Palantir harvests battlefield data that Ukraine pays for ‘with blood’

Months into Russia’s full-scale penetration of Ukraine, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp became the archetypal main of a large Western Big Tech institution to personally sojourn Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said successful June 2022 that helium was “delighted” to person the enactment of specified a institution successful the combat against Russia “on the integer beforehand line”.

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The Florida-based bundle improvement firm’s concern has paid off.

Ukraine has since go the archetypal federation successful modern past to systematically cod battlefield data, a important plus for grooming subject artificial quality (AI) to recognise patterns and marque predictions.

The trove of real-world combat information obtained from video and sensor feeds implicit 4 years of struggle is helping Ukraine monitor, foretell and respond to Russian attacks with the assistance of Palantir’s products.

Yet observers accidental the information is besides boosting the capabilities of the United States corp whose technologies are implicated successful quality rights abuses, including successful Israel’s genocide successful Gaza, raising questions astir the increasing leverage that backstage tech corporations are acquiring implicit sovereign states.

A ‘strategic advantage’

Palantir was founded successful the aftermath of the 2001 onslaught connected New York’s World Trade Center to assistance the US defence manufacture physique a azygous information situation from which to show and respond to incoming threats.

To bespeak specified a mission, the institution was named aft a chromatic successful JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that grants powers that borderline connected omniscience.

Yasir Atalan, lawman manager of the Futures Lab astatine the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Palantir makes “different forms of information speech to each other”.

In the subject context, information from missiles, radars, the automatic recognition strategy (AIS) and unfastened sources is gathered connected 1 screen, offering a “larger presumption of the battlefield”, Atalan said.

Similar solutions are disposable to governments for civilian purposes, including borderline control, wellness services, taxation and gross – and wide surveillance.

With much data, systems usage statistical learning to recognise patterns to marque close predictions, enabling subject systems to marque split-second, automated tactical decisions.

Under this premise, ample datasets based connected real-life scenarios are coveted by companies aiming to outperform their competitors.

“Good battlefield information is highly uncommon and hard to travel by,” Elke Schwarz, a lecturer focusing connected integer technologies astatine Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera. Because of its scarcity, “those with entree to [it] person a strategical advantage”.

Data originating from Ukraine whitethorn not beryllium straight applicable to different struggle but is inactive important for training, Schwarz said.

“Building a strategy that correctly identifies a tank, for instance, requires a ample measurement of vessel images, ideally successful each kinds of upwind conditions,” she explained.

Similarly, ample volumes of behavioural information – accusation connected however radical respond to a fixed script – are cardinal successful tracking, profiling and predicting quality enactment successful wide surveillance systems.

Ukraine’s invaluable battlefield data

The pinnacle of the collaboration betwixt Palantir and Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence came successful January with the motorboat of a specialised bundle platform, the Brave1 Dataroom, which uses battlefield information to bid artificial quality for subject applications.

But salient figures successful Ukraine’s defence assemblage person questioned their government’s determination to stock the country’s invaluable plus with a backstage tech institution nether undisclosed terms.

“Ukraine has thing that nary different state successful the satellite has,” Valerii Markus, a serviceman and erstwhile main sergeant, wrote connected Facebook. “We are paying with humor for information that idiosyncratic other tin person into capital, planetary influence, and large money.”

The institution maintains it does not get lawsuit data.

In an emailed connection to Al Jazeera, it said that “customers ain and power their data”.

Palantir’s bundle helps them “integrate and analyse their existing information sets,” the institution said, adding: “Palantir ne'er uses oregon retains lawsuit information for its ain purposes.”

Schwarz, astatine Queen Mary University London, said Palantir does not request to person the information to payment from it. “Rather, it works with the information that is made available,” she said.

Civil liberties and information protection

Palantir’s technologies, contracted by backstage clients and authorities agencies astir the world, are known to person been implicated successful quality rights abuses.

Its halfway bundle platforms, ICM and FALCON, facilitated the medication of US President Donald Trump successful detaining and deporting thousands of people, including asylum seekers, since January 2025. Amnesty International recovered the institution aggregated monolithic amounts of data, built elaborate idiosyncratic profiles to way migrants and asylum seekers and assisted with deportations, contrary to its obligations to debar causing oregon contributing to quality rights abuses nether planetary law.

The institution has besides assisted Israel successful its warfare successful Gaza, which a United Nations enquiry recovered bears the hallmarks of genocide.

Last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese recovered “reasonable grounds” to judge Palantir provided AI platforms utilized for battlefield information integration and automated decision-making successful the warfare that has killed much than 74,500 Palestinians since October 2023.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS), police, subject and section councils each signed multimillion-pound contracts with Palantir to integrate idiosyncratic data, but the agreements person been met with nationalist backlash.

Nonprofit organisation Corporate Accountability launched a run against the 330-million-pound ($440m) declaration betwixt the NHS and Palantir to supply a caller information platform. The watchdog warned the institution is “at the bosom of the dystopian matrimony of Big Tech, the surveillance and detention industry, and rising fascism”.

Palantir successful April published a 22-point summary of Karp’s coauthored publication connected X, which was wide criticised for promoting an authoritarian, antidemocratic worldview by questioning the efficacy of wide ideology and arguing that immoderate cultures nutrient captious advances portion others are regressive.

Fatimah Shaikh, Corporate Accountability’s lawman campaigns director, said, “Palantir is not a corp we tin trust” to clasp British citizens’ delicate idiosyncratic information.

“We should each beryllium capable to get aesculapian attraction without fearing for our information oregon privacy,” she told Al Jazeera.

Ilia Siatitsa, elder ineligible serviceman astatine Privacy International successful the UK, said tech companies similar Palantir blur the enactment betwixt subject and civilian applications. They are besides opaque astir however they usage customers’ information by virtuousness of their engagement successful nationalist security, she added.

Siatitsa argued the institution could perchance usage idiosyncratic accusation to bid its products – including those with a subject exertion – without explicit consent from the users.

“If my information is going to beryllium feeding into a warfare machine, I privation to cognize astir it,” she said. “I request to person the choice, not lone [as a substance of] privacy, but besides from an ethical constituent of view.”

In June, Britain announced it was reviewing the NHS’s information declaration with Palantir aft parliamentary pressure.

Growing dependencies

Private tech companies are supporting subject and civilian infrastructure, to the constituent wherever governments whitethorn go reliant connected them to behaviour subject operations oregon tally nationalist services, experts say.

Anna Nadibaidze, researcher astatine the Center for War Studies astatine the University of Southern Denmark, said the equilibrium of powerfulness has been shifting.

“We’re utilized to authorities armies, nations’ armies being the main players,” Nadibaidze said, adding that present those players are reliant connected products supplied by the backstage sector. “So what if they take to not proviso this infrastructure immoderate more?”

She argued Elon Musk’s SpaceX offered a valid example.

Ukraine has travel to trust heavy connected the company’s Starlink satellites for communications connected the battlefield and effectual warfare, but successful precocious September 2022, during a pivotal propulsion by Ukraine to retake Kherson from Russia, the tech billionaire abruptly provoked a communications blackout.

Amid tensions betwixt Washington and Europe, respective countries are present refraining from utilizing Palantir’s products. France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu successful June said home quality services would ditch Palantir’s products successful an effort to debar “strategic dependency”. Germany’s subject besides said it would nary longer usage the company’s products.

Spanish work El Confidencial revealed successful July that Spanish authorities softly instructed state-backed companies to debar signing caller contracts with Palantir, citing concerns that delicate nationalist information accusation could beryllium exposed.

Palantir’s reliability arsenic a spouse has besides been called into question successful Ukraine aft the institution finalised successful September a strategical concern with Nebius, a Dutch institution founded arsenic an offshoot of Russian exertion elephantine Yandex.

Denys Shtilerman, main decorator and co-owner of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence-tech institution that develops and produces UAV and rocket systems, said “the precise aforesaid Palantir that works with Ukrainian combat data” had struck a woody with Yandex cofounder Arkady Volozh.

Volozh’s statement of Russia’s warfare arsenic “barbaric” has not eased Shtilerman’s concerns.

“Our combat information is not escaped earthy worldly for Western exertion corporations. It is simply a strategical plus of the state,” helium wrote connected X successful a effect to Kyiv’s collaboration with Palantir.

“Ukraine has paid for it with blood. We person nary close to simply manus implicit the astir invaluable plus we possess.”