U.S. firm Palantir invited into the engine room of ADF

A quieter surrender of sovereignty is taking place in our defense software as Australia debates the $368 billion AUKUS bill, and unlike submarines, this is software we can actually build ourselves, says Wayne Hawkins.

IN FEBRUARY THIS YEAR Department of Defense signed Largest contract ever with Palantir Technologies – A $7.6 million deal to provide an ICT platform to Defense Cyber and Electronic Warfare Division. Awarded as part of a limited tender. There is no open market. There is no competition. There is no chance for an Australian company to even raise its hand.

If you haven’t heard palantirhere’s the barbecue version: it’s a US data analytics company he co-founded. Peter ThielHe is one of the most influential supporters of the Trump political project. Its software helps governments combine massive data sets with operational intelligence. Handles deportation logistics for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and provides targeting support technology to the Israeli army.

This is the company we welcome into the engine room of Australian defence.

And invite is the right word. A contract obtained by cricket In March, it was revealed that Palantir’s agreements with Defense included: placement of company staff in the department and processing of Australian datain particular according to the terms of the contract which are favorable to the company.

The defense has now spent More than $26 million with Palantir since 2013. AUSTRAC, the agency that monitors every major financial transaction in the country, spotted the Palantir contract exceeded $12 million with repeated variations.

And Future FundOur sovereign wealth fund has Approximately $100 million in Palantir shares — means Australians are customers, datasets and stakeholders all at once.

The pattern should look familiar

In my presentation AUKUS Public InquiryI have argued that the fundamental failure of the AUKUS debate is the conflation of capacity and sovereignty. Virginia-class submarines require US fuel, US maintenance, US supply chains and US operational integration. This is not strategic independence, but strategic dependence by a different name.

Palantir is a miniature AUKUS. Same dependency, different layer.

Submarines connect our equipment to Washington; The software connects our data. Researchers say Palantir’s highly specialized tools vendor lock-in — The more an organization relies on the platform to make sense of its information, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to leave it. When a foreign company’s proprietary system is caught between the Australian government and the Australian government’s own data, sovereignty over that data is a matter of courtesy, not fact.

Consider what Defense actually wants Palantir to do. The company is under a previous contract Map Australia’s defense industry capability and capacity – “Industrial Intelligence Capability”. Sit with this for a while. A foreign company in cahoots with a foreign government has been paid to construct the definitive map of Australia’s dominant industrial base. The person holding this map knows our strengths, gaps, addictions and pressure points; we don’t have about them in return.

The defense assures us that the data is “absolutely sovereign”, hosted on local infrastructure and accessed only by vetted Australian personnel. Maybe. But the sovereignty guaranteed by the seller’s contractual commitment is the sovereignty lent. Just ask officials, who assure us that the AUKUS delivery schedule is solid through June. announcement All three Virginia class boats would now come second-hand.

Here’s the part that should really piss every Australian off: unlike nuclear submarines, this is a capability we can develop ourselves.

Australia has no nuclear industry, no large workforce in nuclear engineering. Fair enough – this gap took decades to create.

But software? Data analytics? we produced Atlassian And Canvas from scratch — two of the most successful enterprise software companies in the world. CSIROs Veri61 is a world-class data science research organization. Our universities are producing AI and machine learning graduates that Silicon Valley is actively missing out on. The talent is available. It’s ours. Many are leaving precisely because contracts like this are awarded offshore without being tendered.

This is a story of renewed resource sovereignty with a new key. We export iron ore and take back steel. We export lithium and take back batteries. We are now exporting our brightest data engineers and buying back the software layer of our own national security from a Thiel-aligned firm in a limited tender at a premium. Your country. Your data. Where is your share?

None of this requires attributing bad faith to anyone. Under pressure to deliver, defense officials are buying the mature product; This is not a conspiracy, but a structural incentive problem.

But structural problems have structural fixes, and they’re not complicated:

First, there are no longer limited tenders for core national security data platforms. If the market cannot be tested, the reason must be publicly explained to Parliament.

Second, a legally determined sovereign capacity requirement: government data platforms above a threshold must be Australian-owned, hosted by Australia, and auditable by Australia; The source code should be deposited here.

Third, get some of the money. The AUKUS commitment now exceeds $368 billion. One-tenth of one per cent (about $370 million) of investment in sovereign defense data capability built by Australian firms and researchers would deliver a return to true strategic independence from any second-hand submarine.

Fourth, the Future Fund must explain to Parliament why we are holding $100 million in a company whose deepest business incentive is to keep Australian agencies dependent on it.

The question is the same as the one I posed to the AUKUS inquiry: not whether Australia has the capacity, but whether Australians have been consulted about who controls it.

Accountability without consequences is performance, not governance.

Giving the keys to our defense data to a foreign billionaire’s company without even an open tender is a performance we can no longer afford to buy a ticket for.