The relatively recent rapid advances in AI, computing power, data mining capacity and unobtrusive surveillance technology seem to be ultimately owned and controlled by a small number of uber-wealthy corporate oligarchs. Many of these same oligarchs have tried and largely succeeded in convincing many governments that their technological solutions offer salvation from a multitude of thorny problems of modern governance — but at an eye-watering financial cost and inevitably with some loss of data confidentiality and even potential data abuse by authoritarian regimes against citizens.

The key characteristics of the new state-corporate symbiosis include:

• Elite deviance and uncontrolled corporate power — the “totalitarian corporation” coined in 2007 by Kean Birch and expanded upon in 2025 in his The Rise of a Tech Oligarchy lecture — whereby unaccountable “doers” disproportionately amplify their financial returns and influence at the expense of liberal democracy and individual sanctity (the “done-to”). The new AI-focused and techno-oligarch-dominated societies and economies are characterized by authoritarianism and “dark triad” personalities. See also “snakes in suits” corporate psychopathy, elite deviance, corporate authoritarianism, corporate political power abuses, dark money. 
• Blurring of state and corporate interests, with governments (e.g., US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, most Western nations) becoming over-reliant on technical expertise and services from private corporations (Elon Musk’s AI ventures, Technion, Elbit, Palantir, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.).
• Multinational/global reach (e.g., European state sovereignties under digital threat, if not political coercion, by US and Israeli high-tech companies).
• Convergence/coalescence of malign ideology, motivations, methodology and technology (e.g., data abuses, social control abuses, military/policing abuses against civilian populations, etc.). See, for example, chapters 5 and 11 in Vol 3 of The New Authoritarianism (2021).
• Surveillance capitalism, whereby Internet and social media giants seek to control not just information exchange between individuals but also information about them and, worse, “predictive sources of behavioral surplus,” the goal being mass control of populations for commercial gain.
• Political hypocrisy, such as Trump’s claims of “liberation of the individual” hiding an increasingly fettered and repressed US citizenry courtesy of the Heritage Foundation’s radical-right Project 2025 blueprint; Trump’s presidency replacing liberal elites with illiberal elites; favouring Republican-run constituencies while punishing Democrat administrations via voter rezoning/redistricting, postal vote restrictions, gerrymandering, withholding funds; ICE abuses of both undocumented migrants and US citizens, including homicides and deportations without due process; judicial abuses by the White House to investigate and prosecute political opponents, civil servants and former officials who dare challenge White House ideology and opinions; accusations of Palantir-assisted mass profiling of citizens by the Trump administration.

Case study: Palantir Technologies

Palantir Technologies, a leading US-based software company, provides IT solutions for governments, intelligence agencies and commercial clients, including data integration, analysis and AI platforms for very large data sets, with a focus on decision-making, military and surveillance applications. Established in 2003, three of the co-founders retain substantial and controlling ownership: Peter Thiel, Chairman; Alex Karp, CEO; and Stephen Cohen, President. Major institutional shareholders include Vanguard Group, BlackRock and State Street Corporation.

It is reported that the company received early funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) company In-Q-Tel.

Palantir now has substantial operations and clients in North America, Europe and elsewhere. Its growing market capitalization is variously quoted by market analysts at over $300 billion and possibly $350 billion.

Palantir and the Trump White House

The company has an extremely close relationship with the Trump White House. For example, Vice President JD Vance is a former Palantir employee who has long been mentored and financed by Thiel. This has included a $15 million contribution to Vance’s 2022 senatorial campaign. Palantir staff have also been seconded to government departments in Donald Trump’s second presidency. Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security, is also reported to have a close relationship with Palantir, including significant stockholding in the company.

It has also been reported that Palantir supports radical-right Christian nationalist causes that form part of the Project 2025 movement seeking to impose permanent illiberal Christian supremacist governance on the US. For example, Palantir was a corporate sponsor of Trump’s Freedom 250 Christian nationalist event, Rededicate 250, in May, which featured Trump’s cabinet member Pete Hegseth, the self-styled Secretary of War and an aggressive proponent of Christian supremacy. Other sponsors included Deloitte, Mastercard and United Airlines. The event was criticized for allegedly rewriting American history and for its evangelistic style in promoting religious supremacy contrary to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

In addition to Palantir’s well-established business relationships in the US with corporations and both federal and state government functions, the following are four examples of Palantir’s major prospecting and client activities in three other countries — the UK, Switzerland and Israel. These are followed by an examination of the stated political ideology, motivations and commitments of Palantir’s top executives, and questions about the company’s authoritarian ethos and its close engagement with hegemonic authoritarian regimes.

UK National Health Service

The National Health Service (NHS) was launched in July 1948 to provide cradle-to-grave medical care for the total population of the UK, regardless of status and ability to pay. The NHS and numerous emulations in other countries have developed almost exclusively in capitalist economies, in which socialism or socialist politics are not of the hard-left extremist kind but part of a pragmatic, eclectic approach to social order, human rights and modernity. Although established by a Labour (socialist) government in 1948, the NHS has been retained by all mainstream UK political parties (including the Conservatives) ever since.

The UK’s NHS is not seen as an ideological artifact of one political creed but as an all-party-agreed necessity for a civilized society, mindful that the provision of health care for all is a human right guaranteed by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

Disagreements between the major UK political parties are rarely about the necessity of an NHS but usually about its best design, organization and policies, and how much public money should be invested in it. The NHS is so popular that for any British political party to suggest that it should be scrapped or diminished would amount to political suicide. Despite operational difficulties and growing waiting lists in recent years (now reducing), this universal health care (UHC) model, funded by compulsory social insurance contributions from citizens over their working lifetimes plus general taxation, is jealously guarded by the general population. Woe betides any parties who advocate its dissolution and replacement by privatized medicine, seen as a return to the “bad old days” before 1948, when only those with enough money received proper health care. 

Private health care is available in Britain for those who can afford it or related private medical expenses insurance, but it is not the main provider or option for most citizens. The UHC model is in stark contrast to the US health care system, where private medicine and private medical insurance prevail, resulting in large numbers of citizens who are unable to pay receiving little or no health care. The Affordable Care Act (informally known as Obamacare) reduced the number of under-65s without health insurance from 48 million in 2010 to 28.1 million in 2016. This number continued to fall modestly but by 2024 had risen again to 26.7 million.

So, any foreign interests, whether governments or private enterprise, that seek to upend, interfere with or financially exploit the UK’s NHS should beware. The American pharmaceutical industry is one such group that has managed to persuade the UK government (with President Trump’s backing) to allow it to sell a defined range of high-priced pharmaceuticals to the NHS. In the US, the prices of pharmaceuticals in general are usually orders of magnitude higher than the same items in the UK. Such high prices have little to do with actual manufacturing costs but reflect the very high profit margins demanded by US pharma giants, mindful of their stock values and shareholder dividends. Unsurprisingly, the British public has become very concerned about what to them looks like a vehicle for outrageous price gouging at the expense of the British taxpayer, with this first agreement being a Trojan Horse for a mass attack on NHS finances by American private pharma companies.

Palantir is clearly not a pharma company but represents yet another private business sector (with the Trump White House’s fulsome backing) seeking to embed itself as indispensable to the governance of Britain, namely initially, large-scale data handling and analysis. One of Palantir’s target interests is the NHS, whose patient data covers a population of some 70 million. Palantir’s initial NHS England 7-year contract (five years plus a two-year optional extension), awarded in November 2023, is to design, build and operate the Federated Data Platform (FDP). The FDP brief is to enable better data sharing across the NHS, better coordination of patient care and improved operational efficiency across the numerous regional and local Trusts that make up the NHS delivery model.

The UK government has expressed satisfaction that Palantir will do an excellent job. However, recent polls of the British public indicate that more than two-thirds of respondents are unhappy with the large scale of Palantir’s penetration into public sector contracts such as the NHS, and 40% do not trust Palantir to honor its obligation not to access individual patient data. Indeed, the recent decision by the NHS to apparently shift from its previous policy of not allowing access to individual patient data to now granting Palantir unlimited access has caused some political and media consternation nationally, such as in the Financial Times. 

At the local level, too, such as in the Folkestone & Hythe District of the county of Kent, the respected “speaking truth to power” online news and blog site Shepway Vox has recently weighed in on the same doubts about the trustworthiness of Palantir regarding individual patient data protection.

Others criticize Palantir for providing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) with surveillance and targeting software that aids and abets contravention of human rights, and wonder rhetorically whether Palantir’s access to NHS individual patient data will bring similar conduct to Britain. Others see Palantir’s NHS FDP project as just one in a whole spectrum of dubious penetration and aiding-and-abetting activities across UK health care, policing, defense, social care, environment and immigration enforcement.

UK policing

Palantir has already made considerable inroads into UK police forces, the largest being London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The major controversy so far has centered on the MPS’s use of Palantir’s AI software to track and monitor the force’s 33,000 police officers. However, the Karp-Zamiska manifesto setting out Palantir’s authoritarian intellectual and political ideology appears to have provoked a wider concern among UK lawmakers and others about the “values and ethics” suitability of Palantir for this company to be allowed access not only to UK policing but also to other sensitive government functions such as the Ministry of Defence and the Financial Conduct Authority. Members of Parliament have variously described the Palantir manifesto as a “parody of a RoboCop film” and “the ramblings of a super villain.”

Recently, Palantir has announced that it will sue the Mayor of London because (as within his statutory powers) he has blocked Palantir’s contract with the MPS.

Additional concerns have been raised about the potential for Palantir to use UK NHS individual patient data plus surveillance technology to enable UK policing to target and monitor migrants, racial groups, religious groups and political dissidents, based on its experience in the US with ICE.

The growing public “trust deficit” and resistance that Palantir faces in the UK is largely one of its own making. Its arguably bullying and dismissive “trust us, we’re Palantir” responses to considerable criticism and concerns raised by the public, civil society organizations, politicians and lawmakers have added to Palantir’s damaged image and credibility. Although the UK government has welcomed Palantir’s data management expertise, it has, nonetheless, paradoxically, identified the country’s growing over-reliance on such US techno-oligarch firms as a threat to national security. UK government minister Liz Kendall warned in April of the country’s dependence on US technology for its critical defense infrastructure, as well as its economic dependence on US-owned digital technology. Her solution includes the UK now being on a “critical mission” to develop its own sovereign AI capabilities.

Alleged interference with Swiss sovereignty and civil rights

As in the UK, Palantir’s access to sensitive national data has raised much disquiet in Switzerland, including a scandal that is still unfolding. Since 2018, the company has developed a strong relationship with Ringier — Switzerland’s largest media group — with Palantir developing Ringier’s AI platform across the company’s media, sports and marketplace divisions. In 2024, a renewed 5-year strategic extension to Palantir’s contract was announced. However, from 2020 to 2022 — a period when Palantir was prospecting Swiss government departments — Palantir’s Executive Vice President in Switzerland apparently also served on the Ringier board. This fact was only revealed much later, and the lack of earlier transparency raises questions about Palantir’s corporate governance and integrity.

In December 2025, the independent Swiss magazine Republik ran a two-part investigation into Palantir’s Swiss activities, involving 59 freedom-of-information (FoI) requests. The investigation found that formal audits by the Swiss Army and other government organizations had determined that Palantir’s systems were fundamentally incompatible with Swiss data protection laws or with Swiss national security and sovereignty. 

The nub of the problem centered on American companies operating abroad being subject to the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act 2018, which could lead to US government demands for access to any or all of their records and data related to their overseas activities. This could be for any purpose, including criminal investigations into fraud, tax evasion, trafficking or money laundering, links to terrorism or US national security threats, or just plain intelligence agency “snooping.” This non-negotiable, supervening extraterritorial jurisdiction right held by the US government was deemed by the Swiss government to be intrinsic to Palantir’s product offering. As Palantir could therefore not guarantee that sensitive Swiss government data would always remain exclusively confidential to the Swiss authorities, their contract was discontinued.

Unsurprisingly, eyebrows have been raised in the UK, and questions have been raised as to why the British government (which faces comparable Palantir risks to those arising from Palantir’s Swiss predicament) appears unconcerned.

However, cancellation of Palantir’s contract was not the end of the matter. Instead of suing Republik for defamation, Palantir filed a “right-of-reply” lawsuit in the Zurich Commercial Court to force Republik to publish a counternarrative or rebuttal from Palantir. As the Republik articles reported on public records, the legal and factual basis for Palantir’s lawsuit is puzzling.

Informed observers suggest that Palantir’s motive is to intimidate Republik with what amounts to a legal move well known in the UK, called a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). SLAPPS are typically used by celebrities, wealthy figures, high-profile business executives and large corporations against anyone who has caused them embarrassment and/or loss by revealing facts or allegations about their conduct and motives. While seemingly a reasonable response to unfounded allegations, SLAPPS have become notorious as a vexatious means by the wealthy and powerful to suppress legitimate public inquiry, especially by small publishers. Moves to outlaw SLAPPS in the UK are slow-moving but have achieved some government backing.

Palantir lost its case. Whether Palantir is unconcerned about the adverse publicity their lawsuit has generated, or even aware of it, is unclear.

Palantir’s Israeli business activities

In 2024, Palantir and Israel signed a strategic partnership intended to “harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions.” This partnership is the latest development in a long-standing, close relationship that goes back at least a decade across multiple levels, both within Palantir and the Israeli government and its national security functions. For example, former Israeli Prime Minister and Head of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Military Intelligence Directorate, Ehud Barak, is reported to have advised on and facilitated venture capital funds involving Palantir.

In recent years, many successful high-tech start-up companies have been formed, both in Israel and the US, by young Israeli entrepreneurs typically in their 20s and early 30s. Many of these are former leading-edge IT and AI specialists in the IDF and, more specifically, its clandestine cybersecurity and intelligence service called Unit 8200. It is highly likely that a number of these specialists will also have joined Palantir. Other similar firms established by ex-Israeli intelligence officers include NSO and Black Cube, both of which have been heavily censured for alleged unacceptable intelligence activities in several EU countries and, in Black Cube’s case, electoral interference in Slovakia. NSO has also been under investigation by the European Parliament over its Pegasus “spyware” in phone hacking of EU staff, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), journalists and lawyers.

Former 8200 commander Yair Cohen established the cyber division of Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s largest defense electronics firms. Elbit specializes in high-resolution specialist cameras and vision systems used in military, security and intelligence applications, for example, surveillance and targeting. Elbit has a joint research agreement with the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion). Palantir enjoys a commensal relationship with Elbit and Technion within this fraternity.

Both Palantir and Elbit have been involved in controversy within Britain over their surveillance businesses as well as over their close involvement in Israel with the IDF and its Gaza War activities. Their collaboration with the IDF on surveillance and targeting technology and services has been regarded by some as amounting to aiding and abetting alleged war crimes and genocide, such as targeted assassinations, mass slaughter of civilians (over 70,000, apparently confirmed by an Israeli official) and “devastated terrain warfare.” Denial of complicity by Palantir has not been helped by CEO Alex Karp holding a company board meeting in Tel Aviv in January 2024 during the Israeli bombing campaign to show solidarity with Israel and its methods in Gaza and criticizing Western companies that fail to show similar support. 

Palantir’s political beliefs and manifesto

In 2009, Thiel stated in a short article in the Cato Unbound journal: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” While clear and erudite in its language and opinion, it nonetheless presented a dystopian polemic about the alleged increasing dysfunctionality of capitalism and representative democracy and the need, in his view, for a step-change libertarian revolution that only unconditional embrace of the kind of technologies that Palantir excelled in could provide.

By 2025, Thiel’s early ideas had been expanded by his colleagues Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska into a book, The Technological Republic, which included a political manifesto of 22 assertions and objectives to create this revolutionary nirvana. The manifesto is undoubtedly radical, and polemically so, in its rhetoric and assertions. Many of the enumerated assertions are highly debatable, for example, numbers five, six and seven, which essentially call for a return to a militaristic outlook by government and society, including compulsory national military service. It very much appears that the Trump White House, in the person of Hegseth, has already taken the hint in terms of his constant bellicose rhetoric and public “warrior” memes, while Trump himself has embarked on his Iran War, has invaded Nicaragua and is threatening to attack Cuba.

The Karp-Zamiska manifesto list has received much media criticism; for example, American journalist Elizabeth Spiers dismisses it as “steeped in oligarchic hubris and authoritarian nihilism” and promising only “a dystopian future.”

Nevertheless, the manifesto does include some surprisingly liberal suggestions. For example, item nine suggests that society should be far more tolerant and forgiving of those who have devoted their time and skills to public life and who may, for example, suffer opprobrium, hyper-criticism or ill-health as a result. Similarly, item 11 advocates that society should refrain from Schadenfreude (“harm-joy”) and not gloat or rejoice when opponents experience ill-fortune. Item 20 demands that “pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted.”

My overall assessment of this manifesto is that it presents as an unstructured, almost random evangelical list of topics, assertions, emotions and even passionate feelings of Karp and Zamiska, ranging from the superficial to the profound, from the peripheral to the fundamental, and from the trivial to the maximal. Such a demonstration of chaotic thinking is hard to fathom, but reminiscent of Trump.

The manifesto reveals a belief in unbounded individual freedom and free-market capitalism, backed by the militant application of AI and technology by corporations and governments to achieve these aims by eliminating democratic interference. War should be embraced as a necessary “might is right” instrument to impose a nation’s supremacy on other nations, and citizens (but not the techno-supremacists, of course!) should accept their unavoidable imposed sacrifice in that endeavor.

The manifesto includes an implicit contradiction, namely that some individual and mass freedoms and human rights must be eliminated to ensure the unbounded freedoms of other parties, i.e., the freedoms of the most powerful (and most deserving — supremacists like the Palantir demagogues) to expunge the freedoms of the less powerful (and less deserving). It has an inherent “jungle logic” of survival of the most ruthless.

From their published statements, Karp and Thiel appear to lack emotional intelligence and self-awareness, despite elements of mawkish compassion for others less fortunate. In a paraphrased summary, they appear to be saying to the masses (the “done to”):

Trust us, we’re Palantir, we always act honorably, ethically and altruistically. Trust us, with our superior intellect, vision and technological wizardry, we know far better than you plebs what is good for you and what needs to be done. Listen to our honeyed voice of reason. Just lie back and accept all the benefits and the sunny uplands of the brave new world we are creating, while accepting some personal sacrifices.

And, to their prospective government clients, they appear to be adding “scareware” blackmail:

Listen to our honeyed reasoning, the pure, unassailable logic of the salvation we offer you. We have no interest in your data content, honest. We are paragons of virtue and have innately altruistic motives. BUT BE WARNED, if you don’t do as Palantir commands, then catastrophe awaits you.

As Lord Acton observed in 1887: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Today, this is about the quiet usurpation of political control and state governance. Palantir and similar companies no longer act as adjuncts to keep political elites in power but, as Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov argues, to supplant them as the all-powerful hegemons who are hell-bent on determining all existential quantities and qualities of human life itself.

Is the “presumption of regularity” dead? Is representative democracy dying?

In the US, all is not well with its governance, and the unhealthy relationship between government and private corporations looks ever more corrupt. The supreme irony of Trump’s boast in 2016, that if elected he would “drain the swamp” of corrupt politicians, special interests and wealthy influencers in Washington DC, has not been lost on political observers and journalists. He has simply enlarged the swamp and replaced the “liberal elites” he so despised with his own “illiberal elites.”

Under Trump’s second presidency, the Project 2025 plan for the wholesale dismantling and repurposing of the structure, institutions, processes, norms and standards of America’s 250-year representative democracy is already more than half completed in less than two years. It is no longer safe, if it ever was, for any US citizen to rely on the so-called “presumption of regularity,” i.e., that government ministers, politicians, officials of state, members of the judiciary, police officers, military officers, etc., can always be presumed to act at all times with the utmost integrity, honesty and non-corrupt purpose. 

The presumption of regularity has been replaced by the cynical presumption of irregularity, whereby citizens increasingly believe that a subverted democratic system is now operating against their interests and cannot be trusted or relied upon to act in the common good. Instead, they witness techno-oligarchs, such as those at Palantir, telling them — with compliant government ministers and politicians nodding in agreement — that the pre-AI democratic world is dying, if not dead. As Shekhovtsov observes, such oligarchs want to snuff out democracy and humanity in short order.

There is a real risk that some democracies (especially the US) could easily slide into a takeover by ethnoreligious nationalist supremacists and a possible totalitarian dictatorship. Is a Trump-led US heading for civil war and a totalitarian one-party state reality? Some observers, such as psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee, are pointing that way. What lies beyond 2028? Are techno-oligarchs such as Palantir’s bosses aiding and abetting? Vance is an ex-Palantir employee, mentored and financed by Thiel, a connection that has raised considerable controversy. In most democracies, such personal financial largesse from a corporate leader to a senior politician would warrant at least serious investigation and possibly criminal prosecution for “buying” political influence; Palantir staff are seconded to the Trump government departments; Palantir has close links to Miller; and Palantir was a corporate sponsor of Rededicate 250.

Evidence suggests that the Trump White House has been trying to export the Project 2025 formula to subvert/convert European and other sovereign states into adopting Trumpian ideology. For example, Vance has openly attacked European countries overall for failing to adopt Trump’s ideas and policies, while praising European radical and far-right conservative parties and leaders (e.g., supporting the electoral campaigns of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and Viktor Orban in Hungary) and also the far-right Tommy Robinson’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim campaign in the UK.

This is an obvious continuation of Steve Bannon’s The Movement, a pan-European populist (some say subversive) Christian nationalist radical-right campaign launched in 2018, although, as with the current Trump White House’s Christian supremacy policy, the “Christian” element was more rhetorical than any actual piety in practice. Bannon, a former Trump strategy adviser during his first presidency, is recognized as a key architect of Make America Great Again (MAGA). It is reported that the Palantir oligarchs are split on whether to aid and abet such apparent political interference outside the US. 

Public mistrust in corrupt governance and undue corporate influence

Generally, in Western democracies, there has been an erosion in recent years of public trust across all levels and forms of government and authority. In the UK, for example, this is evidenced by an upending of traditional voting patterns, with voters no longer prepared to grant elected representatives and the national government much time to fix outstanding problems or grievances. British voters overall nowadays believe very little of what politicians of any party tell them and assume they are all self-serving liars whose promises are worthless. Corporate and government malfeasance, corrupt relationships and general sleaze thrive with impunity. Examples of increasingly harsh authoritarian policies (e.g., policing of public protests, surveillance of “thought crimes,” abuse of terrorism laws to suppress legitimate dissent) are now legion. This has all led to considerable political turbulence, with the ruling Labour Party now under both external and internal pressure and observers openly asking if Britain is ungovernable.

Draconian and highly subjective policing, potentially being used to deter and intimidate legitimate protesters, is bad enough. Also concerning is the bias and self-censorship manifest in the reporting of such protests across the media. For example, according to a survey report by Des Freedman, pro-Palestine marches are almost universally tagged by the media as “hate marches” even though the vast majority of protesters express wishes for peace and justice, while reports of far-right marches, for example those organized by Tommy Robinson, anti-Muslim founder of the racist English Defence League, choose not to use the term “hate march” despite the many hate messages present. A rare exception is the more balanced article in The Times on May 16.

Freedman’s report implies that either UK media editors are biased towards pro-Israel and anti-Muslim ideology, or they may be open to manipulation on such issues by organs or agents of the state. If the latter, it is likely that high-tech AI services will have played at least some role in that chain of manipulation, and also at the technical level of policing, crowd surveillance and targeting. Whether Palantir might be involved is speculative. 

Palantir bosses present themselves as saviors of humankind while apparently acting to save only themselves and their “tech bros” (and their authoritarian, if not totalitarian, and self-serving political clients) at the expense of mass humanity. Thiel, Karp and Zamiska may talk like frank but saintly salvationists running The Last Chance Saloon for humankind, but they seem far removed from being real altruists and intellectual giants. It all looks like pseudointellectual fakery, thinly disguised sophistry.

However, their true “success” lies in bamboozling weak, gullible and self-serving political leaders and governments into swallowing it all. In the UK and some other countries, the latter has willingly, and in some cases enthusiastically, allowed Palantir to manipulate, if not dictate, priorities in the political and governance agenda behind the scenes. Unlike the Swiss, they have allowed the Palantir “tail” to wag the sovereign “dog.”

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.