metagora: Techno Update - Palantir's Swiss Rebuff

Version 1: Fri, Jul 10, 2026

By Palantir - https://www.palantir.com/, Public Domain, Link

The Republik-WAV investigation

Online magaazine and the WAV research collective invetigated for about a year the Palantir efforts to get a contract in Switzerland.

As part of the investigations they submitted 59 document requests using the Freedom of Information Act to the Swiss authorities.

The result of their investigations were published on December 8, 2025 on Republik:

How tenaciously Palantir courted Switzerland https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-palantir-courted-switzerland By Adrienne Fichter et al. - Republik - December 8, 2025 - Archive https://archive.is/nnrXu

Over a period of seven years, Palantir conducted a major sales campaign aimed at securing Swiss federal authorities as clients. During this time, Palantir was turned down outright at least nine times – either because its software was deemed unnecessary or because agencies feared reputational damage.

Later on in the article we learn of an army interal report. The crucial bits with emphasis added:

Above all, however, the army’s staff experts say it remains unclear who has access to data shared with Palantir. The following sentence from the Swiss Army report is particularly relevant: “Palantir is a U.S.-based company, which means there is a possibility that sensitive data could be accessed by the US government and intelligence services.” Faced with questions from Republik, the DDPS said that this wording reflected a “precautionary risk assessment.”

Nevertheless, the finding is explosive. First, because it comes from a high-level army panel, and second, because the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection, and Sport (DDPS) employs seasoned cryptologists. As a result, the report directly contradicts Palantir’s official assurances that any data leakage is technically impossible.

If that is the case for Switzerland is also true for UK and even more so for Greece or any other country.

Palantir vs. Republik

Following the articles Palantir launched a right-to-reply lawsuit against the magazine

On Friday, June 12, Zurich’s commercial court issued its ruling reecting 22 out of 23 right-to-reply claims:

Palantir vs. Republik: The Ruling https://www.republik.ch/2026/06/13/palantir-vs-republik-the-ruling By Daniel Binswanger et al. - Republik - 13.06.2026 - Archive http://archive.ph/8GJwS

Palantir loses legal challenge to force Swiss magazine to publish responses Data analytics company loses on 22 out of 23 counts in lawsuit disputing how Swiss government rejected firm’s services https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/13/palantir-loses-legal-challenge-to-force-swiss-magazine-to-publish-rejoinders by Nadeem Badshah and Aisha Down - Guardian - Sat 13 Jun 2026 - Archive https://archive.ph/6hBTf

The sole exception in the case concerned a statement in Republik’s article, Why Palantir is becoming a risk for Switzerland, reporting that Palantir’s Foundry software platform had originally been developed for US counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The court ordered Republik to publish a short counterstatement from the company disputing that claim.

So what was all that about then?

The answer is in the following article, not about Switzerland but has the legal basis for the Swiss objections:

Revealed: Palantir deals with UK state total at least £670m – including £15m contract with nuclear weapons agency https://www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-technologies-uk-government-contracts-size-nuclear-deterrent-atomic-peter-thiel-louis-mosley By Carole Cadwalladr, Charlie Young and Max Colbert - The Nerve - Jan 27, 2026 - Archive https://archive.is/muenS

Marietje Schaake – a former MEP, a fellow at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and a leading expert in the national security risks of European reliance on US technologies – disputes whether the UK government could retain any control over its data if the US government demanded it.

She said that the US Cloud Act and Fisa – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – “give law enforcement and intelligence the right to access data anywhere in the world if held by a US company”.

Schaake called US technology companies part of Trump’s “imperialist tool box.”

Marietje Schaake is at: https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/people/marietje-schaake

Leonhard Euler has the last word:

By Jakob Emanuel Handmann - 2011-12-22 (upload, according to EXIF data), Public Domain, Link