Norwegian Investor Dumps Palantir Over AI Surveillance

Controversial data analysis firm Palantir Technologies has lost a major Nordic investor over concerns the company may be at risk of violating international humanitarian law and human rights via the services it supplies in support of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Storebrand Asset Management said it had “excluded Palantir Technologies Inc. from our investments due (to) its sales of products and services to Israel for use in occupied Palestinian territories”.

The firm said it believed Palantir was supplying offerings including “AI-based predictive policing systems” that supported Israeli surveillance of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Palantir’s systems are designed “to identify individuals who are likely to launch ‘lone wolf terrorist’ attacks, facilitating their arrests preemptively before the strikes that it is projected they would carry out”, Storebrand said.

AI-powered surveillance

The firm cited the United Nations as saying Israeli authorities had a history of imprisoning Palestinians without charge or trial.

A UN report found last year that “the occupied Palestinian territory had been transformed as a whole into a constantly surveilled open-air prison”. Israel rejected the report’s findings.

The use of AI for surveillance has been highly controversial, with the European Union banning it for biometric surveillance in the recently passed AI Act.

The asset manager held about 262 million crowns ($24m, £18.5m) in Palantir out of a total of about 1tn crowns under management.

Norway’s government in March warned businesses about engaging in economic or financial activity involving Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, the aszset manager said in its latest investment review.

Denver-based data firm Palantir, founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, supplies artificial intelligence models to militaries.

It reached a deal earlier this year to supply Israel with technologies to assist in the Gaza war.

Data controversy

The company has publicly defended its work with Israel, with chief executive Alex Karp telling CNBC in March that the firm had lost employees and expected to lose more over its support for the country.

In November of last year the NHS awarded Palantir a £330m contract to create an AI-powered data management system.

Ahead of the deal Karp told the BBC that under the arrangement NHS patient data would be “safe”.

Asked whether the data was at risk of being sold under the contract, Karp said such a decision could only be made “by the UK government, not by me”.

He said the NHS has a “huge problem” with its patient backlog that is “not solvable without technology”.