alt Hacker NewsGenuine 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?
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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.
Information is power.
Power is leverage.
Leverage is easily applied to corrupt people.
Politicians are corrupt.
Quod erat demonstrandum
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.
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?
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.