Rejecting Palantir: Europe Fights Back
European countries are waking up to the very real need for digital independence, as many are now rebuking the US tech surveillance firm, Palantir
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“Thiel’s politics aren’t libertarian at all; they’re closer to authoritarianism. It’s super-nationalistic, it’s a longing for a sort of more powerful chief executive, or, you know, a dictator, in other words.”—Max Chakfin, author, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and the Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power in Politico
I was hiking on a sunny morning in Los Angeles, listening to an audiobook passage from Max Chafkin’s The Contrarion, a detailed biography of Peter Thiel, when I stopped cold. I rewound to listen again.
It was in Chapter 10: The New Military Industrial Complex, where Chafkin wrote how among “Thiel’s most important projects: to bring the military-industrial complex back to Silicon Valley, with his own companies at its very center.”
But that’s not what stopped me cold. It was the section which revealed that registered foreign agent Mike Flynn, who in 2010 was a major general in Afghanistan, had been an “outspoken evangelist for Palantir, who “would continue to push the Army on Palantir as he rose to become the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under President Obama.”
The disgraced general, who was fired by Obama in 2014, becoming an influence peddler, and in 2017, for 23 days, Trump’s national security advisor, before being forced to resign. Flynn was investigated for his contacts with Russians and pleaded guilty to two counts of lying to the FBI, which he later attempted to rescind.
But it’s a little known fact that, as Chafkin wrote, Flynn “was unofficially lobbying for Palantir.”
Why this matters: founded by Thiel in 2003, Palantir, as my colleague Jim Stewartson writes, is “Nazi cancer. It is metastasizing beyond the point of saving the patient… America is dying; and I need to be direct about how serious its condition is.”
Stewartson cites “several reports that the former Department of Defense has established Peter Thiel’s surveillance software company Palantir as the ‘program of record’ for all branches of military service.’” Stewartson calls Palantir “Cambridge Analytica for the broligarchy” — an apt description.
In my recent Hot Type column, The Machinery of the Fascist State, I wrote:
The new report by Mijente, Just Futures Law, and Surveillance Resistance Lab – Who’s Behind Ice? Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement and the Threats to Democracy, revealed the “dangerous convergence of two trends… the first is the Trump administration’s aggressive acceleration of the use of technology and artificial intelligence to rapidly expand immigration enforcement and military force. The second involves an unprecedented amassing of economic and political influence by a small group of tech oligarchs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has provided a clear pathway towards the current administration’s active construction of a new security state.”
The report identified contracts between ICE and 11 surveillance tech companies, contracts worth $513 million in 2026, driven by Palantir’s surveillance technology and the Anduril defense company.
So from registered foreign agent Mike Flynn to the construction of a security state by Peter Thiel, who famously said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” we find ourselves being encircled inside a walled surveillance prison.
I remind you of this origin story, because these traitors to democracy have played a long game. It was Mike Flynn, whose brother Charles Flynn is a senior advisor for Palantir, who pushed this data mining technology on corporate and military America.
And don't forget that Thiel famously backed Trump in 2016, which for many was the moment when people finally recognized that Silicon Valley wasn’t building utopia but quite the opposite.
I also recall how, according to Forbes, Thiel helped Jared Kushner build the propaganda engine that tipped the election for the felon, and away from the qualified candidate.
So it brings me great joy to report that democratic nations in Europe are now rejecting Palantir en masse, having awakened to the need for digital independence.
As I have written many times, the new nuclear arms race is the digital arms race, and by rebuking Palantir and scaling up tech sovereignty, nations in Europe are signaling that they’re prioritizing the safety of their citizens.
Among the countries and regions that are moving to block Palantir Technologies software — which would also block US access to sensitive data — are:
France: the country’s domestic intelligence agency terminated its Palantir contract, moving to ChapsVision, a French provider. France is also prioritizing investments in French AI companies such as Mistral, to be used for state services
Switzerland: Swiss defense and military agencies rejected Palantir bids due to the US threat
Germany: The German military (Bundeswehr) and federal domestic intelligence agencies (BfV) rejected Palantir due to national security threats
Spain: Spain’s government just blacklisted Palantir from new state contracts
Denmark: Government officials in Copenhagen are reviewing European company bids to remove Palantir, due to fears that US agencies would have access to national data
The Netherlands: Lawmakers in the Dutch parliament are demanding the government terminate Palantir and are currently seeking European-owned companies to replace it
United Kingdom — Regional: As Palantir opponents push for its immediate removal from national government contracts, the Mayor of London blocked a proposed £50 million contract between the capital’s Metropolitan Police and Palantir; in addition, the Sheffield City Council successfully passed a motion this week opposing the tech giant’s software and in breaking news, a new report suggests “Andy Burnham is set to ditch Palantir from the NHS… The prime minister in waiting did not grant the US tech giant any contracts in Greater Manchester and is minded to take the same approach in No 10,” according to today’s Telegraph
Italy: HuffPost Italian reports Italy is pausing new Palantir contracts and just rejected a police contract, also claiming sovereignty concerns
I expect this list to grow.
Recall the blizzard of headlines when Elon Musk, Peter Thiel’s partner in PayPal, became the world’s first trillionaire. Quietly, last week, he became an un-trillionaire.
I have often thought about how things will end for Thiel, who has acted as wrecking ball for global democracies, once people finally understood the enormity of the damage. The name, Palantir, was taken from a seeing stone created by J.R.R. Tolkien, and if it falls into enemy hands, it can be manipulated into a ruthless tool for surveillance, psychological manipulation, and control.
One by one, European countries are removing the stone from the enemy’s hand.
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I am glad to see European countries seeking all kinds of independence from the US, but especially something a potentially dangerous as Palantir.