\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t was over beers on an autumn evening in Zurich in 2024 that a group of journalists with an independent Swiss research collective began to discuss investigating Palantir, one of the world\u2019s biggest tech companies.<\/p>\n Three years earlier, Palantir had advertised that it was setting up a \u201cEuropean hub\u201d in the Swiss municipality of Altendorf, a sleepy town of roughly 7,000 people on the shores of Lake Zurich.<\/p>\n Press coverage of the move was positive: a Swiss national newspaper said the canton of Schwyz had \u201cpulled off a coup\u201d by landing a US tech company. But the journalists in the collective, WAV, were not so sure. They wondered what Swiss authorities were doing with Palantir.<\/p>\n WAV approached a small Swiss reader-funded magazine, Republik, to collaborate on a story. One year and 59 freedom of information requests later, their investigation, which alleged that Palantir had persistently courted Switzerland but had been rejected, made waves across Europe \u2013 prompting debate in Germany and comment from UK politicians.<\/p>\n Palantir was not happy. The journalists say they had interviewed company executives and sent a full list of questions before publication, but that the company demanded they print a detailed rebuttal, with a list of points that the journalists say went well beyond the scope of their investigation. When the magazine refused, Palantir filed a lawsuit in a Swiss commercial court demanding that it do so. <\/p>\n In a statement, Palantir told the Guardian that Swiss law recognised the right of reply \u201cto provide the public with balanced information\u201d. It says the details it sought to rebut are \u201canything but extraneous to their findings. The misstatements speak to material falsehoods about Palantir\u2019s business, technology and operations. Palantir has sought only the publication of a concise and proportionate right of reply to correct material inaccuracies.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The team of WAV and Republik journalists are awarded the Prix Transparence 2025 by the Swiss FOIA Association for their work. From left: Adrienne Fichter, Balz Oertli, Marguerite Meyer, Jennifer Steiner, and Lorenz Naegeli.<\/span> Photograph: Julia Schwamborn\/\u00f6ffentlichkeitsgesetz.ch<\/p>\n In a blogpost, the company says the article paints a \u201cfalse and misleading narrative\u201d about Palantir and \u201csets back important discourse on European software modernisation\u201d. It lists numerous disagreements with Republik\u2019s article, including that it implies Palantir\u2019s technology is expensive, and that it discusses a confidential Swiss army report that the army itself had not shared with Palantir.<\/p>\n \u201cPalantir has the right to sue for a right of reply, if they wish to do so,\u201d says Marguerite Meyer, a journalist who works with WAV. \u201cHowever, we adhered to all journalistic standards, and had a thorough factcheck done. They are suing for an absurd list of changes. It does feel like an intimidation campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n B<\/span>y the time the journalists started their investigation, Palantir had been \u2013 at least, reportedly \u2013 based in Switzerland for nearly four years. It was unclear what the company had achieved during this time: no government contracts had been reported.<\/p>\n The journalists wondered why this was: they wanted to dig into \u201cthis invisible sphere of exchange and negotiation, meetings, government and companies\u201d, says Lorenz Naegeli, who works with WAV.<\/p>\n double quotation markIt\u2019s the first time [anyone] has published a story about Palantir that has a failure narrative \u2026 That\u2019s why they\u2019re going for usAdrienne Fichter, Republik<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to find out, is there any kind of government agency that uses this software? I mean, they are in Switzerland, eventually some government official maybe thought they could use this Palantir,\u201d says Balz Oertli, who is also with WAV.<\/p>\n Their investigation, published in December, gave an account of Palantir\u2019s years-long efforts to try to sell itself to the Swiss government. It found the company had pitched itself to Switzerland\u2019s chancellor during the Covid-19 pandemic to help with data tracking; approached the Swiss army; and met Switzerland\u2019s then finance minister, Ueli Maurer.<\/p>\n <\/span>Palantir\u2019s CEO, Alex Karp, with the then Swiss federal president, Alain Berset, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 2018.<\/span> Photograph: Peter Klaunzer\/EPA-EFE\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cPalantir repeatedly contacted different government agencies through different means \u2026 and tried to repeatedly get a foot into the door,\u201d says Naegeli.<\/p>\n Many journalists have investigated Palantir, reporting for example on its contracts with the US federal government, or with the US\u2019s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, ICE. But Republik and WAV\u2019s work may have struck a nerve.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the first time [anyone] has published a story about Palantir that has a failure narrative,\u201d says Adrienne Fichter, a tech journalist with Republik. \u201cThey didn\u2019t get through and they were not good enough for Switzerland \u2026 That\u2019s why they\u2019re going for us, that\u2019s why they\u2019re suing us, they want to fight this narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n Meyer says: \u201cI think Palantir doesn\u2019t really mind moral criticism. That has been done heaps. But what our reporting shows is a bit of a failure to sell their products \u2013 I believe they really don\u2019t like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Palantir\u2019s blogpost says the article \u201ctakes what any normal business would describe as routine market exploration \u2013 approximately nine meetings over seven years \u2013 and portrays them as an \u2018aggressive\u2019 and inherently nefarious sales campaign\u201d. Palantir says the Swiss government had not been a significant focus for its regional business growth.<\/p>\n The European Federation of Journalists claims the legal action is \u201can attempt at intimidation aimed at discouraging any critical analysis of Palantir\u2019s activities\u201d. \u201cIt seems like they expected a less critical approach,\u201d says Naegeli. Fichter adds: \u201cI think they thought, \u2018Oh, this is a small publication, we can go after them.\u2019 And also, to me, this is my purely subjective impression, but they want to make us too tired and scared to, you know, have time to do other reporting.\u201d Palantir says Republik has repeatedly misrepresented the nature of the proceedings.<\/p>\n In a written response, Palantir told the Guardian that the journalists had presented \u201ca handful of informal conversations with government representatives over a seven-year span as a conclusive portrayal that Palantir repeatedly and formally bid on government contracts and was rebuffed over technological shortcomings and ethical concerns. This is false.<\/p>\n Swiss law allows the subjects of a story to request a right of reply, says Dominique Strebel, an expert in media law and the editor-in-chief of Beobachter, another Swiss magazine. But this has caveats: the right of reply has to be concise and stick to the facts of the story.<\/p>\n \u201cThis lawsuit for a right of reply is not about whether Republik was technically inaccurate or not. It is only about whether Palantir is allowed to place its view of the facts alongside that of Republik and whether Republik must publish it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was over beers on an autumn evening in Zurich in 2024 that a group of journalists with an independent Swiss research collective began to discuss investigating Palantir, one of the world\u2019s biggest tech companies. Three years earlier, Palantir had advertised that it was setting up a \u201cEuropean hub\u201d in the Swiss municipality of Altendorf,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1972,335,5874,1870,16943,6142,14139,4316,98,5254,767,812],"class_list":{"0":"post-47179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-campaign","9":"tag-feel","10":"tag-freedom","11":"tag-giant","12":"tag-intimidation","13":"tag-magazine","14":"tag-palantir","15":"tag-press","16":"tag-small","17":"tag-suing","18":"tag-swiss","19":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}