Transition of officials from the UK Ministry of Defence to spyware firm Palantir raises alarms over national security dependency and eroding accountability.
Investigation reveals that Palantir, a US surveillance and AI firm with close ties to the Trump administration, hired its fourth former UK Ministry of Defence official in 2025, just months before winning a no-bid £240 million contract. The pattern of recruiting senior civil servants and ministers, coupled with high-level government access, illustrates a deep integration that critics warn undermines sovereign control, democratic oversight, and public trust in critical systems from the NHS to national security.
Palantir hired four ex-Ministry of Defence officials last year, with its latest recruit joining months before the US spyware giant won its biggest ever contract with the department, openDemocracy can reveal.
On 31 August 2025, Barnaby Kistruck left his role as the Ministry of Defence’s director of industrial strategy, prosperity and exports – marking the end of a career in the civil service spanning almost two decades, in which he’d worked primarily on national security and defence.
Nine days later, he took up his new position as senior counsellor at Palantir, a US tech firm with close ties to the Trump administration that specialises in providing AI-powered military and surveillance systems and data analytics.
openDemocracy understands Kistruck played a key role in writing the UK’s Strategic Defence Review and accompanying Defence Industrial Strategy, which were published last summer and recommended AI play an increased role in defence policy.
In December 2025, three months after Kistruck’s appointment, Palantir won a three-year Ministry of Defence contract worth £240m to ‘modernise defence’ by providing “data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making across classifications” in the armed forces.
The contract, which is more than three times larger than any Palantir has previously won with the MoD, was awarded without tender.