--- title: Palantir Is About To Lose Its NHS Contract Because Alex Karp Cannot Keep His Mouth Shut description: UK ministers signal they'll use the 2027 break clause on Palantir's £330m NHS contract, days after Alex Karp's manifesto called for the US draft. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-04-22T12:30:55.824Z updated: 2026-04-22T12:30:55.834Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/palantir-nhs-contract-karp-manifesto image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/alex-karp-uk-ai-summit.webp categories: Artificial Intelligence, Business content_type: News publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: Palantir --- Alex Karp is about to lose Palantir a £330m NHS contract because he will not shut up. On [20 April](https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/20/palantir_nhs_break_clause/), UK science minister Patrick Vallance told MPs the government would use the spring 2027 break clause on Palantir's NHS contract and "take a different approach, in line with recent sovereign tech policy". The day before, Palantir's own X account had [posted a 22-point manifesto](https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/19/palantir-posts-mini-manifesto-denouncing-regressive-and-harmful-cultures/) from Karp's new book. It called for bringing back the US military draft. It said "certain cultures, and indeed subcultures, have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful." This was not a slip. Karp has told Palantir's investors the company exists "to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them". The company's own marketing calls its product an "AI-powered kill chain" with "decision dominance from space to mud". He has been saying this stuff in public for three years. What he did this week was put it in a press release while the NHS contract was already falling apart. Peter Thiel co-founded Palantir in 2003 and still owns around 7%. In 2009 he wrote a Cato Institute essay saying "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible". In [March](https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl) he gave lectures in Rome arguing that the Antichrist is really "global government" hiding behind the language of safety and protection. The Vatican newspaper Avvenire called it "superplutocracy". Thiel and Karp disagree on plenty. They both put in press releases what a normal defence contractor keeps in board papers. ## What the Palantir NHS contract actually is The Federated Data Platform is a seven-year, £330m deal signed in November 2023 to link patient records across NHS England trusts. Palantir owns the software. If the contract ends, the NHS keeps nothing: not the platform, not the integrations, not the tools built on top. Half of the 200 trusts meant to be on it have gone live. Of the 13 things Palantir promised at signing, three or four actually work. [Corporate Watch](https://corporatewatch.org/foi-requests-reveal-palantirs-nhs-fdp-rollout-failures/), using freedom of information requests, found that only a quarter of live trusts see any benefit. ## Why Palantir is controversial in the UK People have been pushing to kill this contract since it was signed. In February, BMA council chair Tom Dolphin [told doctors](https://www.digitalhealth.net/2026/02/bma-calls-for-nhs-doctors-to-reject-using-the-fdp/) to stop using the platform for anything outside direct patient care, pointing to Palantir's work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A [coalition](https://www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/tech-hospitals-urged-to-reject-palantir-software-as-rights-and-health-groups-demand-nhs-england-cancel-contract/) called No Palantir in the NHS includes the BMA, the Doctors' Association UK, the Good Law Project, Privacy International, Open Rights Group, Medact and Amnesty International UK. More than 47,000 patients have written to their trusts asking to be taken off the system. In January, Green Party leader Zack Polanski [told Palantir](https://greenparty.org.uk/2026/01/22/zack-polanski-tells-defence-surveillance-corporation-palantir-to-pack-its-bags-and-get-the-hell-out-of-the-nhs/) to "pack its bags and get the hell out of the NHS". None of it moved a minister. Karp's manifesto did. ## What happens next The break clause kicks in in spring 2027. Vallance's statement suggests the department is already working on a replacement built around UK cloud providers and British vendors. Palantir will argue, fairly, that the NHS has no real plan for what happens when the platform goes dark. Ministers will pay twice if the politics demand it. Tech billionaires have spent ten years buying up policing, healthcare, defence and the social web. Laws have not stopped them. Voters have not stopped them. Regulators have not stopped them. The only thing that ever slows them down is themselves. Thiel writes the Cato essay and loses access to fundraising circles he used to walk into. Marc Andreessen writes the techno-optimist manifesto and spooks his own backers. Karp writes the book, pins it to the corporate account, and an NHS contract that was quietly falling apart becomes a political fight no minister wants to own. It seems the only thing stopping the tech oligarchy is the tech oligarchy. ## FAQ **Q: What is the NHS Federated Data Platform?** The Federated Data Platform is a data-sharing system run by Palantir for NHS England under a seven-year, £330m contract signed in November 2023. It links patient records across acute trusts to support planning, elective recovery and population health analysis. Palantir owns the underlying software. **Q: Can Palantir access NHS patient data?** Palantir processes NHS data on behalf of NHS England under contract. The company can see the data to run the platform, subject to NHS data-protection rules, but does not own it. The British Medical Association and campaigners have raised concerns about the scope of that access, especially for uses outside direct patient care. **Q: Why is Palantir controversial?** Palantir builds intelligence and targeting software for defence, policing and immigration agencies, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Its chief executive, Alex Karp, has publicly defended killing adversaries with its products and called for bringing back the US military draft. Critics argue that a company with those positions should not hold sensitive public records. **Q: What does Palantir do in the UK?** Palantir holds more than £500m in UK public sector contracts, including the NHS Federated Data Platform, Ministry of Defence intelligence work, and projects with police and financial regulators. Its UK head, Louis Mosley, has pushed hard to expand the company's government footprint since 2020.