The widespread manifesto of anti-woke tech leader holding NHS and defense contracts
The leader holding NHS and defense contracts, Alex Karp, co-founder and chief executive of Palantir, recently published a 22-point manifesto outlining his views on the future of the West. Palantir, a controversial US tech company, has secured significant contracts with UK government bodies including the NHS, Ministry of Defence (MoD), Financial Conduct Authority, and multiple police forces. The manifesto has attracted widespread attention, with over 30 million views on social media platform X.
Palantir’s role in UK government and NHS data management
Palantir is known for its data integration technology, which helps combine and analyze large, often incompatible datasets. The company won a £300 million contract to develop a data platform for the NHS, a project that has faced opposition from the British Medical Association (BMA) and sparked ongoing debate. Palantir’s UK managing director, Louis Mosley, recently responded on X to criticism from the BMA’s British Medical Journal.
Despite the controversy, some experts support Palantir’s involvement. Consultant Tom Bartlett, who previously led the NHS team responsible for delivering the Federated Data Platform built on Palantir software, told the BBC that Palantir was “uniquely suited to the messy NHS data problems that have been accumulating over the last 25 years.”
Military contracts and ethical concerns
Palantir is also a major military contractor. Its AI-enabled technology is used by NATO, Ukraine, and the US military, including in conflicts such as with Iran. In the UK, the MoD has signed a three-year contract worth £240 million for technology intended to support the “kill-chain,” which integrates data to provide faster options for attacking enemy targets.
The company employs around 950 people in the UK, representing 17% of its global workforce. However, critics have raised ethical concerns about Palantir’s work with US immigration enforcement and Israel’s military. Some also question the influence of Palantir’s leadership, including co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel, a libertarian supporter of Donald Trump, and Alex Karp himself.
Alex Karp’s manifesto and political views
The 22-point manifesto is a summary from Karp’s forthcoming book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, co-written with Palantir lawyer Nicholas Zamiska. The book argues that the survival of the American experiment depends on revitalizing the military-industrial complex through technology.
Karp’s political views are complex. While he has donated to Democratic presidential campaigns, he openly describes Palantir as “anti-woke” and expresses opinions that many on the left may find unpalatable. In his manifesto, Karp criticizes the idea that all cultures are equal, stating that some cultures have produced “wonders” while others are “regressive and harmful.” He argues that the West has resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity, leading to what he calls a “hollow pluralism.”
Karp also advocates for “hard power” to protect democracies and warns against theatrical debates over military and national security technologies, which he believes could cause the US to lose ground to adversaries. He predicts the end of the nuclear deterrence era, to be replaced by AI-based deterrence.
Among his more controversial proposals is the call for universal national service, which he describes as a shared obligation to defend democracy. He also criticizes the post-World War Two disarmament of Germany and Japan, calling it an “overcorrection” that has had negative consequences for Europe’s current security challenges.
Reactions and concerns over Palantir’s influence
Palantir’s growing presence in UK public bodies has raised concerns among academics and campaigners. Professor Shannon Vallor, chair of ethics of data and AI at Edinburgh University, warned that “every alarm bell for democracy must ring” due to the influence of unelected tech leaders like Karp imposing “grand narratives” without public accountability.
Health campaign group Medact, which runs the “No Palantir in the NHS” campaign, has criticized the NHS contract. Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne, author of the critical BMJ cover story, said that continuing the contract makes the NHS complicit in Palantir’s involvement in AI warfare and its “deeply alarming ideology.”
In response, Palantir stated it is “deeply proud to be helping the UK government to deliver more NHS operations, speed up cancer diagnosis, keep Royal Navy ships at sea for longer and tackle domestic violence.”
The UK Department of Health referred to remarks by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who defended the use of Palantir’s technology but expressed personal disapproval of some of the company leaders’ statements, describing them as “abominable.”