Palantir thwarted by Sadiq Khan

London mayor Sadiq Khan has royally annoyed the Met Police after he blocked a £50m deal to hand the cops Palantir technology. Palantir is the genocide-linked AI war firm which has won major military and NHS contracts. Palantir’s founders have openly espoused a far-right ideology.

The Guardian reported:

After the UK’s largest police force had agreed to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, Khan intervened, citing “serious concerns” about how the deal had been struck.

The mayor’s office said there had been a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules and said police had only seriously considered one supplier (Palantir).

Palantir’s close links to the Labour government have caused major concerns. The UK arm of the company is led by Louis Moseley, grandson of fascist aristocrat Oswald Mosley. US founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp have a severe aversion to democracy and view their job as defending ‘Western’ civilisation.

There’s a useful primer on their worldview available here.

The paper said:

The deal would have been Palantir’s largest yet in British policing, after others worth £330m and £240m with NHS England and the Ministry of Defence.

The row has been inflamed by the fact that Khan has previously made clear that Londoners only wanted to see public money being paid to companies that “share the values of our city”.

Palantir technology is widely used by the US and Israeli militaries and was founded with the help of the CIA. The company also services Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paramilitaries.

‘Cultures’ and ‘civilisations’ – Palantir’s wacky worldview

Karp claimed in a bizarre X thread manifesto in April 2026 that:

Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.

Liberal Democrat MP Victoria Collins said:

Palantir’s ‘manifesto’ sounds like the ramblings of a supervillain.

Adding:

A company that has such naked ideological motivations and lack of respect for democratic rule of law should be nowhere near our public services.

Khan’s deputy mayor for crime Kaya Comer-Schwartz told the Guardian:

I have not been provided with any acceptable explanation for this failure, which I regard as a clear and serious breach of the applicable procedural requirements.

Naturally the Met was “disappointed” at being blocked from using the supervillain firm’s technology:

A Palantir spokesperson said:

Palantir software is helping to increase NHS operations, reduce the time it takes to diagnose cancer, keep Royal Navy ships at sea for longer, and protect women and children from domestic violence.

Palantir has also moved to take over large parts of the UK war machine. And on 21 May the Canary reported on how UK legacy media outlet the Telegraph was reportedly using Palantir software.

At heart, this is an argument within the establishment. Khan and the Met’s disagreement is over procurement processes. Questions about the morality of using a genocide-linked AI firm run by far-right ideologues has barely featured in their back-and-forth. The rest of us must continue to forcefully make those missing arguments.

Palantir is willing to help states kill for profit, but the fact they are moving into policing, healthcare, and the media suggests they also want to remake the world in their own deviant image.

Featured image via Getty/Dan Kitwood