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When Silicon Valley’s darkest company is warning about the dangers of the UK’s proposed digital identity system, something may be amiss.
As regular NC readers are well aware, Palantir Technologies is a company with few, if any, moral qualms. It aspires to be “inside every missile, inside of every drone.” Its chairman, Peter Thiel, is a venture surveillance capitalist who is determined to shape our future in all manner of ways, most of them unpleasant, and has built a powerful network of alliances within the Trump administration to that end.
Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, openly boasts about helping to kill “mainly terrorists” in the Gaza strip. He dreams of drone striking his enemies and in the video below talks about the need for the US’ enemies, with Palantir’s help, to “go to bed scared,… to wake up scared”:
ALEX KARP CEO OF PALANTIR:
"They need to go to bed scared, they need to wake up scared… Safe means that the other person is scared."
This man is a complete psychopath.
pic.twitter.com/GmJgIw9Epc— ADAM (@AdameMedia) July 29, 2025
Palantir began life in 2003, with CIA seed funding (like so many Silicon Valley firms), as a spin-offed version of DARPA’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program. TIA was a surveillance program for US citizens that was so comprehensive that even a post-9/11 Congress voted to shut it down, which it was but only partially. In a Reddit AMA from 2014, Thiel responded to a question asking if Palantir was a front for the CIA by saying: “The CIA is a front for Palantir.”
The company has branched out since its early days. Today, Palantir provides artificial intelligence-enabled military targeting systems, assembles AI-powered kill lists of Gazan civilians for the Israeli Defense Forces, helps ICE identify undocumented immigrants and overstays to deport, and manages the federated patient data platform of the UK’s National Health System, among many other things.
Democratically “Untested”
Yet even Palantir, Silicon Valley’s darkest company, claims to have reservations about the UK government’s proposed digital identity system. In an interview with the Times of London, Louis Mosley, Palantir’s UK boss (and the eldest grandson of former British fascist figure Oswald Mosley), lambasted the government’s ID plans, saying the firm would not bid for any contracts:
“Palantir has long had a policy that we will help democratically elected governments implement the policies they have been elected to deliver and that does mean that often we are involved in the implementation of very controversial measures,” he told Times Radio.
“Digital ID is not one that was tested at the last election. It wasn’t in the manifesto. So we haven’t had a clear resounding public support at the ballot box for its implementation. So it isn’t one for us.”
[NC: It’s kind of funny to hear a Palantir executive warn of the democratic risks of the UK’s digital ID plans when Thiel himself believes democracy and freedom are incompatible and has positioned himself as a staunch opponent of government in general — at least when it suits him]
Mosley added that he had “personal concerns” about digital IDs, suggesting they might be open to abuse. “One of my concerns about it is the technical necessity of it,” he said. “We have all had the experience of engaging with parts of government where the online experience leaves something to be desired. It needs improvement.
“However, we are in a world now where there are at least a dozen unique identifiers for each of us in government. We have passports, we have driving licences, we have unique tax codes, we have national insurance numbers. Now, each of these sits in a silo and doesn’t talk to the other. It isn’t harmonised. There’s no way for government to easily jump from one to another.”
This, presumably, is where Palantir would conveniently come in to play. As we warned a few months ago, the company aspires to become the US and the UK governments’ central operating system by (in the words of its CTO, now a lieutenant colonel in the US army) expanding its “footprint across defence, healthcare and civilian agencies”:
As outlandish as the idea may seem that one company could aspire to exclusively provide and manage a central operating system for the governments of both the US and the UK, there can be no doubting Palantir’s ambitions to expand its influence throughout government on both sides of the Atlantic. This is a company, after all, whose founder, Peter Thiel, has long marketed himself as a libertarian while lauding the benefits of monopoly capitalism and helping build the infrastructure of the modern surveillance state.
As Iain Davis writes in his excellent two-part series on the “Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate”, the “proponents of Technocracy and the proponents of the Dark Enlightenment, such as Elon Musk and Thiel, are not interested in restricting state power, though they may say otherwise”:
Instead they wish to move the state from the public to the private sector and expand its power once sufficiently privatized. True, they oppose “representative democracy” and characterise it as both a “democracy” (which it isn’t) and a bureaucratic system riddled with problems (which it is), but the solutions they offer, to all intents and purposes, magnify the power of the very state they supposedly condemn.
What the believers in Technocracy and the believers in the Dark Enlightenment both propose are compartmentalised, hierarchical sociopolitical power structures that couldn’t be more state-like or more authoritarian. They seek to expand and maximise the power of the state, though in slightly different ways. Calling their new model of the state either a Technate (as technocrats do) or a gov-corp (as accelerationist neoreactionaries do) doesn’t change the nature of the tyrannical statism they desire to foist on the rest of us.
As such, one should not necessarily take Palantir’s reservations about the UK’s proposed digital identity system at face value. This is a company, after all, that will do just about anything to expand its already significant footprint in the UK’s governance structures, even if it means leveraging public sentiment against the government’s digital identity program to help soften its image among the public.
That image could certainly do with softening after the public backlash over the Sunak government’s decision in 2023 to award Palantir a £330 million contract to manage the NHS’ federated data platform. According to NHS insiders, the software being used simply isn’t up to scratch and has already been rejected by most hospitals.
Palantir’s footprint in the UK nonetheless continues to grow at an alarming rate. In June, the UK Police signed on with Palantir to develop a surveillance network that will gather data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information. In September, the UK Ministry of Defence announced a £1.5 billion deal with Palantir to, among other things, “develop AI-powered capabilities already tested in Ukraine to speed up decision making, military planning and targeting.”
Creating A Larger “Surface Area of Risk”
That all being said, Mosley does raise two key points in the interview, both of which appear to resonate among some British voters:
- With regard to data security, a broad digital identity system creates a greater “surface area of risk.” Even the best designed digital identity systems, such as Estonia’s, are vulnerable to hacks while the worst designed, such as India’s Aadhaar, are constantly being compromised. As we warned in May, the UK’s plans for digital identity risk creating a giant treasure trove of data for hackers and nation state adversaries.
- The Starmer government’s proposed digital identity system has zero democratic legitimacy. As Mosley says, “it was not tested at the last election. It wasn’t in the manifesto.” It hasn’t had a “clear resounding public support at the ballot box for its implementation.”
Both Reform Party leader Nigel Farage and Green Party leader Zack Polanski have gained political capital in recent days by attacking Starmer’s digital ID plans. Jeremy Corbyn is also “firmly” against the idea.
I firmly oppose the government’s plans for compulsory digital ID cards.
This is an affront to our civil liberties, and will make the lives of minorities even more difficult and dangerous.
It is excessive state interference — and must be resisted.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) September 25, 2025
Polanski has vowed to defend Britain from a descent into authoritarianism, warning: “This country has a proud tradition of protecting civil liberties, but once again a Labour government is cracking down on our rights.”
As this reality gradually sinks in with voters, Starmer’s approval rating sinks lower. The more unpopular his government becomes, the more authoritarian it seems to grow. Over the weekend, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood unveiled new powers to allow police to restrict “repeated” political protests. The new measures are aimed primarily at protests against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which the Starmer government continues to support and enable.
“Just because you have a freedom doesn’t mean you have to use it at every moment of every day.”
That’s UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on BBC, defending new powers to let police shut down or relocate protests deemed “too frequent.” The measures are aimed squarely at the mass… pic.twitter.com/872EbijkCp
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 5, 2025
As Big Brother Watch’s Silkie Carlo says, “repeated demonstrations have long been tools for change in our country, from women’s rights to workers’ rights.”
👁️The Government is planning to CRACK DOWN even more on free speech in Britain by seeking to restrict repeat protests
"The freedom to protest has never been a right only to be exercised where and when it’s convenient to those in power, but precisely the opposite.
It’s one of… pic.twitter.com/EIzeemtdA5
— Big Brother Watch (@BigBrotherWatch) October 6, 2025
Mahmood also recent said the proposed national digital identity system could be used to crack down on benefit fraud and “all sorts of other things”, directly contradicting Starmer’s own claims that it would only be mandatory for people looking to access the UK’s formal job market. Once again, Starmer’s word is worth nothing.
Whatever one may think about government-controlled digital identity systems, one thing is clear: the less trust the public have in the government implementing — or in this case trying to impose — the system, the more of a threat it will pose to basic rights and freedoms. And in the UK, public trust in government was already at a record low before Starmer took the helm, and Starmer is now polling as the least popular prime minister on record.
This might end up being a huge stroke of luck for UK citizens, namely that the government that has taken it upon itself to impose digital identity on UK citizens, by trying to make it mandatory not only to work legally in the country but also to own a company, is the least popular in decades. As we noted last week, if anyone is capable of tarnishing forever the idea of mandatory digital IDs among the UK public, it is Keir Starmer.
In the space of just over a week more than 2.8 million UK citizens have signed a petition calling for the digital identity legislation to be scrapped, vastly exceeding the threshold — 100,000 — for parliamentary consideration. To put the number in perspective, it’s just under half of the roughly six million people that signed a petition asking for the Brexit decision to be reversed. And it is still rising, albeit more slowly.
The government’s predictable response has been to reject the petition and reaffirm its commitment to introduce a de facto mandatory digital identity system for workers and business owners alike. According to the response, published on the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s website, the new ID system is part of Labour’s broader aim to modernize public services. From Reclaim the Net:
“We will introduce a digital ID within this Parliament to help tackle illegal migration, make accessing government services easier, and enable wider efficiencies. We will consult on details soon,” the government wrote.
Although a formal consultation process is expected in the coming weeks, involving employers, unions, and civil society organizations, the government made it clear that legislation to support the digital ID system is on the way.
Over time, it is expected to serve as a single access point for government services like benefits, tax records, and other official interactions, potentially eliminating the need for physical documents or multiple logins.
The government’s decision to push ahead with a national digital ID comes in the shadow of the recently enacted Online Safety Act, which has already laid the groundwork for sweeping identity checks across the internet.
That law, marketed as a way to protect children from harmful content, gave regulators broad authority to demand age verification for accessing a wide range of online services.
The result is an emerging digital framework where proving who you are, even just to browse or communicate, is becoming a condition of access.
However, opposition is on the rise. Peter Hyman, a former communications adviser to Starmer, told a meeting at the Labour Party conference last week that digital ID was a significant policy but “no one’s going out there to explain it” and as a result its opponents were “motoring” ahead.
In my 2022 book Scanned, I warn that the digital identity systems being rapidly erected around us are among the most important issues today’s societies could possibly grapple with — not only from a governance or financial perspective but also from an ethical and legal standpoint. They genuinely threaten to reorder the way our societies function, providing governments and corporations far greater, more granular control over society.
We are already beginning to see their impact with the proliferation of online age verification systems across Western jurisdictions, putting at risk both online privacy and anonymity. Given the extent and scale of the risks they pose, digital identity should be under discussion in every parliament of every land, and every dinner table in every country in the world. This, it seems, is actually beginning to happen in the UK.
In contrast, in most other countries that have introduced digital identity legislation in the past year — including the 27 members states of the European Union, Australia, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, Taiwan and China, to name a few — there has been no debate at all. The only exception I know of is Switzerland where voters rejected digital ID in a 2021 referendum, only to be told to vote again. In September, they voted the “right way“, with the narrowest of margins.
Marching in Lockstep
At a time when the established world order seems to be fracturing, scores of countries around the world are adopting digital identity legislation at almost exactly the same time, as if in lockstep. Taiwan and China are both on board, as are Ukraine and Russia. Here is an infographic by the World Bank’s ID4Africa showing the coalition parties behind the rollout of digital ID systems in Africa, including all the fintechs, billionaire foundations, NGOs and UN agencies.
Just as almost all countries are launching digital identity at or around the same time, almost all countries are developing or piloting a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. As the Bank for International Settlements noted in 2021, “identification is central in the design of central bank digital currency… This calls for a CBDC that is account-based and ultimately tied to a digital identity, but with safeguards on data privacy as additional features.”
The emerging CBDCs will almost certainly be programmable, which means central banks and/or governments will be able to “program” money so as to achieve certain monetary, fiscal or social policy objectives. Programmable money could be used to encourage the right sorts of consumption and discourage or even prevent the wrong sorts. Taken to the extreme, governments could even use CBDCs to exclude undesirables from the economy altogether.
Once you integrate digital ID with programmable money, you are talking about complete control, warns Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
If you look around the world today, we are watching many different divide and conquer tactics used to cover up the real problem. Right now we are in a political war between the mega-rich and everybody else. And the question is: if you’re the mega-rich, how are you going to control the many when you are few?
The way you’re going to do it is programmable money, but programmable money doesn’t click in and work well unless you’ve got everybody on the grid. You need to be able to track them, you need to be able to watch their behaviour, you need to be able to influence their behaviour. And then you’ve got complete control.
And that is not just wearables, that is not just an internet of bodies, that is a coup d’état. That is the end of human liberty in the West.
Lastly, an article published by Open Democracy offers a stark picture of what may soon (as in, the next year or two) lie in store for the people of the UK and all the other countries embracing digital identity systems. Written by Aman Sethi, the editor-in-chief of HuffPost India, the article provides an overview of the systemic flaws, security risks and inevitable mission creep that have plagued India’s Aadhaar system, the world’s largest digital identity system:
As editor-in-chief of HuffPost India, my team and I reported on how the entire system had been compromised by a malicious software patch, how a botched attempt to link Aadhar numbers and voter IDs had disenfranchised millions of Indians, how a public-facing database allowed anyone with an internet connection to identify the caste and religion of over five million families and to geolocate their homes with pin-point accuracy. And then there was the case of the gentleman who bought a packet of generic viagra and anti-nausea drops on 13 June 2018 from a state-run dispensary. We found his name, address, phone number and a list of his purchases on a public dashboard that the authorities took down after we reached out to them.
Each time, our findings were dismissed as edge cases, localised lapses that affected a miniscule percentage of users. But these percentages add up over time and result in millions of individual miscarriages of justice when scaled up to 1.4 billion people.
In 2020, we reported on how the Indian government was using Aadhar as the starting point to build an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to provide a “360 degree view” of the lives of every Indian citizen. The capabilities of such a database, which is not yet complete, are so terrifying that even the Indian bureaucrat who first proposed it told our reporter that he feared its misuse.
Our investigations into Aadhar revealed that once such a system is implemented, it is almost impossible to prevent its proliferation into every interaction between the state and the resident, which turns each failed transaction into a potential criminal breach.
This is what happened in India with Aadhar, and this is the idealised state of Brit Card. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said as much at a Fringe event at the Labour conference.
Once the scheme is rolled out, pressure will build to link your Brit Card to your other IDs such as your NHS number, and when your ID glitches at the pharmacy, it is a relatively trivial task to build a system that flags this transaction to the Home Office to open an inquiry into your resident status. Imagine the postmaster scandal, except where every one of us is a few failed biometrics away from being postmastered.
Given GOV.UK’s long, storied history of IT disasters, this is a very real danger.
Pretty sure that there is no evil that Palantir is not willing to do, so long as there is lots of money involved. The fact that they are backing away from the UK’s Digital Identity System tells me something interesting. That Palantir considers the Digital Identity System to be nothing more than a tar baby. It is being pushed forward by the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history and who is likely on his way out the door. And that means that his appointed successor will have a chance to back away from the whole scheme. And that means that everyone associated with this scheme will be under close scrutiny and criticism. Palantir may figure that if they were involved with this scheme, then they would come under close scrutiny as well which might put some of their lucrative contracts in the UK under close scrutiny and perhaps put them at risk of being cancelled. Better to just back away now.