As a Brit, I've never had the sense the UK (specifically the City of London) has any genuine interest in tackling money laundering. I suspect our economy is structurally reliant upon us being extremely good at it.
If an oligarch extracts wealth from Russia and parks it in London... that seems like a win for London?
It is a bit anarcho-tyrannical in nature though. That is, the AML/FCA stuff then has the outcome of only effectively constraining the UK's own law-abiding citizens. Which is... something of a disadvantage?
Especially when half of what the FCA puts out in terms of regulations is pure time-wasting theater.
The thing about banks: AML is for the small fry. The big money launderers walk in the front door as VIPs, they don't have to sneak around.
A good recent case is how TD Bank actively helped cartels launder money. An interesting scenario from the past was BCCI, a bank founded to lend legitimacy to criminals (I'm sure it wasn't the last of its kind).
Specifically the Eurodollar is the main reason for the City of London to exist.
Eurodollars are US dollar deposits at European banks. Originally these were used as a way to give the Soviet Union access to the dollar markets through French banks, but eventually it became a way for basically anyone to participate in dollar exchange who can't have a US bank account.
Having worked at FinTechs and in finance in general that doesn't ring true at all. The FCA definitely takes anti-money laundering checks quite seriously.
e.g. (off the top of my head) NatWest were fined £264 million for AML breaches.
I'm no expert by any means but if I wanted to flout the rules I'd definitely consider a few other juristictions before the City.
AML tech is so primitive, it almost looks like it's designed that anyone 'in the know' will know how to not be detected.
Eg. Most AML checks are done because someone wrote some triggering keyword in the payment reference field. Do we honestly think a criminal mastermind won't manage to come up with something else to write there?
The AML you are thinking of is designed to catch small time crooks and drug mules (and maybe also dumb terrorist supporters). They are not really designed (or more specifically deliberately obtuse towards) Slavic oligarch money. Not all "corruption" and money laundering are treated equally. Places like London (not to mention Jersey), Switzerland, and Singapore are more for good old fashioned siphoning-of-national-assets type of corruption where there's almost always a "clean" paper trail to back things up. Also, don't get tax dodging mixed with money laundering. There are plenty of processes required by OECD and similar orgs, e.g. the concepts of a LEI number, that are not really useful against real oligarch/state level money launderers.
Here's a simple example: You lived in a former USSR/iron curtain state. During the chaos of '89 you managed to "acquire" lots of assets or finagle yourself into owning former public companies/real estate/factories. The paper trail is clean as far as your typical London banks are concerned because you are merely liquidating assets you own in your own country where there's a full paper trail (regardless of whether it was attained through illegitimate means). Alternatively, in a different narrative, you a rich international student from similar types of countries and you just happened to have "rich parents" who have plenty of money to throw around. It's a very different threat model than for example trying to prevent grassroots terrorism financing.
Money laundering vs tax evasion have a lot of overlap but don't get them confused. They are very different threat models from the perspective of the service provider (and it's also why many smaller foreign banks refuse to accept Americans as customers, partially because of the paperwork required to stay compliant with Uncle Sam).
If you want an actual no-questions-asked romp of organized crime type of money I believe the current main contenders are the middle eastern states like Dubai (pre Iranian conflict at least).
Rumor through the financial grapevine is that ironically there are many GCC middle eastern royalty/pseudo-royalty currently under house arrest who are trying to do the opposite i.e. get their assets out of the country because their main bank accounts are frozen domestically. So basically real life Nigerian princes.
(As for why they are under house arrest, it's kinda out of scope for HN but mostly because of domestic political purges, especially in Saudi Arabia from what I heard)
The rich international student pipeline has always stood out to me – we've seen dozens of 30, 40 or even 50 storey skyscrapers built for students, enjoying lifestyles usually reserved for those in high finance.
Well, I assure you most London bankers won't lose any sleep given that the money is often from Gulf states/places like China/ex Soviet oligarchies/various forms of corruption in the global south. The countries where the money flow out from often lack the means to actually pursue and prosecute overseas, especially for what boils down to "white collar" offences/corruption. It's only when anything like terrorism/organized crime/anything involving Uncle Sam's tax revenue occurs then the banks AML processes might become useful for more than just check-the-box compliance.
You will often find that entrepreneurs and digital nomads get caught in this sort of of AML debanking web because the paltry 6-7 figs of business/personal transactions across countries often resemble mules/illegitimate businesses and the banks are not allowed to talk about it. (Just go to the subreddit for wise or PayPal and search for the keyword "frozen")
Meanwhile international students can easily bring in 8 figs to buy houses and that's perfectly fine because it's "clean" as far as the compliance department is concerned. It's also a cultural issue, fintech platforms and neobanks try very hard to use heuristics to automate compliance. This is why I recommend digital nomads to use a proper cross border bank like HSBC Premier. You pay a lot more but you get a lot less of the "account frozen" bullshit.
Countries that are caught in between corruption and terrorist threats and Uncle Sam are the worst generally. E.g. transfering money both into and from Turkey are a pain in the ass.
Our money laundering supports freedom, while theirs supports tyranny etc.
I love the whole “unexplained wealth” concept the UK developed, curiously enough after Abramovich had been running around buying Chelsea etc. If you are friend to MI6 this week you are allowed to do anything, but if you get on their wrong side you will be Berezhovskied.
> Most AML courses Ive done have emphisized that the people behind high level money laundering can be too dangerous to take down
This is how they deliberately miss the point. They are not taken down not because they are dangerous but because they align with us, and will buy tat from our buddies in Mayfair and Knightsbridge at inflated prices with some of the proceeds.
British high society is completely rotten by this stuff. They are still amazed that Al Fayed was’t nearly as grimy as many had assumed.
Western affluence was built on the movement of stolen people and goods; it stands to reason that its maintenance in an era where one of those is illegal and the other involves somewhat less looting might involve the movement of stolen debt (money).
> Palantir [...] gets access to sensitive FCA data.
Is this the right characterization?
Is Palantir being given access to the data(to do with what they like), or is Palantir software being deployed in the customer private cloud environment?
I am under the impression that Palantir is typically deployed on-premise, or in a private cloud, where the customer can ensure that the data remains sovereign.
Particularly in a military setting, it would be deployed in an airgapped or highly controlled network.
> I am under the impression that Palantir is typically deployed on-premise, or in a private cloud, where the customer can ensure that the data remains sovereign.
I'll believe that when I see a thorough audit report. But anyone competent to do that wouldn't be buying Palantir in the first place.
It’s likely an impossible choice, between inept big four consultancy groups (that charge $$$, deliver little, and run everything through manual excel entry) vs palantir who likely will deliver results. I have no love for Palantir but at least they’re competent.
During covid, palantir had to elbow its way to sell to the UK govt and replaced dilapidated “solutions” from the big four.
It's just the UK state in it's classic rut/local minima. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be solved by simultaneously (a) paying MPs a lot more, and (b) banning all other forms of income. As it is, being an MP is a total dead end for anyone actually talented at getting things done.
Even a middling technical understanding of things precludes getting seduced by Deloitte.
you say this as if massive corporations with extremely well-compensated executives don't regularly employ Deloitite and other worthless consultancies to do all sorts of work ineptly?
I work in the maritime domain for the Norwegian gov., where we've had a couple of demos. AFAIK, there's only one agency here that uses Palantir software - the customs service - and that's not any secret info.
But we frequently work with people from adjacent fields (military, law enforcement, aviation, other maritime, etc.), basically the usual suspects as far as Palantir clients go.
My observation has been that there's no strong push or even desire to become a customer. The people I've talked with have either been outright unimpressed, or have already similar systems they've rolled out themselves.
From the demos we've had, it seemed to me that Palantir can do well in countries where all the potential clients are isolated from each others (disorganized even), and do not have and good means of sharing data / communicating with each others.
There's a lot of hype, myth even, around what their tools do - and I can understand why many are just saying "no thanks" when they come knocking. It is sort of underwhelming.
Organizations that are already running well with solid operational processes and data governance won't gain a huge benefit from Palantir. They can only add a lot of value in organizations full of lazy, incompetent people. This describes many government agencies. But not all.
> Palantir has previously defended its work, saying it has led to about 99,000 extra operations being scheduled in the NHS
No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
> helped UK police tackle domestic violence
And precisely how was this done?
> Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract
Contractual obligations that are not practically enforceable will not be honored. I don't think these individual administrative agencies have the acumen necessary to correctly negotiate these contracts.
Can't find the article atm, but it was basically pre-crime from Minority Report (without the pre-cogs, obviously). They looked at large datasets and built a predictive model, correlating things like race and prior criminal history to infer who was more likely to re-offend. At scale, this works. Ethical issues abound, however.
We're going to need a definition of "works." The false positive rate seems to be notable since those stories readily percolate into media whenever these schemes are implemented and the damage done from those is absolutely massive.
The idea that criminals are likely to re-offend is not new. What to do about this has always been the challenge. Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Unless, of course, you are invested in the "private prison" industry.
> Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution.
Just curious, why? This seems like the obvious, lowest cost solution. Rates of recidivism are known data points, and crime in most American cities is actually committed by a very, very small population of repeat offenders. Seems like there is much upside to simply monitoring the situation.
> No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.
They likely bribed someone in the government to get that contract though.
Regardless, it is ridiculous to absolve corporations and the people running them from all accountability, just because their aim is ever more money. In fact, that should make you criticize them more, not less.
Epstein's friends who had appointments in the WTC on 9/11 mysteriously canceled last minute or had other excuses.
- Lutnick, whose whole Cantor & Fitzgerald was obliterated, brought his son to school after a last minute "argument with his wife".
- Sarah Ferguson was "stuck in traffic" and late.
- Michael Jackson "overslept".
There is another one whom I don't remember. Maybe the Bayesians here can calculate the probability using a control group of all well connected people who miraculously survived. There aren't that many.
Epstein and Maxwell's other friends of course were connected to funding Palantir.
Genuine question to people more knowledgeable: Why are politicians/technocrats doing this?
Also generally speaking e.g. in relation to chat control and so on. Do they think this is what the people actually want because of lobbying or are they aware and believe they know better? Is it literally just corruption? Or are there actual benefits and we are just in the HN bubble where most people think its a bad idea?
Politicians in democracies need a fallback career for when they lose office. Before capital controls were lifted in the 80's, economies were a lot more local: UK politicians would take positions in UK companies or institutions, French in french ones, etc. This did mean a certain amount of corruption, but it did mean politicians were highly interested in the success of national companies and institutions.
Now, most of our senior politicians go to the US after leaving office; so for consistency they adopt the belief that there is no downside to making the UK beholden to foreign companies, or becoming a nation where all the innovative professions end up building capital for foreign owners, instead of building strong UK companies. As a consequence of this, they almost compete to sell out the public. It's impossible for them to believe that what they were doing is a betrayal of their country, because that would go directly against their personal interest.
It depends on what you're referring to when you say 'corruption'.
The public officials involved in signing off on these contracts with Palantir will almost certainly be offered non-executive, board, or consulting positions with one of its subsidiaries. These roles will likely net them £50k-£100k a year for four to five years and conveniently begin a fixed number of months/years after their terms in public office conclude.
This will all be strictly legal and well within the regulations those same officials voted on for themselves (without public consultation, and watered down further by the lobbying efforts of Palantir and similar companies looking for a cut of public funds).
This is an entirely legal and extremely common practice. If you choose to label it 'corruption', that's your call.
I don't think politicians across the board are corrupt. I think they're just surrounded by syncophants and special interest. Also the old absolute power corrupts, absolutely sort of thing.
I can't be convinced people go into politics twiddling their mustaches like a cartoon villain. I think that they go into it either to genuinely help, or because they like the attention. Then the system surrounds then with people who either take small bites of their ethics, or agree with anything for the chance to be powerful as well.
Businesses and politicians don't care about (you), the little guy. They want your demographic, the individual outrage you feel is pointless. Nobody is going to throw away their iPhone or protest the internet because NSO Group and Palantir exist. Your outrage is Palantir's commodity.
Even among tech-obsessed ideologues, both sides roll over and accept this because it's less flattering than arguing over CPU specs. Would we really break up with Big Tech over a gold trophy and a few backdoors?
Feelings about Palantir aside, this is a really misleading headline. The FCA has hired Palantir to "investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data", which presumably requires Palantir to have access to that sensitive data.
Saying that Palantir is "reaching" into the British state, and then having the article image be "billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel" literally holding a wad of cash is... not exactly a high standard of reportage.
And that's the most believable thing in the image. From the banknotes, to the rather visible outline on Thiel himself, to what I can only describe as an out-of-focus picture of the supernatural entity from Still Wakes the Deep.
He joked about Palantir killing people. I know Israel and the US have been using some sort of Palantir system for target designation and that speaks for itself.
As a Brit, I've never had the sense the UK (specifically the City of London) has any genuine interest in tackling money laundering. I suspect our economy is structurally reliant upon us being extremely good at it.
If an oligarch extracts wealth from Russia and parks it in London... that seems like a win for London?
It is a bit anarcho-tyrannical in nature though. That is, the AML/FCA stuff then has the outcome of only effectively constraining the UK's own law-abiding citizens. Which is... something of a disadvantage?
Especially when half of what the FCA puts out in terms of regulations is pure time-wasting theater.
The thing about banks: AML is for the small fry. The big money launderers walk in the front door as VIPs, they don't have to sneak around.
A good recent case is how TD Bank actively helped cartels launder money. An interesting scenario from the past was BCCI, a bank founded to lend legitimacy to criminals (I'm sure it wasn't the last of its kind).
Isn't the whole point of the City of London, to be a legal money laundering economic zone, that brings banks, corporations, money and jobs to the UK?
Specifically the Eurodollar is the main reason for the City of London to exist.
Eurodollars are US dollar deposits at European banks. Originally these were used as a way to give the Soviet Union access to the dollar markets through French banks, but eventually it became a way for basically anyone to participate in dollar exchange who can't have a US bank account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar
Pretty much, yes.
Really? What are you basing that on?
Having worked at FinTechs and in finance in general that doesn't ring true at all. The FCA definitely takes anti-money laundering checks quite seriously.
e.g. (off the top of my head) NatWest were fined £264 million for AML breaches.
I'm no expert by any means but if I wanted to flout the rules I'd definitely consider a few other juristictions before the City.
AML tech is so primitive, it almost looks like it's designed that anyone 'in the know' will know how to not be detected.
Eg. Most AML checks are done because someone wrote some triggering keyword in the payment reference field. Do we honestly think a criminal mastermind won't manage to come up with something else to write there?
The references are almost irrelevant. The banks + fintechs have far more depth than that.
The AML you are thinking of is designed to catch small time crooks and drug mules (and maybe also dumb terrorist supporters). They are not really designed (or more specifically deliberately obtuse towards) Slavic oligarch money. Not all "corruption" and money laundering are treated equally. Places like London (not to mention Jersey), Switzerland, and Singapore are more for good old fashioned siphoning-of-national-assets type of corruption where there's almost always a "clean" paper trail to back things up. Also, don't get tax dodging mixed with money laundering. There are plenty of processes required by OECD and similar orgs, e.g. the concepts of a LEI number, that are not really useful against real oligarch/state level money launderers.
Here's a simple example: You lived in a former USSR/iron curtain state. During the chaos of '89 you managed to "acquire" lots of assets or finagle yourself into owning former public companies/real estate/factories. The paper trail is clean as far as your typical London banks are concerned because you are merely liquidating assets you own in your own country where there's a full paper trail (regardless of whether it was attained through illegitimate means). Alternatively, in a different narrative, you a rich international student from similar types of countries and you just happened to have "rich parents" who have plenty of money to throw around. It's a very different threat model than for example trying to prevent grassroots terrorism financing.
Money laundering vs tax evasion have a lot of overlap but don't get them confused. They are very different threat models from the perspective of the service provider (and it's also why many smaller foreign banks refuse to accept Americans as customers, partially because of the paperwork required to stay compliant with Uncle Sam).
If you want an actual no-questions-asked romp of organized crime type of money I believe the current main contenders are the middle eastern states like Dubai (pre Iranian conflict at least).
Rumor through the financial grapevine is that ironically there are many GCC middle eastern royalty/pseudo-royalty currently under house arrest who are trying to do the opposite i.e. get their assets out of the country because their main bank accounts are frozen domestically. So basically real life Nigerian princes.
(As for why they are under house arrest, it's kinda out of scope for HN but mostly because of domestic political purges, especially in Saudi Arabia from what I heard)
Thank you for a very detailed explanation.
The rich international student pipeline has always stood out to me – we've seen dozens of 30, 40 or even 50 storey skyscrapers built for students, enjoying lifestyles usually reserved for those in high finance.
It just seems very suspect to me.
Well, I assure you most London bankers won't lose any sleep given that the money is often from Gulf states/places like China/ex Soviet oligarchies/various forms of corruption in the global south. The countries where the money flow out from often lack the means to actually pursue and prosecute overseas, especially for what boils down to "white collar" offences/corruption. It's only when anything like terrorism/organized crime/anything involving Uncle Sam's tax revenue occurs then the banks AML processes might become useful for more than just check-the-box compliance.
You will often find that entrepreneurs and digital nomads get caught in this sort of of AML debanking web because the paltry 6-7 figs of business/personal transactions across countries often resemble mules/illegitimate businesses and the banks are not allowed to talk about it. (Just go to the subreddit for wise or PayPal and search for the keyword "frozen")
Meanwhile international students can easily bring in 8 figs to buy houses and that's perfectly fine because it's "clean" as far as the compliance department is concerned. It's also a cultural issue, fintech platforms and neobanks try very hard to use heuristics to automate compliance. This is why I recommend digital nomads to use a proper cross border bank like HSBC Premier. You pay a lot more but you get a lot less of the "account frozen" bullshit.
You should also take a look at this
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001441
Countries that are caught in between corruption and terrorist threats and Uncle Sam are the worst generally. E.g. transfering money both into and from Turkey are a pain in the ass.
Australian house transactions are also commonly used for low-million dollar money laundering operations.
Australia specifically exempts house purchases and the associated agents and their lawyers from AML laws.
I think the power is knowing who is moving what and where
Our money laundering supports freedom, while theirs supports tyranny etc.
I love the whole “unexplained wealth” concept the UK developed, curiously enough after Abramovich had been running around buying Chelsea etc. If you are friend to MI6 this week you are allowed to do anything, but if you get on their wrong side you will be Berezhovskied.
Most AML courses Ive done have emphisized that the people behind high level money laundering can be too dangerous to take down
You even see this with suspicious deaths of lawyers and accountants in this area?
> Most AML courses Ive done have emphisized that the people behind high level money laundering can be too dangerous to take down
This is how they deliberately miss the point. They are not taken down not because they are dangerous but because they align with us, and will buy tat from our buddies in Mayfair and Knightsbridge at inflated prices with some of the proceeds.
British high society is completely rotten by this stuff. They are still amazed that Al Fayed was’t nearly as grimy as many had assumed.
There's a British TV series called "The Night Manager" that seems to show how MI6 really works and what its priorities are.
Western affluence was built on the movement of stolen people and goods; it stands to reason that its maintenance in an era where one of those is illegal and the other involves somewhat less looting might involve the movement of stolen debt (money).
Why are you booing me I'm right.
> Palantir [...] gets access to sensitive FCA data.
Is this the right characterization? Is Palantir being given access to the data(to do with what they like), or is Palantir software being deployed in the customer private cloud environment?
I am under the impression that Palantir is typically deployed on-premise, or in a private cloud, where the customer can ensure that the data remains sovereign.
Particularly in a military setting, it would be deployed in an airgapped or highly controlled network.
> I am under the impression that Palantir is typically deployed on-premise, or in a private cloud, where the customer can ensure that the data remains sovereign.
I'll believe that when I see a thorough audit report. But anyone competent to do that wouldn't be buying Palantir in the first place.
It’s likely an impossible choice, between inept big four consultancy groups (that charge $$$, deliver little, and run everything through manual excel entry) vs palantir who likely will deliver results. I have no love for Palantir but at least they’re competent.
During covid, palantir had to elbow its way to sell to the UK govt and replaced dilapidated “solutions” from the big four.
It's just the UK state in it's classic rut/local minima. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be solved by simultaneously (a) paying MPs a lot more, and (b) banning all other forms of income. As it is, being an MP is a total dead end for anyone actually talented at getting things done.
Even a middling technical understanding of things precludes getting seduced by Deloitte.
you say this as if massive corporations with extremely well-compensated executives don't regularly employ Deloitite and other worthless consultancies to do all sorts of work ineptly?
Well-compensated is necessary, not sufficient
https://hansard.parliament.uk/search?searchTerm=palantir
Are we seeing the beginning of super-corporations that will supersede nation states?
Isn't that what we've been being led into? As they spoke of "One world order" since Bush Sr. If not earlier.
One world guv with the 5g brain-influencing towers already in place and the nano tech already inside of us.
How many of us emit a MAC address already?
To answer your question, more like the beginning of the end.
It's what we're not seeing...
It's quite hard to tell if this is satire. So... good job? Maybe?
You should read Jennifer Government.
I work in the maritime domain for the Norwegian gov., where we've had a couple of demos. AFAIK, there's only one agency here that uses Palantir software - the customs service - and that's not any secret info.
But we frequently work with people from adjacent fields (military, law enforcement, aviation, other maritime, etc.), basically the usual suspects as far as Palantir clients go.
My observation has been that there's no strong push or even desire to become a customer. The people I've talked with have either been outright unimpressed, or have already similar systems they've rolled out themselves.
From the demos we've had, it seemed to me that Palantir can do well in countries where all the potential clients are isolated from each others (disorganized even), and do not have and good means of sharing data / communicating with each others.
There's a lot of hype, myth even, around what their tools do - and I can understand why many are just saying "no thanks" when they come knocking. It is sort of underwhelming.
Don't worry, they'll buy your boss's boss nice dinners and box seats at sports games until they see the light.
Organizations that are already running well with solid operational processes and data governance won't gain a huge benefit from Palantir. They can only add a lot of value in organizations full of lazy, incompetent people. This describes many government agencies. But not all.
Previously:
"US to embed Palantir AI across military" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47471655
"The singularity".
> Palantir has previously defended its work, saying it has led to about 99,000 extra operations being scheduled in the NHS
No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
> helped UK police tackle domestic violence
And precisely how was this done?
> Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract
Contractual obligations that are not practically enforceable will not be honored. I don't think these individual administrative agencies have the acumen necessary to correctly negotiate these contracts.
>And precisely how was this done?
Can't find the article atm, but it was basically pre-crime from Minority Report (without the pre-cogs, obviously). They looked at large datasets and built a predictive model, correlating things like race and prior criminal history to infer who was more likely to re-offend. At scale, this works. Ethical issues abound, however.
> At scale, this works.
We're going to need a definition of "works." The false positive rate seems to be notable since those stories readily percolate into media whenever these schemes are implemented and the damage done from those is absolutely massive.
The idea that criminals are likely to re-offend is not new. What to do about this has always been the challenge. Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Unless, of course, you are invested in the "private prison" industry.
> Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution.
Just curious, why? This seems like the obvious, lowest cost solution. Rates of recidivism are known data points, and crime in most American cities is actually committed by a very, very small population of repeat offenders. Seems like there is much upside to simply monitoring the situation.
> No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.
They likely bribed someone in the government to get that contract though.
Regardless, it is ridiculous to absolve corporations and the people running them from all accountability, just because their aim is ever more money. In fact, that should make you criticize them more, not less.
> They likely bribed someone in the government to get that contract though.
No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
> [Palantir] The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel
And backed by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital (CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency of the US).
https://fortune.com/2025/07/29/in-q-tel-cia-venture-capital-...
Even google was funded by In-Q-Tel.
Not really surprising given it was founded post-9/11 to stop another 9/11.
Epstein's friends who had appointments in the WTC on 9/11 mysteriously canceled last minute or had other excuses.
- Lutnick, whose whole Cantor & Fitzgerald was obliterated, brought his son to school after a last minute "argument with his wife".
- Sarah Ferguson was "stuck in traffic" and late.
- Michael Jackson "overslept".
There is another one whom I don't remember. Maybe the Bayesians here can calculate the probability using a control group of all well connected people who miraculously survived. There aren't that many.
Epstein and Maxwell's other friends of course were connected to funding Palantir.
Genuine question to people more knowledgeable: Why are politicians/technocrats doing this?
Also generally speaking e.g. in relation to chat control and so on. Do they think this is what the people actually want because of lobbying or are they aware and believe they know better? Is it literally just corruption? Or are there actual benefits and we are just in the HN bubble where most people think its a bad idea?
Politicians in democracies need a fallback career for when they lose office. Before capital controls were lifted in the 80's, economies were a lot more local: UK politicians would take positions in UK companies or institutions, French in french ones, etc. This did mean a certain amount of corruption, but it did mean politicians were highly interested in the success of national companies and institutions.
Now, most of our senior politicians go to the US after leaving office; so for consistency they adopt the belief that there is no downside to making the UK beholden to foreign companies, or becoming a nation where all the innovative professions end up building capital for foreign owners, instead of building strong UK companies. As a consequence of this, they almost compete to sell out the public. It's impossible for them to believe that what they were doing is a betrayal of their country, because that would go directly against their personal interest.
It depends on what you're referring to when you say 'corruption'.
The public officials involved in signing off on these contracts with Palantir will almost certainly be offered non-executive, board, or consulting positions with one of its subsidiaries. These roles will likely net them £50k-£100k a year for four to five years and conveniently begin a fixed number of months/years after their terms in public office conclude.
This will all be strictly legal and well within the regulations those same officials voted on for themselves (without public consultation, and watered down further by the lobbying efforts of Palantir and similar companies looking for a cut of public funds).
This is an entirely legal and extremely common practice. If you choose to label it 'corruption', that's your call.
A lot is facilitated by the Epstein elites. Lord Mandelson is a long time Epstein friend and so is Thiel. Mandelson facilitated several UK deals:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/peter-mande...
I'm unsure why MI6, who is eminently familiar with the Maxwell spy family, allows this. So perhaps they are in on it.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/palantir-mi6-spymaster-cabi...
Information is power.
Power is leverage.
Leverage is easily applied to corrupt people.
Politicians are corrupt.
Quod erat demonstrandum
I don't think politicians across the board are corrupt. I think they're just surrounded by syncophants and special interest. Also the old absolute power corrupts, absolutely sort of thing.
I can't be convinced people go into politics twiddling their mustaches like a cartoon villain. I think that they go into it either to genuinely help, or because they like the attention. Then the system surrounds then with people who either take small bites of their ethics, or agree with anything for the chance to be powerful as well.
Is there a solution? I'm not sure there is.
Businesses and politicians don't care about (you), the little guy. They want your demographic, the individual outrage you feel is pointless. Nobody is going to throw away their iPhone or protest the internet because NSO Group and Palantir exist. Your outrage is Palantir's commodity.
Even among tech-obsessed ideologues, both sides roll over and accept this because it's less flattering than arguing over CPU specs. Would we really break up with Big Tech over a gold trophy and a few backdoors?
Feelings about Palantir aside, this is a really misleading headline. The FCA has hired Palantir to "investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data", which presumably requires Palantir to have access to that sensitive data.
Saying that Palantir is "reaching" into the British state, and then having the article image be "billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel" literally holding a wad of cash is... not exactly a high standard of reportage.
> literally holding a wad of cash
And that's the most believable thing in the image. From the banknotes, to the rather visible outline on Thiel himself, to what I can only describe as an out-of-focus picture of the supernatural entity from Still Wakes the Deep.
Guardian doing clickbaity headline specifically to infuriate their readers, I am shoketh
As if being Palantir isn't bad enough, the UK arm is headed by Louis Mosley. Who likes to go on tv wearing black, like is grandad Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. https://www.thenational.scot/news/25759699.palantir-uk-boss-...
It's beyond alarming seeing this company be allowed in the door.
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What's he done that's so evil...?
He joked about Palantir killing people. I know Israel and the US have been using some sort of Palantir system for target designation and that speaks for itself.
Palantir's Maven AI targeting system misidentified an Iranian girl's school as a legitimate military target, killing around 170 innocent children.
Citation is desirable here.