Document:Palantir’s Military Role in Israel and Britain

UK Digital ID card “isn’t one for” Palantir

Palantir Technologies – the surveillance company co-founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel – has secured at least 24 contracts across key UK public institutions, and is now working with both the Israeli and the British military.

 Article  by Mike Small dated 6 October 2025

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Subjects: Palantir Technologies, Louis Mosley, Digital ID, IDF, dehumanisation
Source: Bella Caledonia (Link)

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Palantir’s Military Role in Israel and Britain

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Palantir Rejects Labour’s ID Scheme

It’s not often that I would share an image from the Daily Star, but this is hilarious. Peter Thiel’s Palantir have distanced themselves from Starmer’s digital ID scheme.

Palantir has pulled out of involvement with the UK Digital ID card, according to an interview with their UK CEO, Louis Mosley on Times Radio. They’re (hilariously) concerned about the reputational damage of being involved with an unpopular Starmer policy. Take a moment to reflect on that. Palantir are concerned about the reputational damage of being involved with an unpopular Starmer policy.

Speaking to Times Radio, the firm’s UK boss Louis Mosley said the firm had “A policy that we will help democratically elected governments implement the policies they have been elected to deliver”, but added that since digital IDs were not on the Labour Party’s manifesto for the 2024 general election and therefore hasn’t seen “a clear resounding public support at the ballot box”, it “isn’t one for” Palantir. The Times covered the story here.

Mosley is the grandson of Oswald Mosley, head of the British Union of Fascists. He was asked by Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight on the controversy around the sale of the company’s software to the Israeli Defence Force. He replied “We are proud of the work we do in Israel.”

Palantir has supplied Israel with AI-powered surveillance and targeting technology during its genocide in Gaza — tools used to identify and strike homes and moving vehicles. Palantir co-founder Alex Karp has called Palantir’s systems “crucial” to Israeli military operations.

They are also working with the British military. On September 18 Mosley announced: “Incredibly proud that the news is out that Palantir has signed a strategic partnership with the MoD worth up to £750 million. This agreement will represent a step change in the UK’s defence capability and the future of our defence ecosystem.”

"Palantir will provide the MoD with access to the most advanced AI defence technology, incorporating key elements of the Maven Smart System – the US’s flagship AI programme which was recently acquired by NATO. The results will be transformative. Our Armed Forces will be connected to weapons systems that studies have shown will increase targeting efficiency by 100x, meaning that 20 people can now do work it would have once taken 2,000 to do.”

“That’s a game-changer for the UK and will transform our national defences.”

Palantir and AI, Israel’s Killing Machine

The convergence of AI and the IDF is, predictably, gruesome. As James Bamford wrote for The Nation last year How US Intelligence and an American Company Feed Israel’s Killing Machine in Gaza:

“The most in-depth examination of the connection between AI and the massive numbers of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children slaughtered in Gaza by Israel comes from an investigation recently published by +972 Magazine and Local Call. Although Palantir is not mentioned by name, the AI systems discussed by the journalists appear to fit into the same category. According to the lengthy investigation, Unit 8200 is currently using a system called “Lavender” to target thousands of alleged Hamas fighters. But the magazine also reported that, while before the brutal attack on October 7 Israel’s rules of engagement tightly restricted the numbers of non-combatant casualties allowed in targeting a single alleged Hamas militant, such limitations have been loosened in the months since to the point of allowing for the slaughter of dozens of Palestinian non-combatants (including women and children) for each targeted individual.”

“Palantir’s AI machines need data for fuel—data in the form of intelligence reports on Palestinians in the occupied territories. And for decades a key and highly secret source of that data for Israel has been the US National Security Agency, according to documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. After fleeing to Hong Kong in 2013 with a pocket full of flash drives containing some of the agency’s highest secrets, Snowden ended up in Moscow where, soon after he arrived, I met with him for Wired magazine. And in the interview, he told me that “one of the biggest abuses” he saw while at the agency was how the NSA secretly provided Israel with raw, unredacted phone and e-mail communications between Palestinian Americans in the US and their relatives in the occupied territories. Snowden was concerned that as a result of sharing those private conversations with Israel, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would be at great risk of being targeted for arrest or worse.”

“Now, with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, critical information from NSA continues to be used by Unit 8200, according to a number of sources, to target tens of thousands of Palestinians for death—often with US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons. And it is extremely powerful data-mining software, such as that from Palantir, that helps the IDF to select targets. While the company does not disclose operational details, some indications of the power and speed of its AI can be understood by examining its activities on behalf of another client at war: Ukraine. Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine,” according to Karp. “From the moment the algorithms set to work detecting their targets [i.e., people] until these targets are prosecuted [i.e., killed]—a term of art in the field—no more than two or three minutes elapse,” noted Bruno Macaes, a former senior Portuguese official who was given a tour of Palantir’s London headquarters last year. “In the old world, the process might take six hours.”

It’s all about efficiency.

I wrote about Lavender last year:

Lavender was developed by the Israel Defence Forces’ elite intelligence division, Unit 8200. One officer was quoted as saying: “This is unparalleled, in my memory. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.” Another said: “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”

Just as Palestinians are dehumanised by the rhetoric around the conflict, the technology furthers this dehumanisation. People become ‘targets’ and the technology is seen as simply a mechanism for efficiency and time-saving in the process of killing.