon Valley should play a role in addressing violent crime."}],[{"start":1508.46,"text":"The idea that someone in this position, with this powerful technology and these big government contracts, takes such strong positions on social issues and political issues is deeply unnerving to a lot of people."}],[{"start":1508.96,"text":"This manifesto really just shows what this company's ideology has been."}],[{"start":1509.46,"text":"Donald Trump is right. It's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country."}],[{"start":1509.96,"text":"Ever since Peter Thiel stood up and backed Donald Trump 10 years ago, Palantir has put itself right in the political firing line."}],[{"start":1510.46,"text":"Some even inside the company say that Palantir has made itself into a perfect villain. It's thrived on its notoriety for so many years."}],[{"start":1510.96,"text":"Peter Thiel relishes this kind of controversy. He likes to antagonise. He likes to stir up the other side. It's always been part of his thing. He uses it very successfully. He trolls his enemies. This is all good for business. This is all good for the share price."}],[{"start":1511.46,"text":"Palantir is one of the big winners of the Trump age. It's been worth as much as $400bn in recent years. Palantir has been perhaps the best stock market performer in the American corporate landscape. At one point, it was up 2,000 per cent on its IPO price. The share price has dropped a little bit this year, mostly on Wall Street's concerns that the AI age is creating new competitors. But nonetheless, it is a stonking corporate success story."}],[{"start":1511.96,"text":"We're positive on Palantir because we think they're one of the few companies directly benefiting from this massive explosion in AI spending. A year ago, we thought this was a business going to be growing about 30 per cent. This most recent quarter, they grew over 80 per cent. We think that that has room to move higher, potentially over 100 per cent."}],[{"start":1512.46,"text":"Year, year and a half ago, this stock appeared to be trading at about 80 times, 90 times forward revenue, which is sort of absurd. But then we've realised maybe those revenue estimates are 50 per cent too low. And by the way, their cash flow margins are 20 points higher."}],[{"start":1512.96,"text":"So all of a sudden, you're saying, OK, here's a business that could potentially be growing over 100 per cent and actually trading at a rich valuation, maybe 70 times, 75 times free cash flow. But if that's doubling every year, that quickly becomes 35 times the following year. They got to demonstrate that that growth is sustainable."}],[{"start":1513.46,"text":"Now, Palantir itself doesn't build AI. It doesn't develop large language models. But they are in this great position to collect the data that companies need to feed into the AI systems to make sense of. Is this one of the great AI names and stories of the future, or are there going to be other ones that overtake it? There's a long way to go. They've got a nice start, but I think where they fit into the AI world isn't clear yet."}],[{"start":1513.96,"text":"Palantir has built up a formidable network on both sides of the Atlantic, creating what some people call a revolving door."}],[{"start":1514.46,"text":"A revolving door between the company and the corridors of power in Washington and Westminster. Former government officials have ended up being some of the key recruits to Palantir in recent years. Gregory Barbaccia, who became the chief information officer. DOGE under Elon Musk hired many Palantir alumni."}],[{"start":1514.96,"text":"Jacob Helberg he became undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and environment. Mike Gallagher, a Republican former Congressman. They hired him to help identify contract opportunities. They've used former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers to broker introductions to the UK government. Palantir used Global Counsel, the lobbying company co-founded by Peter Mandelson. They have built up this amazing network of people, both who have links into power and who understand how data and procurement in government works."}],[{"start":1515.46,"text":"They are simply buying in influential people who formerly worked in government places they want to get into. That is unacceptable. That has to stop."}],[{"start":1515.96,"text":"The UK has welcomed Palantir with open arms. In fact, after the US, its biggest government client."}],[{"start":1516.46,"text":"Palantir has won a number of contracts with the UK government, offering it deals with the Financial Conduct Authority, the Ministry of Defence, and even the police services. But the one contract that's provoked the most controversy is the one it secured with the NHS."}],[{"start":1516.96,"text":"This is the worst public health crisis for a generation."}],[{"start":1517.46,"text":"If you want to understand how Palantir won this NHS contract in November 2023, you have to go back to the beginning of the pandemic, inside Downing Street. Everyone sits there and realises something that data experts and analysts have been saying for years. Our data system inside the NHS is fragmented. Enter Palantir."}],[{"start":1517.96,"text":"Ministers, officials in the NHS get really, really interested in this company and what it is able to do."}],[{"start":1518.46,"text":"They were actually offering their services for free, but because of contracting rules, they offered it for a pound. And that was to manage what was called the Covid-19 data store."}],[{"start":1518.96,"text":"And from all accounts, it was a really good system, ' and it really did help in the early days of the pandemic. Helping organise PPE data, vaccination data."}],[{"start":1519.46,"text":"Under the cover of the pandemic and during the relaxation of the procurement rules and a very intense lobbying campaign, they got the first contract in the NHS. This is a private security company who specialise in surveillance and intelligence. No history in healthcare whatsoever. Months after the one pound contract, Palantir won another one worth £23mn, which critics argue enabled them to go and work in hospitals all around England, where they were helping to set up the tools that would eventually form part of their case for developing the Federated Data Platform."}],[{"start":1519.96,"text":"Essentially, what it does is it collates NHS data on things like staffing levels, hospital bed capacity, waiting lists all over the country. Palantir did indeed win this £330mn contract to develop the FDP."}],[{"start":1520.46,"text":"NHS data really is pretty much unique in the world. People's health from birth to death of a whole population level. This is a hugely valuable data set. The manner in which Palantir arrived on the scene and in the NHS has continued to create suspicion with MPs who are concerned about the data security, who are concerned about privacy issues."}],[{"start":1520.96,"text":"I don't how the bidding process worked. That is not open to scrutiny. It's funny. Very little with Palantir is open to scrutiny. They had a head start to actually then be inside and to talk to the right people for the bid for the Federated Data Platform."}],[{"start":1521.46,"text":"Palantir was represented by the lobbying firm Global Counsel, which is now defunct because it was co-founded by Peter Mandelson, and it all fell apart following the revelations over the former ambassador to the United States. And questions continue to be asked over the role that Mandelson played in setting up Palantir with really senior government officials."}],[{"start":1521.96,"text":"If you look at when Keir Starmer first came into office, his first visit to the US, he went to the White House, and then he went to Palantir HQ."}],[{"start":1522.46,"text":"That meeting, we have no idea what was discussed, and there are no minutes."}],[{"start":1522.96,"text":"Transparency is absolutely essential, as well as understanding who is connected where. Because yes, you want the contract to be awarded to the best company to do the job in the interests of the customer, and you can't know that if it's tied up in backroom decisions between old boys who know each other."}],[{"start":1523.46,"text":"I'm Tom Bartlett. Up until March 26, I led the NHS England team that built the Federated Data Platform. I'm speaking up now because I feel the debate has become detached from technical reality. Working with Palantir was a very positive experience. They were high calibre individuals. NHS England has been producing figures for the Federated Data Platform. There's 110,000 extra operations delivered."}],[{"start":1523.96,"text":"FTs looked really closely at some of the data claims that NHS England has been making when it comes to the FDP And when you break it down, what you actually see is that a number of these performance gains are concentrated in a very small number of hospital trusts, and a third of the hospital trusts using the FDP are delivering fewer operations since going live on the platform. And in recent weeks, NHS England itself has actually conceded that it's hard to prove the cause and effect between FDP technology and improved outcomes in hospitals, because there are so many other variables happening at the same time."}],[{"start":1524.46,"text":"Palantir was the only company that was trialling the Federated Data Platform with selected trusts while the procurement process was going on. So I would say that wasn't a very fair procurement process."}],[{"start":1524.96,"text":"The procurement of FDP happened in 2023, and it was very strictly followed by professionals within NHS. They weren't doing anybody any favours. The only technology that could solve the problem was Palantir, and that's why they were chosen. If we don't want people with ethical questions around them providing into our service, build in a procurement gateway."}],[{"start":1525.46,"text":"There is a really important moment here when we have lots of British companies who could be providing these services, I would say with much better value for money that instil much more public trust."}],[{"start":1525.96,"text":"Palantir had 20 years in Silicon Valley to develop this. They're years and years ahead of everybody else. There's no credible alternative right now."}],[{"start":1526.46,"text":"I've done this interview in this way because it would be career ending to criticise policy in this area. I don't think the Federated Data Platform is good value for the taxpayer, and that's why I'm sat here."}],[{"start":1526.96,"text":"A number of people coming to work very concerned about having to work on software provided by a company they have a fundamental disagreement with. There is this huge pressure, which I'd never seen before, to fall into line. I've heard from a number of people that they have been told they would lose their job if they criticised this programme."}],[{"start":1527.46,"text":"Lots of the trusts have been refusing to use it, and lots of doctors are very bravely speaking out and being forced to pivot to a Palantir system that is a subscription service that will benefit them for the time that they use it, and provides no long-lasting infrastructure for the NHS. It's not a good decision for them, and it's not a good decision for their patients."}],[{"start":1527.96,"text":"The federation of data is a good idea. It's a waste of money to have spent it the way we have done. There's a lot of technology that already exists and is already provided by a huge range of companies that don't have the toxicity of Palantir associated with them. There's nothing particularly clever about this that needs one huge American company to do it."}],[{"start":1528.46,"text":"The original contract was for £330mn. The true cost is likely to be closer to £1bn. You do have the government looking at how you could break this contract early."}],[{"start":1528.96,"text":"There has been, in the last few months, serious pressure on ministers to consider triggering that break clause, by MPs, by hundreds of thousands of people across the UK, by doctors, by the British Medical Association. There is a serious resistance building against Palantir."}],[{"start":1529.46,"text":"Given what Palantir is setting out in terms of its mission, I find it really hard to see how we can maintain that at the heart of British critical infrastructure when it is so manifestly set on protecting American interests and American Western civilisation as it understands it."}],[{"start":1529.96,"text":"If we triggered the break clause, you'd have to pull the system and replace it with manual workarounds until you could find a replacement to migrate it to. You basically have to go back to all of the spreadsheets, the bits of paper, the whiteboards, the phone calls, and the NHS would go backwards, not forwards. I would love to see these campaigners and MPs put forward a credible plan. I've got no particular interest in Palantir at all. They just happen to be the company that can deliver this."}],[{"start":1530.46,"text":"The real concern around Palantir and its contract with the NHS is about trust. It's about who has access or not to patient data. A new admin role has been created by NHS England for a small number of Palantir staff, which an internal briefing note that we saw said and admits does give Palantir staff unlimited access to patient data. And this has really prompted some concerns about who sees what and when. Palantir will continue to argue that legally, they cannot do whatever they want with this patient data and that NHS England is the controller."}],[{"start":1530.96,"text":"It's a huge trust issue. Palantir's background is in immigration detention, separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border, counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. That company is now managing everybody in the UK's health data."}],[{"start":1531.46,"text":"A really serious concern that MPs and critics of this particular deal have raised is that the way that Palantir works means that there is a risk, they argue, of something called vendor lock in. Once you're signed up to what they would describe as Palantir subscription service, you can't get out. And the MOD contract is a classic example of this, where they won one contract and then suddenly won another one. And it didn't even go out to tender, because the government felt there was nobody else at that point who could continue to offer that specific service."}],[{"start":1531.96,"text":"To give a contract to one company and to say that they're doing something that nobody else can do is a huge red flag. If we are dependent on that country, how sovereign are we?"}],[{"start":1532.46,"text":"There is an argument around sovereignty of data in the UK. It's a shame that we've allowed ourselves to get into this position where we've got no real option other than to purchase from America. Unless there's a complete change in terms of our national policy, singling out this one particular company seems to be the wrong thing to focus on."}],[{"start":1532.96,"text":"There's now an interesting, very live debate happening in the UK after London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked the Metropolitan Police from awarding Palantir a £50mn contract. The reason they gave for this was that proper procurement rules hadn't been followed and there were questions of value for money. But a spokesman for the mayor also raised concerns that the procurement process should take into consideration the ethics of a company."}],[{"start":1533.46,"text":"They are getting into every part of the British state, or as much as they're allowed into. And so there's a real intention by a company that has a founder who is very Trump aligned."}],[{"start":1533.96,"text":"Palantir's UK chief executive has also made the point, who decides what the values of London are and is it dangerous to give politicians the right to decide what makes a company ethical or not based on the ideology of that company's founders?"}],[{"start":1534.46,"text":"It's no accident that Palantir has prospered primarily in the years after the global financial crisis. It has come in where cash strapped governments no longer have the capacity to improve the state. And it has said we will solve this problem for you at a reduced cost. As long as we have governments who are constantly looking around for extra investment, who are constantly struggling to increase their tax base, to improve their finances, Palantir is likely to prosper."}],[{"start":1534.96,"text":"People should be able to live free of state surveillance and state violence. One company should not be sitting at the nexus of all of this different personal information that we have."}],[{"start":1535.46,"text":"It has a political problem. It has a growing corporate problem. There may be competitors brewing. It also has a problem of societal legitimacy, and whether it will just become one of those companies that becomes too toxic for any public body to be associated with."}],[{"start":1535.96,"text":"The tools that Palantir provides could be solving riddles in health research. They can also be used to more efficiently kill people."}],[{"start":1536.46,"text":"It will take a movement to challenge Palantir and to root out the companies that are just like Palantir from our society."}],[{"start":1536.96,"text":"Show me an institution you respect that's actually working."}],[{"start":1537.46,"text":"If Palantir was a boring company without the pronouncements of the executive, the controversial statements, people would be asking less questions."}],[{"start":1537.96,"text":"Technology is neutral. The question should be, who are Palantir's customers and what are they doing? What are governments and companies doing with all that data? How do we trust these people that have all our data? How do we trust them to do something in our interests? That's the real problem."}],[{"start":1502.96,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785557643_6403.mp3"}