Why the NHS is working with ‘the world’s scariest CEO’

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:12Palantir boss Alex Karp has told Silicon Valley to stop making distractions and start helping the West win wars. His company's software is already deep inside the British state and this is why.

0:26Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

1:19The End

1:28different systems, joins it up and helps organisations decide what to do next. Now that might mean managing an NHS waiting list, helping immigration identify someone for deportation, or it might mean finding and striking a target on a battlefield. Earlier this year Palantir published a 22-point manifesto setting out CARP's political vision for the West. So what does he believe and why has Britain placed so much trust in his technology? Roland Manthorpe is Sky's technology correspondent. Roland, he's an interesting figure, this Alex Karp. Who exactly is he? Because he's not your standard tech bro.

2:07Oh, no, not at all. Alex Karp is the CEO of Palantir, a very controversial company, one of the most valuable software companies in the world, right? But he's a very strange figure to be in charge of this valuable software company, which is generally associated with the right of politics because he grew up in a very left-wing progressive family. And even fairly recently was describing himself as a socialist. He has no computer science background and quite a limited business background. The main thing he did before he became a CEO was study philosophy and social theory. And it's created this figure who's done very unusual things and has had huge success in business and has become a billionaire all while espousing philosophy.

2:53There's a book about him called The Philosopher in the Valley. I think the thing about Karp is that he stands for something in a way that many tech CEOs don't, right? They are often really quite bland people, not Karp. And this is through both in the stuff that he says, but also in his personal demeanour. You see him once on stage and you don't forget it. He's incredibly energetic. And every now and then he'll say something either very controversial or totally outrageous. He once said that he wanted his critics to be sprayed with fentanyl laced urine. And that is just one of many carpisms. I hope I've given you a flavour of the guy, a very unusual person to be in this position.

3:32Let's talk about Palantir then. What is this company? What exactly does it do? Very simply, Palantir makes software that help organisations, private and public, but famously public organisations like the armed forces in the US, knit their data together. But the funny thing is that is a really inadequate explanation of what Palantir do, because there are loads of companies that do that. Palantir is also a one-stop shop for any organization that is struggling to get a grip of their data. So Palantir pioneered this thing that people thought was laughable at the time, called forward deployed engineers, where they would send very smart young software engineers into organisations and embed them there to work out what they needed.

4:16And they weren't being paid by the hour, they were being paid by results. So I've met a Palantir engineer who worked in the NHS, spent months at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, following doctors around and building tools specifically to help them. They were trying to understand their problems and then build those tools. Is this sort of like management consultancy in the age of artificial intelligence? I think that's actually a really good way of putting it. But where is it? The management consultants, they'll come in, but they don't really understand the tech. And the tech companies will have got all the tech, but they're not really going to tell you how to use it.

4:48Palantir do everything. And of course, we're going to talk about the NHS and everything. This is kind of why they're so attractive to organisations that are really struggling to get a handle on their data. So attractive to organisations, deeply, deeply worrying to certain individuals and other organisations. Why would an ability to bring together different pots of data make Palantir, on the one hand, incredibly valuable, but in its critics' eyes, incredibly frightening. I guess it's because of who Palantir's working for. So it's working for the Department of Defence in the US, the intelligence services.

5:22It's worked with the Israelis, the Ukrainians. These are people that people understandably worry about them getting more power. What will they do if they truly get a handle on their data? So Palantir itself is named after the seeing stone in Lord of the Rings. There's a slightly ominous aspect to that, right? Yeah, that wasn't a tool of the good guys, was it? Ah, well, how long do you have? Don't get into talking with a nerd. But I guess basically it's that people are worried about these organisations being given more power. But also I think it goes back to CARP. CARP says things that make people concerned because this is an organisation that has an ideological position.

6:02And so in a way, whereas a lot of organisations, Microsoft for instance, Microsoft worked with all the people that Palantir worked with. Microsoft are as deeply embedded in many ways as Palantir. But Microsoft, they make it boring. Palantir, they make it interesting and they raise these questions of what would you really do if you had this power? Interesting, but also concerning. We have it written down, in fact, the 22-point manifesto that was penned by him. Just first and foremost, just explain exactly what the manifesto is. It's a summary of a book that Karp co-authored called The Technological Republic.

6:36And it's a statement of his thesis that really he's been saying for years and years. And it's 22 points. I mean, it's kind of long. So you could do a bit of editing. But I guess there are basically three key points. The first is about hard power. He's saying, look, in Silicon Valley, it's not enough for us just to build apps. We need to build weapons too. He's also talking to people in the valley, talking to this elite and saying, we need to do useful things. We have a civilisational duty. And then lastly, and I guess most controversially, or this is what really puts the wind up people, is that he's calling for a kind of civilisational confidence in the West.

7:18Karp talks a lot about the West. He says that Palantir stands for the West. Unlike other companies who work with anyone, we know who we are. One thing that I think really defines Karp is that he's Jewish. And for him, standing with Israel is core to his beliefs. That's not exactly an uncontroversial position in many parts of what we might call the West. And he has quite a strong idea of what the West is. I printed out the manifesto because I knew I wouldn't remember it. But let me give you kind of one flavour of it, the sort of things he's saying. He says, some cultures have produced vital advances, others remain dysfunctional and regressive.

7:51And even in the longer book, you never quite work out exactly which cultures he mean and how to define them. To kind of put it in the most favourable light is saying that there are core Western values, we can name them, and that in the West people should stand up for them. Is this really a genuine political philosophy, or is it just an extremely convenient intellectual justification for governments in the West buying Palantir products? I think it's both. I think it's definitely genuine, because Carp has been saying this stuff for a long time. And also he was saying it when it was incredibly unpopular.

8:23He said that one of Palantir's core advantages is that we walk towards government and towards the intelligence services and the Department of Defence when everyone else is walking away. So one of the things that Palantir's been most involved with is this thing called Project Maven for the Department of Defence, now the Department of War, which is a military targeting system. Google signed a contract to do that and then pulled out because their workers protested. Apple also refused to be part of it and many other Silicon Valley companies did. Palantir not only were part of it, they were enthusiastically part of it.

8:55However, I think it is true to say that if you read through this manifesto, it does seem as if the answer to all these problems is to buy more Palantir. So yeah, he's a salesperson too. So it's not just simply limited to the DoD. Palantir has got involvement in immigration work in the United States in the form of ICE, the Pentagon, police forces are using it. Is there a pie that it doesn't have its fingers in? You could say that about many companies. Yeah, they've got a lot of private and public sector clients. But I think you're right to say, is that in particular, Palantir is incredibly embedded in the US DOD and the intelligence services.

9:31Their capacities have grown together, hand in glove. And at Palantir's recent conference, one of the top figures from the DOD was there speaking, talking about their longstanding partnership and how they work together. and Palantir is right at the centre of the United States kill chain. This kind of organisational, technological thing that they use to persecute war so effectively. Palantir aren't just involved with the defence industrial complex at its base in terms of the production or in terms of data gathering. They're actually involved in active conflict. Ukraine, Israel, both of them are using Palantir.

10:09Just explain. I'll tell you a bit more about what happens in the US and then I'll talk about Ukraine and Israel because I think it's really interesting. So in the US, the key thing about Palantir to understand is that they don't just knit the data together. They also give you software that can act on it. So they knit the data together and then you can see it all through Palantir Maven Smart System, which is a system which gives you all sorts of views of the battlefield. So you can look at it from the bird's eye view, the drone's eye view, the plane's eye view, and then you can go further into that data.

10:38And again, using Palantir software, do something like one-click execution of a missile. Palantir will also give you options, generated by artificial intelligence. It will make suggestions saying, oh, you should do this. Sorry, are we talking target selection? Yes, exactly. Some of the most fundamental decisions that members of the armed forces can ever make, who to point their guns at. Absolutely. There are huge questions over exactly how much control the humans have. So there are humans in the loop, clicking the button. But once the Palantir system has made a very strong recommendation, how can you refuse it?

11:10And I really cannot overstate the extent to which Palantir is embedded in the system. It is the core of the system. Everything else runs through it. The situation in Ukraine and Israel is slightly different. They both have systems that are very much like that, but Palantir feeds into those systems rather than being the core of them. In Ukraine, they have a system called Delta, which does something quite similar, and Palantir feeds into that. In Israel, there's one system called Lavender, which also provides targeting and again, does this kind of identification of targets and allows you to take actions on them very quickly.

11:43And again, Palantir feeds into that. And I think it's important to stress this, because Ukraine and Israel are two of the most advanced countries in terms of technology in the world. I find it very interesting that they've decided they want to use Palantir, but not make them the nervous system. Why might they do that? Dependency. You can see why from a national security point of view, the Israelis who know tech better than anyone would think, we're going to build this ourself, thanks very much. You can input into it, but we want to maintain control of that core section because it is so central to everything we do.

12:17Isn't there also another interesting point when we're talking about both Israel and Ukraine? On the one hand, Palantir being celebrated for helping Ukraine resist the Russian invasion. On the other hand, Israel, frankly, the commentary has been rather more critical. Yeah. Yeah, if you speak to Palantir, they say, look, we just make tools. They say, we work with democracies, we work with Western countries, and we give them the tools. And we've got very strong lines. We will never work with, say, China, unlike other tech companies, which might do that. Okay, let's talk about the United Kingdom. To what extent is Palantir being used in this country?

12:54Palantir have a lot of private sector clients, including this country. But just talk about the public sector ones. They have a large contract with the armed services. They've also been involved with the Met. There's been quite a bit of controversy over that, and I think it's now proceeding in the form of a pilot project. But I suppose more specifically, and the biggest contract is with the NHS, where Palantir is organising this federated data platform. And where the aim is to bring together NHS data, which, as I'm sure you know, right, anyone who's used the NHS is well aware how fragmented it is.

13:27And I guess a good example, and I've actually seen this inside Palantir. I've seen the system running in demo of an operating theatre. Think of all the different types of data that need to make that work correctly. You need the patient data, all the data about the staff that's being there, the timing and everything. Would you be surprised to learn that this was being run by fax machines and pen and paper or 17 different Excel sheets? No, not at all. Palantir say that by bringing that all together, they can make the whole system run much more effectively. But what is the argument for using Palantir above other providers?

13:58I think it's because of this thing that they're a one-stop shop. I've spoken to so many people about this over the years. And I think in a way, it all goes down to your estimation of what the NHS can do. So some people, they're really enthusiastic about Palantir and they say, it's so much better than what we had before. We'd never be able to manage that. Other people will say, oh no, it's so much worse than what we could do. All the amazing things we could do if we really around this technology ourselves. And so you see how it often comes down to this, do you really believe you can do it yourself?

14:30Or have you accepted that actually we need someone to come in and just take it over? And yeah, it won't be perfect, but at least they'll solve the problems. But if the software works, if the NHS is in control of its data, there are contractual safeguards popped in at the very beginning. Why is it the case we have doctors, campaigners, and two separate common select committees saying, we should be concerned about Palantir's involvement in the UK? There are lots and lots and lots of criticisms of Palantir, but just to identify two in particular. One is about the long-term value for money. You have to think that these are such core systems that if you built them yourselves, you would have so much more control over them and you would really be able to do what you want.

15:16And there is a very long history of governments having contracts with people and it turning into something that isn't quite right for their purposes. And I think people are very worried about that. And then I suppose in a broader sense, there's this question of dependency, right? And again, this goes back to Karp and all his statements. Is it really acceptable for a sovereign nation to have at the very core of its country and its armed forces in its health service, a company which by its own admission has very strong opinions about our politics. Isn't there a bigger concern, right? How many times have I heard a big US-based tech company say, your data's safe in our hands?

16:01And at some point down the line, we all discovered it was being used in a way that we were not told about when we signed up for that particular service. Why should we not be worried that Palantir isn't going to do something like that? Yeah. On the other hand, how many times have you heard about NHS data leaks where someone just basically decided that they would go in and take a look at a bunch of other people's data. That would be much harder to happen with a proper data system, such as the one run by Palantir. Another problem is one government comes in and says, we want to use Palantir for these very clearly delineated sets of purposes.

16:32Another government comes in five years down the line, and they have the bare bones of the ultimate surveillance system at their fingertips, don't they? There are two things there, right? One is about the potential of these systems for surveillance. Like, yeah, welcome to the modern world. This is the choice. You either have modern systems that use data and take all the advantages of that, or you have systems that don't really run properly. And there's the separate question of whether data is being given to Palantir. And again, I would say that the data controllers of the hospitals, Palantir is processing the data.

17:09That's software. If you think about all the emails you send, that data is stored somewhere. it's extremely hard to create that certainty without actually getting in your own way. Look, we are becoming so used to big Silicon Valley figures espousing their own personal manifestos. The investor Peter Thiel, for one, Elon Musk, never shuts up about what he thinks. And businesses and states have chosen not to do business with those two individuals on the basis of their political views. Should we be doing business with a guy who says the things he has in that manifesto in your lap? The reverse of that question is that should we be deciding which companies we use based on their political views?

17:48Maybe I can frame it this way, right? Is that say you did decide to get Pantor out of the NHS. What would be the sensible thing to do from a technological perspective to get another company, maybe a British company, to do exactly the same thing? And then you'd have all those same worries about surveillance, about data. But I guess they'd be our guys. Would you feel better about that? Like maybe a bit, but it definitely wouldn't make all the issues go away. Roland always a pleasure chatting to you thanks very much

18:18that is your lot for today indeed for this week on This Is Why do have a great weekend we'll see you the other side

18:31hello Ed Conway here here's what might sound like a slightly random question what do AirPods bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common. On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.