Under the journalists profiles, where most people will never see it, Palantir’s PR machine kicked into gear via some rep.

📄: linkedin.com/posts/adriennefic…

Palantir published a “correction” claiming the journalists misrepresented their work. Except they “corrected” claims the journalists never made.

📄: blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wi…

Palantir built a straw man saying they never officially participated in any RFP or formal government procurement process. And that either way, it’s not a big deal that they sometimes demo the software. So what?

What the journalists actually wrote: that Palantir engaged in 7 (seven!) years of informal contact attempts, sales conversations, and exchange meetings with Swiss officials.

Journalist Adrienne Fichter called them out in the comments: “I am still waiting for the list of wrong claims and facts in our 2 articles. We never wrote any of [what you claim].” (My edit for brevity)

The Palantir rep’s LinkedIn comment got 20 likes from his tech bro allies.

One even called the journalists part of the “bipolar ludditic left.” Casually weaponizing mental health stigma while completely misunderstanding what Luddites actually fought against (*cough* exploitation).

Meanwhile, these journalists who spent a year doing actual investigative work, who filed dozens of FOIA requests, who read through military reports and health service evaluations barely had anyone come to their defense in that same space.

They are now fending for themselves as they should, but the asymmetry is jarring.

Our story in the GUARDIAN!!!

Our story in the GUARDIAN!!! 😎 😎 🎇 🎇 🎇 UK MPs have raised concerns about the government’s contracts with Palantir after an investigation published in Switzerland highlighted allegations about the suitability and security of its products.

^{Adrienne Fichter (www.linkedin.com)}

That’s their game when they don’t have arguments that would hold in court:

Generate so much defensive legalese that refuting it becomes exhausting.

Make strawman arguments about claims that were never made.

Create the appearance of legitimacy through social proof (those 20 likes).

And do it all in spaces where the general public will never see it.

Palantir wants people to believe that seven years of talks were just demos or something.

Seven years is longer than some marriages!

The Swiss army doesn’t casually commission a 20-page internal risk assessment because someone had a coffee chat with a Palantir sales rep who opened a laptop for a demo.

Swiss health authorities don’t just write detailed evaluations with redacted conclusions because of “casual chats.”

When their systematic attempts to insert themselves into Swiss infrastructure didn’t work (the Swiss, smart people, said no 9 —nine! —times) Palantir just kept going unabated.

These researchers aren’t wealthy. They stake their professional reputations on this work. If they get it wrong, their careers suffer real consequences.

The Palantir rep has dozen other tech companies that would hire him tomorrow. If this job doesn’t work out, there’s always the next one. The stakes are fundamentally different.

Adrienne Fichter and Marguerite Meyer did rigorous investigative journalism. They documented their sources. They filed FOIA requests. They read government reports. They interviewed officials. That’s what it looks like to speak truth to power.

When Palantir published their “correction,” they didn’t back down. They pointed out *exactly* what was false about Palantir’s response.

That, right there, is the difference between journalism and PR, if anyone still needed proof.

#PostOfTheWeek (season 3):
UK MPs have raised concerns about the government’s contracts with Palantir after an investigation published in Switzerland highlighted allegations about the suitability and security of its products.

The investigation by the Zurich-based research collective WAV and the Swiss online magazine Republik details Palantir’s efforts, over the course of seven years, to sell its products to Swiss federal agencies.

Palantir is a US company that provides software to integrate and analyse data scattered across different systems, such as in the health service. It also provides artificial intelligence-enabled military targeting systems.

The investigation cites an expert report, internal to the Swiss army, that assessed Palantir’s status as a US company meant there was a possibility sensitive data shared with it could be accessed by the US government and intelligence services.