Palantir seemed an obvious contender to implement the government’s digital ID plans, but the company’s UK chief was adamant he didn’t want the job. At the start of October, less than a week after Keir Starmer announced proposals for mandatory ID for UK workers, Louis Mosley told Times Radio his firm wouldn’t be bidding for the contract. In a video of the interview posted online, Mosley, a clean-cut and boyish 42-year-old, appeared earnest as he raised his “personal concerns” about the Labour government’s policy. “But also it’s a problem on a corporate level,” he said. Digital ID had not been tested at the last election. “It wasn’t in the manifesto.”

Opting out of a major government data project was, on the face of it, a surprising move for Palantir. The American data analysis firm has spent the past decade lobbying for and winning UK government contracts, with clients ranging from the Ministry of Defence to the Cabinet Office and the NHS. Days before Starmer’s digital ID plans were set out, the government triumphantly announced that Palantir was entering into a £1.5bn “strategic partnership” with the British state. In a podcast appearance that day, Mosley said: “We’re only just getting started. We’ll look back in five years’ time and we’ll think those were small deals.”

Furthermore, Palantir was seen as a frontrunner to work on digital ID precisely because the proposal was controversial. In the United States, its software has reportedly been used as part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s deportations programme, allowing agents to use cellphone data to track individuals in real time. For six years, the company worked on a secret programme in New Orleans, combining police data with public records and social media analysis to predict future perpetrators of crime. Critics alleged this tool had entrenched racial bias and discrimination, claims Palantir denied. Since the 7th October terror attacks and the start of the Gaza war, Palantir has emerged as a particularly vocal supporter of Israel, entering into an agreement for the country to “harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions”. In 2020, the company’s chief operating officer Shyam Sankar predicted a world in which Palantir’s software will be “inside every missile, inside every drone”.