\n<\/p>\n
It began with a \u00a31 contract.<\/p>\n
In the hours after a pandemic was declared in March 2020, Palantir, the secretive American data analytics company, was invited<\/a> to 10 Downing Street along with other tech groups, including Amazon, Google and Meta, to discuss how it could help the British government respond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Within days, Palantir\u2019s software was processing streams of data from across England\u2019s National Health Service, with Palantir engineers embedded to help. The company\u2019s services, used by the C.I.A. and Western militaries for more than a decade, were deployed to track emergency room capacity and direct supplies of scarce equipment.<\/p>\n Palantir charged the government just one pound<\/a>.<\/p>\n The deal provided the company with a valuable toehold. Since then, Palantir, which is chaired by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and one of President Donald J. Trump\u2019s major 2016 donors<\/a>, has parlayed the work into more than \u00a360 million in government health contracts. Its biggest reward may be yet to come: a seven-year contract worth up to \u00a3480 million \u2014 about $590 million \u2014 to overhaul N.H.S. England\u2019s outdated patient data system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But an outcry over Palantir\u2019s rapid ascent within the N.H.S., the beleaguered but beloved public institution that provides free health care across the country, has been building for months among some lawmakers, doctors and privacy campaigners. It could come to a head in October, when the winning bid is expected to be announced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The contract Palantir is competing for would create one of the largest repositories of health data in the world and make the company a key partner in modernizing the health system, which has an annual budget of \u00a3160 billion. Civil society groups have raised alarms about a single private company handling so much personal data, especially one dogged by concerns that its software can be used for mass surveillance<\/a>. During the Trump administration, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency used Palantir software<\/a> to help find undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n The unease also reflects a culture clash. Palantir, which has a market value<\/a> of over $30 billion, has employed a lobbying playbook honed in the U.S., at times ruffling British officials unaccustomed to its assertive approach. It has enlisted political figures, senior health executives and multiple consulting firms, according to interviews with N.H.S. officials, industry insiders and people involved in Palantir\u2019s operations. In 2022, after requests for proposals were sought for the \u00a3480 million contract, Palantir poached N.H.S. England\u2019s deputy director of data services and its artificial intelligence director.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s expansion in the N.H.S. has coincided with a crisis at the 75-year-old health service<\/a>, after years of constrained funding and staffing shortages. The criticism of Palantir is part of a fierce debate in Britain about the role of profit-seeking companies within a taxpayer-funded system, as well as the handling of sensitive patient information. Most Britons oppose<\/a> further privatization of the health service, polls show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Parliament, more than a dozen lawmakers from across the political spectrum have called for greater transparency over the details of the \u00a3480 million contract. David Davis, a Conservative member of Parliament, told The New York Times he would ask England\u2019s public spending watchdog to review \u201cany contracts awarded to Palantir.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPalantir\u2019s extensive lobbying efforts in the U.K. are an obvious attempt to whitewash their background at the heart of the world of espionage \u2014 with all its implications for ethical behavior and lack of transparency,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Palantir declined to comment on its bid, but said it was proud to support \u201cthe world\u2019s most important private and public institutions.\u201d The company defended the quality of its work and said, \u201cWe are now helping to reduce the N.H.S. backlog, cut the amount of time nurses and doctors need to spend on administrative tasks and speed up cancer diagnosis \u2014 all while rigorously protecting data privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n N.H.S. England said the application process was \u201cfair and transparent\u201d and that all companies were being treated equally. \u201cBids are evaluated against the same objective criteria that has been shared with all suppliers,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Speaking at Oxford University in January, Mr. Thiel went off script. The N.H.S. makes people sick and should embrace privatization, he said in response to a question. The British public\u2019s support for the service, he said, was \u201cStockholm syndrome<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Palantir quickly distanced itself from Mr. Thiel\u2019s comments, but they seemed to confirm critics\u2019 fears about welcoming the business into the health service.<\/p>\n Named after the seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d Palantir, founded in 2003, originally marketed its technology as a tool for tracking terrorists and criminals \u2014 including, according to news reports it has republished<\/a>, Osama bin Laden. Its software collects data from myriad inputs, including internet traffic and cellphone records, and can integrate feeds from almost any source a client has access to.<\/p>\n It is used by the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, while in Britain it has been used by the Ministry of Defense since at least 2018, according to Tussell, a company that tracks government contracts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2018, Palantir hired the consulting firm Global Counsel to position it as a respectable partner to the British government, not a shadowy American military contractor, according to two former senior employees at the consultancy who spoke on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Palantir got help from several politically connected advisers.<\/p>\n One was Nicola Blackwood, a former health minister focused on N.H.S. innovation, who took a part-time position at Global Counsel in April 2018. Her previously unreported connection with Palantir was part of her work to provide clients with \u201cpolitical risk analysis,\u201d according to information<\/a> she provided to a government watchdog.<\/p>\n Ms. Blackwood returned to the health ministry from 2019 to 2020. She has since been paid by Global Counsel<\/a> to attend a number of events in her role as chair of Genomics England, according to government disclosures, sometimes appearing with Palantir representatives. After being contacted by The Times in March, she pulled out of a speaking engagement with Global Counsel where she had been set to appear alongside a Palantir executive, at an event called \u201cRebooting the N.H.S.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a statement, Ms. Blackwood\u2019s office said her role at Global Counsel involved providing strategic advice and had been approved by Britain\u2019s anti-corruption watchdog. It said her interaction with Palantir was limited, that she never lobbied on the company\u2019s behalf and that the event cancellation resulted from an unexpected schedule change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Two months after resigning as deputy chief executive of N.H.S. England in 2019, Matthew Swindells also joined Global Counsel, where he advised Palantir. He chaired the company\u2019s health advisory board even after becoming joint chair of four prominent N.H.S. hospital trusts, health service documents<\/a> show. One of the trusts, Chelsea and Westminster, was the first to take part in a government pilot to test Palantir\u2019s technology. (The trust said Mr. Swindells was excluded from decision-making related to Palantir.)<\/p>\n Shane Tickell, the chief executive of one N.H.S. contractor, Voror Health Technologies, recounted meeting with Mr. Swindells last year. Mr. Swindells, he said, suggested Voror build software to work with Palantir\u2019s systems and added that the health service might have money available if it did. \u201cIt left me feeling awkward and uncomfortable,\u201d said Mr. Tickell, who later joined a British consortium<\/a> to challenge Palantir for the N.H.S. contract, pledging to safeguard patient data. (The bid was unsuccessful.) He provided a calendar item and dated notes from the meeting to corroborate his account.<\/p>\n Mr. Tickell said he believed Palantir had an inside track to win the big data contract because of its work during the pandemic and its ties to the government.<\/p>\n Mr. Swindells said in a statement that he no longer chaired Palantir\u2019s health advisory board and that his Global Counsel work had always been declared to the health service. He declined to comment on the meeting with Mr. Tickell.<\/p>\n Last year, a government-commissioned review warned<\/a> the N.H.S. to \u201cavoid exclusive commercial arrangements\u201d around its data, describing decades of patient records as \u201cburied treasure\u201d that could save lives if safely shared with researchers. The author, Prof. Ben Goldacre, noted that the data represented some of the most sensitive information that could be held about individuals, from mental health assessments to abortion records. Sharing it with analysts \u201cis an extremely serious undertaking whose gravity must never be underestimated, if the N.H.S. is to maintain trust,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Against this delicate political backdrop, Palantir has emphasized that it would not collect or monetize N.H.S. data, but merely provide the software to analyze it. Simultaneously, it has tried to shape the conversation around the role of private companies in health care.<\/p>\n It hired Fleetwood Strategy, the consultancy co-founded by Isaac Levido, a political adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Palantir also gave money to think tanks and industry groups, sponsoring two<\/a> events<\/a> at the Institute for Government that included its own staff members as speakers, and funding a Christmas party for the Cambridge Health Network, an industry body that brings together N.H.S. and corporate executives.<\/p>\n Palantir joined a tech industry trade group, TechUK, and urged its members to lobby government agencies to adopt a \u201cbuy vs. build\u201d policy of purchasing commercial technology rather than developing it internally.<\/p>\n Others bristled at their approach.<\/p>\n At a TechUK meeting in August 2021, Palantir\u2019s efforts were called \u201cappallingly arrogant\u201d by Ian Harris, the representative of VMware, a software company, according to a summary of the meeting made by a Palantir executive and reviewed by The Times. \u201cIt\u2019s not for industry to tell government whether it should build or buy,\u201d Mr. Harris said. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n While some health officials praised<\/a> Palantir\u2019s software, particularly for its usefulness in the Covid vaccination program, questions have emerged over whether its services are suited to the complex needs of the N.H.S., which vary between regions and types of care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Milton Keynes University Hospital Trust in Buckinghamshire was selected last year to test Palantir software as part of a pilot to relieve a backlog of patients awaiting treatment. The technology was supposed to pull data from health records, waiting lists, surgery schedules and elsewhere to help prioritize appointments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Palantir\u2019s software was not compatible with the hospital\u2019s patient management system, meaning workers had to manually enter some data, according to two hospital officials who would only share the information on condition of anonymity. Palantir told officials it would solve the issue, but the hospital suspended the project after weeks passed without a fix, the officials said.<\/p>\n The technology did work in some hospitals, with 24 trusts \u201crealizing benefits,\u201d a health minister said in August<\/a>. At one, it helped reduce a backlog of nonemergency surgeries and cancer treatments by 28 percent. But 11 hospitals and health trusts paused or abandoned their involvement in the pilot program, the government said in March<\/a>. One said the software \u201cdid not fully meet its needs or priorities,\u201d while another decided its existing system \u201cprovided current capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Palantir said in a statement that at least four of the hospitals had since resumed using the software and that its technology was \u201cwidely acknowledged as best in class.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Whether the company secures the N.H.S. deal may not only influence the health service\u2019s future, but also its own.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a very pivotal contract,\u201d said Rishi Jaluria, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets, who tracks the company. \u201cIt\u2019s going to shape the narrative around Palantir.\u201d<\/p>\n Audio produced by Jack D\u2019Isidoro.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nA Push for Growth<\/h2>\n
A Growing Backlash<\/h2>\n