Kanadas Deal mit dem US-Datengiganten Palantir ist „legitim“, sagt Verteidigungsminister – thestar.com
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/canadas-deal-with-us-data-giant-palantir-is-legitimate-defence-minister-says/article_e49b9c32-8f76-466c-86ed-36a4110ba45a.html
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Canada should treat all US tech companies the same we would treat Chinese ones. Assume they are an asset of the state and keep them at arm’s reach when it comes to national security.
>“Palantir Canada is a Canadian company, subsidiary to Palantir global,” McGuinty said, referring to the parent company based in the United States that was co-founded by a tech billionaire with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump.
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>The minister added that “we’ll look at this question of data sovereignty,” and stressed that the Carney government will direct its military spending as much as possible to companies that “build in Canada.”
Sounds like they consider Palantir’s Canadian subsidiary to be a Canadian company that builds in Canada. How convenient.
>Its chief executive officer has also argued in a recent book about the alleged perils of “hollow pluralism” in Western countries and proclaimed Big Tech companies have a “moral obligation” to defend the United States…
So the company has openly declared they’ll voluntarily act as an arm of the US gov’t.
>…the military’s use of Palantir is concerning because of a 2018 law in the U.S. that could compel companies to hand over data to the American government.
There we have it. The final cherry on top.
The fact that the defence minister feels confident enough to brazenly stand by working with this company speaks volumes.
Carney has been a mixed bag for sure, but doing ANYTHING with a company as evil as palantir is just inexcusable. Between this and bill c-22 I’m very disappointed. It was nice to see the minister of the environment resign today based on his view that Canada is backsliding on climate issues. Hard not to say he’s right. I hate to say it but I don’t know if we can trust carney and this iteration of the liberal party with a majority.
>“Palantir Canada is a Canadian company, subsidiary to Palantir global,” McGuinty said, referring to the parent company based in the United States that was co-founded by a tech billionaire with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump.
This is typically done solely to make having Canadian employees a lot less of a headache. I have worked for a number of American companies, and *every time* I have been employed through their Canadian subsidiary. This sort of arrangement does not indicate any sort of meaningful separation between the Canadian subsidiary and the American parent; if anything, we ought to assume that no meaningful separation exists.
From the linked original reporting:
>The documents say the Canadian military used a “call up” on an existing “supply arrangement” with Palantir for a “data integration and analytics platform subscription” dated from June 27, 2025 to June 26. The documents include a price of more than $3.7 million.
>It’s not clear if the new contract is linked to, or on top of, a previous deal worth [$14.4 million](https://archive.is/o/C6W23/https://parl-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/delivery/01CALP_INST:01CALP/12177592250002616?lang=en) that DND signed with Palantir in March 2020. The Logic, a tech business publication, revealed the existence of that agreement last fall after it was disclosed in government documents that detailed all Palantir contracts from 2016 to May 2025.
>The government also signed a contract worth almost $1 million with Palantir in 2019 for “information technology and telecommunications consultants,” according to an online federal [database](https://archive.is/o/C6W23/https://search.open.canada.ca/contracts/record/dnd-mdn,2018-2019-Q4-05758).
Palantir’s [whole schtick](https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-what-the-company-does/) is using their access to *vast* amounts of data to find correlates within it to improve analysis of the whole; then they take your data sources and pipe it into their product. When a subscriber asks Palantir to engage with and analyze their data they do so knowing that their data may be used to improve Palantir’s product.
*This is not to say that the data is shared with other subscribers*; but imagine if you will that there is a sort of database of metadata correlates, or an LLM of some kind, or even just a huge decision tree. Their secret sauce doesn’t need to hold the subscriber’s data so long as it can improve the way it answers questions about all *similar* data by tuning some weights or adding some new conditions or whatever.
But let me be clear, Palantir *isn’t a force for good in the world* and Peter Thiel is just a *bad dude* who happens to be a strong supporter and follower of Curtis Yarvin.
Palantir is a national security threat against Canada and supports imperialist terror, war crimes, and genocide led by malicious men who want to control us and the world. It is appalling that our government has anything to do with them. A disgrace.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. They have other [local partnerships](https://fournier.substack.com/p/meet-cohere-palantirs-canada-ai-partner).
This isn’t really that unusual since a lot of defense industries in allied countries with rocky relationships with Trump’s administration have also been signing deals with Palantir or Palantir subsidiaries over the past 2-3 years (The UK, Australia, Poland, Ukraine etc. as well as formal agreements with NATO directly etc.) Thiel and the Trump administration might might be deplorable and have shady motivations, but there’s none the less some material benefits that defense departments across NATO are seeing in these agreements etc. (foreign intelligence agencies are generally also keeping their eyes on Palantir which makes dealing with some of their more underhanded aspects more manageable)
NATO also currently lacks strong alternatives to the services Palantir is offering, so at least until other allied countries start producing and exporting more viable alternatives, it might be the best short-term/stopgap option as unfortunate as that is.