AI and Big Tech are becoming increasingly integrated with the global arms trade, and understanding this integration is really important for all of us in the movement against the UK war machine.
It is important to first develop an understanding of how closely intertwined American and British weapons industries are, and then unpack what role Big Tech and the militarisation of AI is playing in this. Palantir, with its CIA-funding start and ever-increasing contracts with our government here in the UK, provides a timely case study for this.
F-35 Fighter Jet Programme
The British arms industry plays a very significant role in the F-35 programme. F-35 Fighter Jets have been used extensively by Israeli forces to drop 2000lb bombs over Gaza. Fifteen percent of every F-35 is produced in the UK. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin, with production sites across the UK, announced it had tested for the first time the use of AI in its targeting systems on its F-35 fighter jets.
The UK government made a specific exemption in its September 2024 partial arms export suspension to Israel for components going towards the F-35 programme. This was to allow the continued export of F-35 components to Israel, as long as they were sent from the UK to a third country, and then onto Israel. Our government argued this was needed for “global peace and security”. In the years that would follow, F-35 fighter jets have been used in US military’s illegal attacks on Venezuela, and in the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon.
Significantly, out of all the countries involved in F-35 production outside of the US, the UK is by far the most important, being the only “level 1 partner”. This is one of the key ways that British and American weapons industries are intertwined.
The United States: The UK’s second biggest arms customer
Furthermore, for many years now, the United States has remained the second biggest recipient of UK weapon exports, second only to Saudi Arabia which has historically been aligned with the US. This further demonstrates the close relationship between British and American arms industries.
It could be argued that the US being the second biggest recipient of UK weapons exports violates our government’s Strategic Export Licencing Criteria (SELC). The Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU), which involves the UK Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and Department of Business and Trade, is supposed to take the SELC guidance into account when issuing export licences to UK weapons companies.
Criterion 4B of the SELC specifically states that a factor which must be considered is whether a country has tried or threatened to pursue, by means of force, a claim against the territory of another country. The United States has been involved in over 300 military interventions around the world since 1945. The estimated civilian death toll from this is somewhere between 20 and 30 million people.
Yet, the UK continues to export weapons and weapons components to the US at an alarming rate. The UK has exported £5.1 billion worth of weapon components and military equipment to the US since 2020.
The UK too has been involved in 83 military interventions around the world since 1945, more than that if one considers recent British involvement in the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon.
Furthermore, criterion 2C of the SELC focuses on the importance of the ECJU considering whether a country has violated International Humanitarian Law (IHL) when deciding whether to issue an export licence for that country. The risks that the United States violated IHL in Iran and Yemen are very high, and with the US having attacked Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria and boats across the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean in 2025 alone, it is almost a certainty that the US has breached IHL numerous times, and that is only taking the past few years into account.
Palantir
Yet, the US remains the UK’s second biggest arms recipient. This brings us to Palantir, an American tech company which openly boasts about its role in the global “kill chain”.
Significantly, Palantir has a very close relationship with all six branches of the US military and the US department of war. Unsurprisingly, as it follows from what I have highlighted about US and British arms industry integration, Palantir also has a very close relationship with the UK Ministry of Defence.
In December, Palantir signed a £240 million contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD). This contract is worth three times more than the previous MoD-Palantir deal signed in 2022, and was a direct award which means no other corporations were an option for it. A key aspect of the contract is the development of advanced AI-powered military capabilities, and the promise to set the UK up as the head of the European wing of Palantir. The head of Palantir UK, Louis Mosley, is descended from the founder of the British Union of Fascists, and has not spoken out against his family’s legacy.
Between 2014 and 2023, £244.5 million was spent incorporating Palantir into UK public institutions. Palantir is not only a technology company that works with militaries and departments of defence, as it has aimed to have a connection to every sector of government, both in the US and in the UK.
UK public institutions which have contracts with Palantir other than the MoD include the Met alongside almost 50 police forces across the country, and GCHQ. GCHQ is the UK’s digital spy agency that Palantir assisted with the mass surveillance programme XKEYSCORE, which many may remember Edward Snowden exposing through his whistle-blowing.
The Police, the MoD and GCHQ are institutions you might expect to be quick to work with Palantir, but Palantir also has a £330 million contract with the NHS, as well as contracts with the Department of Health and Social Care, various local council authorities, the Department for Levelling Up, Highways England, The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as the Crown Commercial Service, which regulates the procurement of government contracts.
Palantir and the militarisation of AI
Palantir is at the forefront of the militarisation of AI, in particular through Project Maven, which includes Palantir’s Maven Smart System – a decision support system involving AI targeting, which has been used in the aforementioned US military attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. The key thing I wish to highlight here is the vast scale of weapons the UK exports to the US, the use of AI targeting by the US military, and Palantir’s contract to “modernise” the UK military with AI.
Palantir also works closely with Israel and has been accused of involvement in Lavender and Gospel, AI systems fuelling the Gaza genocide. The AI model Claude, developed by Anthropic and partnered with Palantir, was reportedly involved in the US military’s illegal abduction of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores.
Airbus
Palantir also partners with Airbus, one of the largest aviation companies in the world and a partner on the Eurofighter Typhoon Combat Aircraft, alongside BAE and Leonardo. Although headquartered in France, Airbus has 25 sites across the UK and four active UK subsidiaries.
Alongside the F-35, the Eurofighter Typhoon has been used extensively in the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon. RAF flying patrols shot down an Iranian drone in March, using a Eurofighter Typhoon that had been deployed to Qatar in January.
Conclusion
There is so much more that could be said about Palantir, from its close collaboration with ICE in the US to its ties to some of the most dangerous and wealthiest politicians in the world, from the US to Israel. That being said, I hope what I have shared has helped make clear the ways in which Palantir is ingrained with the global arms trade, and why Palantir is working so hard to further cement its relationship with our government here in Britain. It ultimately comes down to the business of war and genocide, which have always been profitable for the rich and powerful. In this sense, Palantir is actually not an anomaly, but a continuation of this same system, perhaps just with a more honest face.
