Thiel’s company has spy links
AUCKLAND: New Zealand spy agencies and Special Air Service soldiers have longstanding commercial links with a controversial bigdata company founded by surprise Kiwi Peter Thiel.
An investigation into Mr Thiel’s links to New Zealand has found his firm Palantir Technologies has counted as clients the New Zealand Defence Force, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications and Security Bureau, with contracts dating back to at least 2012.
The recent news the billionaire investor and Trump supporter became a New Zealand citizen in 2011, before buying a 193ha estate on Lake Wanaka in 2015, raised questions in Parliament and around the world.
The spy links revelation prompted Green Party intelligence and security matters spokesman Kennedy Graham to call for a delay to the passage of the New Zealand Intelligence and Security Bill, which yesterday passed its second and penultimate reading.
Mr Graham said the New ZealandPalantir connection was ‘‘potentially huge’’ and raised more questions than it answered.
‘‘The Parliament should not be too hasty until these things properly come to light,’’ he said.
The connections between Palantir — controversial in the United States over its long links with National Security
Agency surveillance operations and Mr Thiel’s backing of President Donald Trump — and the New Zealand Government has long been shrouded in secrecy.
Questions sent to spokesmen for Mr Thiel and Palantir both went unanswered this week.
Requests under the Official Information Act to the three agencies seeking to disclose the existence and amount spent on Palantir dataanalysis software
initially drew a response of either ‘‘neither confirm nor deny’’ or ‘‘neither denies nor confirms’’ and claims that even answering the question threatened national security.
This mystery is undercut by official publication over the past few years by the agencies themselves disclosing its use.
A recentlyadvertised job description for the SIS said a key performance measurement would be that ‘‘appropriate user
champions are identified within teams and provided with support to develop the Palantir skills of their team.’’
Jobs advertised in Wellington by Palantir itself warn successful applicants ‘‘must be willing and able to obtain a Government security clearance in New Zealand’’.
The company has been a regular fixture at the university careers fairs since 2013.
And a brief item in the mili tary magazine Army News in 2012 stated a trial of the company’s software was being piloted, but this was not the first time it had been deployed in New Zealand.
‘‘Palantir intelligence software is in use with a number of our domestic and foreign partners,’’ Army News said.
The reference to domestic partners is understood to be the GCSB and SIS, who both assist the army’s SAS regiment in deployments overseas.
The New Zealand Defence Force, after being made aware of the public disclosures, backtracked on its refusal to comment and confirmed in later correspondence Palantir had been in use since 2012 and 100 staff had been trained in its use.
Despite the backtrack by their counterparts in the military, a spokesman for both spy agencies reiterated: ‘‘It is our longstanding policy not to discuss operations, suppliers or capabilities.’’
While the exact size of Mr Thiel’s stake in the company is not clear, it is by many accounts the largest single asset of the man valued by Forbes to be worth $4 billion.