Is Palantir taking over Europe?

Earlier this March, the German police announced a new $26.2 billion contract with Palantir to implement AI and data-analysis tools, allegedly in order to combat crime and terrorism, by using surveillance technologies such as face-recognition, massive data processing and profiling techniques.

The contract gives access specifically to two tools, which by the time of writing have already been adopted by three federal states, namely Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and Baden-Württemberg is expected to join soon, as reported by DW. More specifically, the tools are Gotham and Foundry. The first focuses on data analysis on behalf of governmental agencies. What this means is that Gotham is capable of processing a lot of raw information (ranging from social media scanning to satellite imagery) which otherwise would be meaningless, and it does so primarily to carry out intelligence analysis and target detection. As Palantir's own site puts it:

Gotham's targeting offering supports soldiers with an Al-powered kill chain, seamlessly and responsibly integrating target identification and target effector pairing. [...] Operators experience enhanced situational awareness and effectiveness as Gotham streamlines critical decision-making in the modern battlespace.

Foundry, on the other hand, is targeted towards companies more than to governmental agencies. And again, its primary job is to centralise an otherwise spread and incoherent amount of corporate data. Or, according to their words: "transform myriad data and models into dynamic, real world objects, relations, actions, and more." As an example, Airbus has been relying on Foundry since 2015 in order to increase the production of the aircraft A350, and the partnership with Palantir has only grown closer ever since, culminating in the launch of Skywise in 2017, an open data platform used to streamline aviation operations.

Now, the adoption of these tools by the German police has been criticised by several civic platforms, and with good reason. These surveillance tools are well-known for mistakenly flagging innocent persons as culprits. For instance, when it comes to facial recognition, many false positives appear due to the racial biases present in this kind of technology. Moreover, the fact that surveillance is implemented by default means that the presumption of innocence is noticeably put at risk. As DW reports in the same article:

Whoever shows up on the police radar via this so-called data mining knows nothing about it. According to current law, police in Bavaria may use the Palantir software even when there is no indication of danger.

In fact, a campaign to collect signatures against the adoption of Palantir in Germany collected more than 250.000 signatures in a week's time.

Palantir's continued expansion

Germany's partnership with Palantir is just one of the latest to come to light. As said, Airbus, a key European company, has been collaborating with Palantir for a decade now. More than that, even health agencies such as UK's NHS contracted Palantir's Foundry in 2023. The EU considered Palantir for its CSAM initiative, a bill-project that aims at effectively removing encryption in every piece of communication (instant messaging, email,...) in order to scan it and detect illegal content. Several EU countries also relied on Foundry to monitor COVID-19 cases. And recently, this March, the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) acquired Palantir's Maven Smart System NATO (MSS NATO) in order to make a "significant advancement in the modernization of NATO’s warfighting capabilities", effectively bringing the Project Maven to Europe. Besides Palantir, there are other companies involved in Project Maven, notably Anduril and OpenAI.

Europe's defeat?

The need for a European true digital autonomy has become more evident over the last years, since Europe's dependence on US' tech makes it vulnerable and often incapable of reacting to major geopolitical events. And while the European Commission seems to be aware of it, the reality is that no substantial progress has been made so far, but on the contrary, it is becoming clear that the EU's strategy of appeasement to Trump's USA implies an ever-increasing dependence on such companies, and that EU members still decide to rely on this kind of software, rather than investing in European solutions. We are not talking just about purchasing a service, but about handing highly sensitive data to companies linked with foreign intelligence and defence agencies, which are naturally not concerned about Europe's interests - when not in direct opposition to them. Why should they? Moreover, in the case of Palantir, its co-founder Peter Thiel is not only an enthusiastic supporter of Trump, but also of techno-authoritarian ideas as formulated by Curtis Yarvin, and has actively taken under his protection anti-EU politicians such as Vice-President JD Vance. Yet the EU remains silent and has opted for increased cooperation with such firm.

Europe's dependence on these companies is not only a strategic risk, but an existential one. And either reacts now with decision, or very soon it will already be too late.