The New Statesman.

For so long a fixture of public debate in the US, the software company Palantir is now increasingly being talked about here in Britain.

In September, the UK government announced a £1.5 billion investment by Palantir in the military.

It already has contracts with the police

and the NHS. Is this a cause for concern? For some, Palantir has become synonymous with

dystopian surveillance. It's worked with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in the US,

the US Department of Defense and the Israeli military. But what does it actually do? And what does

it tell us about where society is going?

I'm Tangil Rashid, and this is the New Statesman podcast. Joining me today is journalist James Vincent,

who's written for numerous publications with a particular focus on tech and AI. James, what got you

interested in Palantir? Well, I think, as you said, it's a company that says something about where the state of politics, the state of technology is at the moment, and the fact that these two spheres are increasingly fusing together.

And we see this particularly in the world of AI.

Palantir didn't necessarily start out in the AI world, but it's definitely

shifted into that. And it's become a company, and particularly through its CEO, Alex Karp,

that represents the sort of allegiance between right-wing forces in America and in the UK and elsewhere

and the tech sector. So I think it, yeah, it says a lot about where we are right now.

I mean, why should we be interested in Palantir? I mean, a lot of people actually haven't heard

of Palantir, and I've sometimes spoken to people and they're like, you know, what's Palantir?

And even within news organizations, there's a surprising number of senior editors and producers

and that sort of thing who, you know,

often say, what's what's Palanty? So they still seem a bit obscure even to people who follow

current affairs quite closely. I mean, why is that? And why should they sort of sit up and find out

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