London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, blocks Metropolitan Police deal with Palantir

[Innula Zenovka]

Sadiq Khan sparks row with Met after blocking £50m AI deal with Palantir

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”.

The row comes amid a growing public backlash over the British state’s use of services provided by Palantir, which was cofounded by the Donald Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and also serves the Israeli military and the US president’s ICE immigration crackdown operations.

Last month its chief executive, Alex Karp, published a mini-manifesto extolling the benefits of US power and implying some cultures were inferior to others, in what one MP called “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at the tech equity campaign Foxglove, said: “Palantir is notorious for its ‘land and expand’ approach, in which it wins small contracts or even offers free services at first, then uses those to build a much wider role in our public services.”.

He said Khan had “seen through this practice, and put a stop to it – while rightly highlighting Londoners’ concerns over Palantir’s ethical record”.

Met Palantir row goes to heart of how public services should use AI