Welcome back. The main thing happening today is the discussion around Palantir's role in the British state. Live 12–3 BST. Here's your Order of Play.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY
Palantir has become one of the most talked-about, and most contested, companies in British public life.
Two new Economist pieces this week have pulled attention back to how deep the American firm now sits inside the UK. Palantir holds contracts across health, defence and financial regulation, most prominently NHS England's Federated Data Platform. Last September it signed a strategic partnership with the government, pledging to invest up to £1.5 billion in the UK and base its European defence business here.
A Commons parliamentary committee has recommended triggering a break clause to remove Palantir from the NHS, citing a “clear mismatch with UK values.” London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office also blocked a proposed £50 million contract with the Met Police, and French and German security chiefs are moving to replace it with European alternatives. Critics point to its work with US immigration enforcement and the Israeli military, its chairman Peter Thiel's politics, and what even some supporters admit is brash lobbying.
The Economist's take is that much of the panic is misplaced. Palantir has oversold its impact, its boast of enabling 110,000 extra NHS operations was flagged by Britain's statistics watchdog as misleading, but the underlying software works. Its engineers pull scattered government data into a single usable picture. The Metropolitan Police’s commissioner says losing it would pull hundreds of officers off the front line.
At the heart of it is a broader British anxiety over tech sovereignty: dependence on US firms feels riskier as America under Trump becomes a less reliable partner. June’s order restricting foreign access to Anthropic’s latest models sharpened those concerns. Britain and Europe have yet to produce a rival that can compete with Palantir, which makes the push for tech sovereignty harder.
We're diving into all of it on today's show at 12 BST.
YESTERDAY’S MOMENT
Odin research lead Dan Gray gave us a contrarian take on the AI lab race, arguing it’s hard to assess the hype around private labs until their finances are transparent and they’ve gone public.
He argued that the two frontrunners look less distinct than everyone assumes. "Long-term, I don't think these two labs really have a ton of differentiation… Just like Azure and AWS, over time their performance is going to converge. Their market share will converge."
He also flagged the three names he thinks aren’t in the conversation as much as they should be. "Google has an insane moat with distribution, SpaceX has an insane moat with compute, and Facebook potentially as well."
Watch the full clip below.
YESTERDAY’S BANGER OF THE DAY
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