Palantir didn’t get into the British state because it had some groundbreaking system or because anyone in government actually understood what they were buying. It got in because the people who were supposed to guard the door weren’t paying attention, and the company knew exactly how to move through the gaps. There’s nothing impressive about that. It’s just the kind of slow institutional decay that lets a surveillance‑heavy American firm slide into the NHS without anyone stopping to ask basic questions.
Palantir went looking for political access, not technical credibility. They found Global Counsel — Mandelson’s outfit, Wegg‑Prosser — and paid them £30,000 a month. That kind of money isn’t for advice. It’s for introductions and shortcuts. They hid the contract behind a code name, Project Onion, because even inside the firm they didn’t want staff asking why this particular client needed to be handled quietly. You don’t bother with code names unless you’re already worried about how something will look when someone eventually stumbles across it.
Then the Epstein emails surfaced. Suddenly Epstein’s private secretary is putting together glossy presentations for Global Counsel. You’ve got Mandelson talking to Epstein about the firm’s founding. You’ve got a lobbying shop that later collapses into administration, but not before it helps Palantir build a pipeline straight into the British government.
The UK’s lobbying laws make all of this easier than it should be. You only have to declare lobbying if you directly contact a minister with a specific request. Everything else — events, panels, “conversations,” introductions — doesn’t count. So a lobbying firm can host an event about AI in healthcare, seat a minister next to Palantir executives, let everyone chat, let everyone exchange contact details, and none of it is considered lobbying. Once Palantir has the minister’s number, they can call them directly. That still doesn’t count. It’s a loophole that Palantir uses to its full advantage.
They didn’t stop there. They hired people straight out of the NHS. You had people who actually understood the internal politics — the ones who knew which trusts were falling apart, who could tell you which civil servants hesitated, which ones were climbing, and which ones folded the second someone important looked their way. People who wrote policy one year and were selling software the next. It’s not illegal, but it’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder why anyone bothers pretending the system has integrity. When public knowledge becomes private leverage, you don’t need good technology. You just need the right phone numbers.
The tender for the Federated Data Platform — the £330 million NHS contract — is where alarm bells should get going off for everyone. The Financial Times found that the tender documents mirrored Palantir’s own language. It’s the kind of thing that happens when a company whispers in the right ears long enough that the people writing the tender start using the company’s own language without even realising they’ve been coached.
One person interviewed said: you don’t rig the tender; you influence how the tender is written. Once the tender is written a certain way, the winner is basically predetermined. That’s how Palantir got the contract. Not because they were the best option. Because they were already inside the room when the criteria were being shaped.
And then there’s the platform itself. The FDP was supposed to be the big fix, the thing that finally drags NHS data into the present. Instead, whistleblowers described a system so slow they had time to boil water and make tea while waiting for basic tasks. Analysts posted tumbleweed GIFs because Palantir didn’t respond to technical issues for a week. Some trusts never logged in for a year. The ones with real data teams already had better systems they built themselves. One analyst said the platform “looks absolutely rubbish,” and that wasn’t an exaggeration.
The money behind the contract is just as bleak. The £330 million headline number isn’t even real. It’s higher. Chelsea and Westminster — one of the “flagship” FDP trusts — got £3 million just to help with adaptation. KPMG got £8.5 million to push adoption across the NHS because uptake was so bad. Other trusts got money to try to make the system usable. This isn’t a rollout. It’s a very expensive patch job.
Thiel talks about democracy like it’s beneath him. Karp shouts about Israel like he’s their mascot. They brag about working with ICE. They brag about helping the Israeli terrorist military. They brag about being involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden — something people inside the defense world have dismissed for years. It’s all part of the act. If you act dangerous enough, people assume you’re competent. If you act indispensable, people stop checking whether you actually are. And when ministers don’t understand the technology, they lean on the myth instead of the reality.
Palantir isn’t a genius company. It’s not an all‑seeing machine. It’s not the terrifying intelligence system it pretends to be. It’s a company that figured out how to get close to power, and once it’s close, it stays. Not because it’s brilliant. Because nobody wants to admit they let it in without asking the right questions. The NHS didn’t choose Palantir because the software was good. It chose Palantir because the company was already inside the room, and the people inside the room were paid not to push back.
