Shut The System says its activists this morning destroyed entrances, glass panels, security cameras and ID card readers at Palantir Technology’s London office in Soho Square, then doused the facade in red paint. This action was taken in response to the company’s intense surveillance of Palestinians to profit from the genocide in Gaza, along with its controversial contract with the NHS. It comes a week after Shut The System took international direct action in London, Paris, Hamburg, Geneva and Vienna against fossil fuel investors Barclays and BlackRock.

Palantir is a one of the world’s largest data mining and spy-tech companies, providing artificial intelligence to the Israeli military to escalate its assaults on Palestinians. Meanwhile, it is aggressively expanding its operations in British public institutions, including the NHS for which it faces strong opposition among health workers.

In early 2024 Palantir announced a strategic partnership with the Israeli military, agreeing to ‘harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war related missions’. This partnership has involved supplying Israel with AI software which scrapes data gathered from the surveillance of Palestinians and places them in AI driven ‘kill chains’, further muddying the lines of accountability.

The company also won a controversial £330 million contract to create a centralised data management platform for the NHS, as well as contracts with British police departments and social services. The NHS contract caused outrage amongst health workers who have been resisting Palantirs’ involvement.

Palantir was created with funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm co-founded by Peter Thiell, a man with a long history of financial support for politicians who promote Christian nationalist and white supremacist politics, including his mentorship of James Vance. The firm plays a central role in Trump’s White House, including taking on a recent ten billion dollar contract with the US army, and a thirty million dollar contract to play a central role on ICE’s brutal immigration crackdown.