Palantir – the Silicon Valley surveillance technology company co-founded by Peter Thiel, friend and ally of Donald Trump – has recruited 32 senior UK government and public sector officials including the leaders of AI strategy at both the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, a new investigation by The Nerve has revealed. Transparency experts say the practice has exposed the UK to an “acute risk” of corruption.
The Nerve – an independent investigative media organisation founded by former Guardian and Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr – published the investigation this week. It exposes a “revolving door” between Palantir and the highest levels of the British state, at a time when the company holds at least £670 million in UK government contracts and is facing growing public scrutiny over its role in NHS data handling and in US military operations in Iran.
The scale of the hiring
The investigation identifies a pattern of recruitment spanning more than a decade. Since 2012, Palantir has hired personnel from across the top tiers of the Ministry of Defence, Department of Health and Social Care, NHS, Home Office, Foreign Office, UK Health Security Agency, Crown Commercial Service, secret service and Downing Street.
Among the most significant hires identified by The Nerve:
The MoD’s senior official on AI – Laurence Lee, who co-wrote the UK’s entire military AI strategy and met Palantir nine times in that official capacity between 2021 and 2023 – is now the main adviser to Palantir’s chief executive Alex Karp on “geostrategy.” He joined Palantir in 2024, having previously served as second permanent secretary to the Ministry of Defence.
Indra Joshi, who had been NHS England’s head of AI and led the formation of the NHS’s AI lab, was recruited to be Palantir’s director of health, research and AI in 2022. She had overseen the creation of a critical data dashboard during the pandemic before moving to the private sector.
Sir John Sawers – a former head of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service – provided services to Palantir by organising a meeting between CEO Alex Karp and then-head of the Civil Service Sir John Manzoni in 2019.
Major-General James Robert Chiswell, previously the UK liaison to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington and director of UK Special Forces, and Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, former deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq and director of UK Special Forces, have both served as advisers to Palantir.
Isaac Levido – campaign director for the Conservative Party’s 2019 and 2024 general election campaigns – co-founded a consultancy hired by Palantir between 2021 and at least 2024.
The Lords connection – and the Mandelson link
Four members of the House of Lords have advised Palantir, with two continuing to do so at the time of publication.
The investigation notes that Peter Mandelson’s consultancy, Global Counsel, was still representing Palantir when he was appointed UK ambassador to Washington – where he used his position to introduce Keir Starmer to key Palantir personnel during a visit to meet Donald Trump. Mandelson was subsequently sacked as ambassador over his failure to disclose the full extent of his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Tom Watson – a former deputy leader of the Labour Party – sits on Palantir’s advisory board. He is also chair of the advisory council for Lodestone Communications, the lobbying firm Palantir hired in 2024.
Nicola Blackwood, a peer who was previously chair of the Commons science and technology select committee – the parliamentary body whose remit would include scrutinising Palantir – also consulted for the company through Mandelson’s Global Counsel.
John Woodcock, Lord Walney, a former special adviser to Gordon Brown who also served as an independent government adviser on political violence and disruption, has also advised the company.
What the experts say
Steve Goodrich, director of research at Transparency International UK, told The Nerve the situation carried unavoidable risks. “Poor controls on the revolving door between government and the private sector mean there’s an acute risk of former officials abusing privileged information and contacts entrusted to them for the benefit of their new employers.”
Susan Hawley, executive director at Spotlight on Corruption, was equally direct: “There is no doubt that companies do this to get privileged insights into how government runs and gain commercial advantage from doing so.”
Elizabeth David-Barrett, director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex, described the regulatory framework as fundamentally inadequate. “Regulation, which is very weak anyway, tends to assume that the risk comes after movement. In fact, it’s the relationship that is in itself risky. Once they’ve gone from public to private, does the company benefit from the knowledge that they bring with them – or is the job being used as a reward for giving them some favourable treatment while they were still in public office? I think the regulatory system is really quite inadequate, not fully understanding the nature of the risks.”
She added that such arrangements could in theory constitute bribery – but would be “very difficult to prove.”
The deliberate strategy
The Nerve reports that the hiring pattern is not accidental. According to Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson, whose new book Project Maven examines Palantir’s operations, “Palantir deliberately targets employees who have had hands-on experience of its software and who understand the culture of its biggest customers.”
Crucially, this strategy targets middle management as well as senior figures. As Manson told the Tech Policy podcast: “Every defence contractor has a revolving door, but their revolving door looked a little different from some of the traditional big defence contractors like Lockheed Martin. They tend to be hiring from the middle ranks.”
The Nerve identified an additional 37 mid-ranking current staff hired from the military, the NHS and various government departments – bringing the total number of identified government hires to at least 69.
The NHS data contract controversy
Palantir’s relationship with the NHS has been under particular scrutiny. The company holds a £330 million NHS contract and has been at the centre of a growing debate about who should control sensitive health data belonging to millions of British patients.
Both the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey and Green Party leader Zack Polanski have publicly demanded that Palantir withdraw from its NHS contract. The investigation also reveals that Matthew Swindells – who was still the joint chair of four NHS trusts at the time – was recruited as an adviser through Global Counsel in 2019. He only stood down from those NHS trust roles last month after the Financial Times revealed he had urged GPs to put practice data on Palantir’s platforms.
Palantir’s response
A Palantir spokesman rejected the characterisation of its hiring strategy: “We were supplied 32 names spanning around 15 years – a period in which thousands of people have worked for Palantir in the UK. Of those, 14 no longer work for, or with, us, some of whom stopped as long as five years ago. Six are ex-armed forces veterans whose public sector experience involved serving and protecting their country.”
The spokesman added: “Not only do we entirely reject claims of an alleged ‘revolving door’ strategy, but we also believe it is inappropriate to include veterans in a report alleging such a strategy. Characterising this as part of a ‘revolving door strategy’ does them, and all veterans, a disservice.”
There is no suggestion of criminal wrongdoing on the part of any individual named in The Nerve’s investigation.
Why it matters
Palantir is not a conventional defence or technology contractor. Co-founded by Peter Thiel – the libertarian billionaire who is a close ally of Donald Trump and a major backer of the American right – the company’s surveillance technology has been central to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations that have detained thousands of migrants. It has also been involved in US military operations in Iran.
In Britain, it holds contracts across more than ten government departments worth at least £670 million. The company that processes NHS patient data, advises on military AI strategy and has access to sensitive government information across multiple departments has, according to The Nerve’s investigation, systematically recruited the officials who oversaw those functions while in public service.
Hawley’s conclusion frames the stakes clearly: “Unless the rules are much tougher, with longer lobbying bans for those who have held the most senior offices of state, and are more robustly enforced, it will continue to be difficult to rebuild public trust in politicians.”
The Nerve’s full investigation, written by Charlie Young, Carole Cadwalladr and Ian Tucker, can be read here.
