Ukraine's Battlefield Data, Bought with 'Blood,' Fuels Palantir's AI Capabilities Amid Privacy Concerns

Months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Palantir CEO Alex Karp made a significant visit to Kyiv, becoming the first chief of a major Western Big Tech company to do so. In June 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed his delight in the company's support on the 'digital front line' against Russia. This partnership has proven fruitful, positioning Ukraine as the first modern nation to systematically collect battlefield data. This data is crucial for training military artificial intelligence (AI) to identify patterns and make predictions. The extensive combat data, gathered from video and sensor feeds over four years of conflict, aids Ukraine in monitoring, predicting, and responding to Russian attacks with Palantir’s products. However, concerns are mounting as this data also enhances the capabilities of the US corporation, whose technologies have been linked to human rights abuses, including in Gaza, raising questions about the increasing influence of private tech firms over sovereign nations.

A 'Strategic Advantage'

Founded after the 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, Palantir was established to help the US defense industry create a unified data environment for monitoring and responding to threats. The company's name, inspired by a mythical object from J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings,' reflects its mission of near-omniscience.

Yasir Atalan, deputy director of the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), explained that Palantir enables disparate data forms to 'talk to each other.' In a military context, this means integrating data from missiles, radars, automatic identification systems (AIS), and open sources onto a single screen, providing a comprehensive 'larger view of the battlefield.' Similar solutions are offered to governments for civilian uses such as border control, health services, tax collection, and mass surveillance. The more data available, the better statistical learning systems can recognize patterns and make accurate predictions, facilitating split-second, automated tactical decisions in military operations. Consequently, large datasets derived from real-world scenarios are highly sought after by companies seeking a competitive edge.

“Good battlefield data is extremely rare and hard to come by,” stated Elke Schwarz, a lecturer specializing in digital technologies at Queen Mary University of London. She added, “those with access to [it] have a strategic advantage.” While data originating from Ukraine might not be directly transferable to other conflicts, it remains vital for training purposes. Schwarz elaborated, “Building a system that correctly identifies a tank, for instance, requires a large volume of tank images, ideally in all kinds of weather conditions.” Similarly, extensive behavioral data, detailing human responses to specific scenarios, is essential for tracking, profiling, and predicting human activity in mass surveillance systems.

Ukraine’s Invaluable Battlefield Data

A significant development in the Palantir-Ukraine collaboration was the January launch of the Brave1 Dataroom, a specialized software platform designed to use battlefield data for training military AI applications. However, prominent figures within Ukraine’s defense sector have voiced concerns regarding the government's decision to share the nation's valuable data with a private tech company under undisclosed terms. Valerii Markus, a serviceman and former chief sergeant, wrote on Facebook, “Ukraine has something that no other country in the world has. We are paying with blood for data that someone else can convert into capital, international influence, and big money.”

Palantir asserts that it does not acquire customer data. In a statement to Al Jazeera, the company clarified, “customers own and control their data. Palantir’s software helps them ‘integrate and analyse their existing data sets,’ adding: ‘Palantir never uses or retains customer data for its own purposes.’” Schwarz further explained that Palantir benefits from the data made available to it, stating, “Rather, it works with the data that is made available.”

Civil Liberties and Data Protection

Palantir's technologies, utilized by private clients and government agencies globally, have been implicated in human rights abuses. Its core software platforms, ICM and FALCON, were used during the administration of US President Donald Trump to detain and deport thousands, including asylum seekers. Amnesty International reported that the company aggregated vast amounts of data, created detailed profiles to track migrants and asylum seekers, and assisted in deportations, potentially violating international human rights obligations.

The company has also supported Israel in its war in Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry found exhibits characteristics of genocide. Last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese indicated there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Palantir provided AI platforms used for battlefield data integration and automated decision-making in the conflict that has resulted in the deaths of over 74,500 Palestinians since October 2023.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS), police forces, the military, and local councils have entered into multi-million-pound contracts with Palantir for data integration. These agreements have faced public opposition. The nonprofit organization Corporate Accountability launched a campaign against the £330 million ($440 million) contract between the NHS and Palantir for a new data platform, warning that the company is central to a “dystopian marriage of Big Tech, the surveillance and detention industry, and rising fascism.” Fatimah Shaikh, Corporate Accountability’s deputy campaigns director, stated, “Palantir is not a corporation we can trust” with sensitive British citizen data, emphasizing the need for secure medical care without compromising safety or privacy.

Ilia Siatitsa, senior legal officer at Privacy International in the UK, noted that tech companies like Palantir blur the lines between military and civilian applications and maintain opacity regarding data usage due to their involvement in national security. Siatitsa argued that such companies could potentially use personal information to train their products, including military applications, without explicit user consent. “If my data is going to be feeding into a war machine, I want to know about it,” she stated. “I need to have the choice, not only [as a matter of] privacy, but also from an ethical point of view.” In June, the UK announced a review of the NHS’s data contract with Palantir following parliamentary pressure.

Growing Dependencies

Experts suggest that private tech companies are increasingly supporting military and civil infrastructure, leading to potential government reliance for conducting military operations or managing national services. Anna Nadibaidze, a researcher at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, observed a shift in the balance of power, where state armies are becoming dependent on private sector products. “So what if they choose to not supply this infrastructure any more?” she questioned.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Starlink satellites, crucial for Ukraine’s battlefield communications, serve as an example. In late September 2022, during a critical offensive in Kherson, Musk reportedly caused a communications blackout. Amid geopolitical tensions, several countries are reconsidering their use of Palantir’s products. France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced in June that domestic intelligence services would cease using Palantir’s products to avoid “strategic dependency.” Germany’s military has also stated it will discontinue using the company’s offerings. Spanish publication El Confidencial reported in July that Spanish authorities had quietly advised state-backed companies against new contracts with Palantir due to concerns over sensitive national security information exposure.

Palantir’s reliability has also been questioned in Ukraine following its September strategic partnership with Nebius, a Dutch company founded as an offshoot of Russian technology giant Yandex. Denys Shtilerman, chief designer and co-owner of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defense-tech company, expressed concern that Palantir, which works with Ukrainian combat data, had partnered with Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh. Despite Volozh’s condemnation of Russia’s war as “barbaric,” Shtilerman remains apprehensive. “Our combat data is not free raw material for Western technology corporations. It is a strategic asset of the state,” he wrote on X, responding to Kyiv’s collaboration with Palantir. “Ukraine has paid for it with blood. We have no right to simply hand over the most valuable asset we possess.”