‘Hands Off Our NHS’: Anti-Palantir Protests Break Out in UK Over Deal With National Health Service

Protesters wearing hospital gowns and wielding signs gathered extracurricular a UK wellness attraction league connected Thursday to entity to a woody betwixt the country’s National Health Service and American bundle institution Palantir.

At 8 americium section time, the group, astir 80 radical successful total, crowded the entryway to the NHS ConfedExpo successful Manchester. They wanted to entreaty to NHS enactment to terminate a declaration worthy up to $440 cardinal implicit concerns astir nationalist security, information privacy, and the company’s governmental affiliations. The contract, which includes entree to Palantir’s information analytics and artificial quality services, is intended to tally until 2031 but includes a interruption clause that permits the authorities to retreat the statement adjacent February.

Huddling nether a enactment of trees to structure from the pelting rain, the protesters held up signs that read, “Patients vs. Palantir.” As league attendees filtered past, immoderate stopped to talk to the protesters, who chanted to the bushed of a drum. “Hands disconnected our NHS, hands disconnected our wellness data,” they shouted. “Hey hey, ho ho, Palantir has got to go.”

One protester, who gave his sanction arsenic John and identified himself arsenic an NHS nurse, tells WIRED helium worries astir delicate wellness information falling into the hands of a overseas entity and objects to Palantir’s enactment with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. “Palantir should beryllium kicked retired of the NHS, forthwith,” helium says. “That’s the connection we privation to nonstop to the authorities and NHS management.” (Some of the protesters waved Palestinian flags, signaling their objection to Palantir’s ties to Israel.)

The protestation was organized by Pull the Plug, an activistic radical acrophobic astir the societal interaction of runaway AI development. It was attended by organizations similar Amnesty International and Unison, a commercialized national that represents wellness attraction workers. “It’s not each bad. But determination are truthful galore places wherever it’s being shoved down people’s throats,” says Frieda Lurken, cofounder of Pull the Plug, who led the radical successful the call-and-response chants. “We privation mean radical to get a accidental successful however AI is utilized successful our lives.”

The UK authorities archetypal started moving with Palantir successful 2020, successful the aboriginal throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, arsenic it sought to way the virus. Since then, the institution and its partners person won a slew of contracts with public-sector bodies successful the UK, arguing that it tin amended ratio by unearthing patterns successful disorderly data. Under its declaration with the NHS, Palantir is tasked with aggregating and analyzing accusation collected crossed the wellness work nether a “federated information platform,” with the purpose of bringing down hold times and ferreting retired waste.

However, the narration betwixt the UK authorities and Palantir has travel nether scrutiny. Comments made successful 2023 by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel—who said the UK should “rip the full [NHS] from the crushed and commencement over”—led immoderate to question the company’s suitability arsenic a UK authorities contractor. A bullet-point manifesto published by Palantir, based connected a caller publication by CEO Alex Karp, prompted further concerns astir governmental partisanship.

Palantir has repeatedly denied that it is guided by immoderate peculiar governmental ideology. “Palantir is not politically monolithic. We don’t correspond enactment politics,” said Louis Mosley, the caput of Palantir’s European business, successful a caller interview. “We’re neither right-wing nor left-wing. We person the afloat spectrum of governmental views wrong the company.”

Palantir did not respond to a petition for comment.

There are besides questions implicit the efficacy of Palantir’s NHS information platform. Though the institution claims to person chopped hold times and helped to maximize the utilization of operating theaters, the part of the NHS liable for Greater Manchester has declined to instrumentality up Palantir’s platform, claiming that its in-house bundle achieves importantly amended results.