It’s likely an impossible choice, between inept big four consultancy groups (that charge $$$, deliver little, and run everything through manual excel entry) vs palantir who likely will deliver results. I have no love for Palantir but at least they’re competent.
During covid, palantir had to elbow its way to sell to the UK govt and replaced dilapidated “solutions” from the big four.
As a Brit, I've never had the sense the UK (specifically the City of London) has any genuine interest in tackling money laundering. I suspect our economy is structurally reliant upon us being extremely good at it.
Our money laundering supports freedom, while theirs supports tyranny etc.
I love the whole “unexplained wealth” concept the UK developed, curiously enough after Abramovich had been running around buying Chelsea etc. If you are friend to MI6 this week you are allowed to do anything, but if you get on their wrong side you will be Berezhovskied.
Western affluence was built on the movement of stolen people and goods; it stands to reason that its maintenance in an era where one of those is illegal and the other involves somewhat less looting might involve the movement of stolen debt (money).
Having worked at FinTechs and in finance in general that doesn't ring true at all. The FCA definitely takes anti-money laundering checks quite seriously.
e.g. (off the top of my head) NatWest were fined £264 million for AML breaches.
I'm no expert by any means but if I wanted to flout the rules I'd definitely consider a few other juristictions before the City.
AML tech is so primitive, it almost looks like it's designed that anyone 'in the know' will know how to not be detected.
Eg. Most AML checks are done because someone wrote some triggering keyword in the payment reference field. Do we honestly think a criminal mastermind won't manage to come up with something else to write there?
The AML you are thinking of is designed to catch small time crooks and drug mules (and maybe also dumb terrorist supporters). They are not really designed (or more specifically deliberately obtuse towards) Slavic oligarch money. Not all "corruption" and money laundering are treated equally. Places like London (not to mention Jersey), Switzerland, and Singapore are more for good old fashioned siphoning-of-national-assets type of corruption where there's almost always a "clean" paper trail to back things up. Also, don't get tax dodging mixed with money laundering. There are plenty of processes required by OECD and similar orgs, e.g. the concepts of a LEI number, that are not really useful against real oligarch/state level money launderers.
Here's a simple example: You lived in a former USSR/iron curtain state. During the chaos of '89 you managed to "acquire" lots of assets or finagle yourself into owning former public companies/real estate/factories. The paper trail is clean as far as your typical London banks are concerned because you are merely liquidating assets you own in your own country where there's a full paper trail (regardless of whether it was attained through illegitimate means). Alternatively, in a different narrative, you a rich international student from similar types of countries and you just happened to have "rich parents" who have plenty of money to throw around. It's a very different threat model than for example trying to prevent grassroots terrorism financing.
Money laundering vs tax evasion have a lot of overlap but don't get them confused. They are very different threat models from the perspective of the service provider (and it's also why many smaller foreign banks refuse to accept Americans as customers, partially because of the paperwork required to stay compliant with Uncle Sam).
If you want an actual no-questions-asked romp of organized crime type of money I believe the current main contenders are the middle eastern states like Dubai (pre Iranian conflict at least).
Rumor through the financial grapevine is that ironically there are many GCC middle eastern royalty/pseudo-royalty currently under house arrest who are trying to do the opposite i.e. get their assets out of the country because their main bank accounts are frozen domestically. So basically real life Nigerian princes.
(As for why they are under house arrest, it's kinda out of scope for HN but mostly because of domestic political purges, especially in Saudi Arabia from what I heard)
The rich international student pipeline has always stood out to me – we've seen dozens of 30, 40 or even 50 storey skyscrapers built for students, enjoying lifestyles usually reserved for those in high finance.
Well, I assure you most London bankers won't lose any sleep given that the money is often from Gulf states/places like China/ex Soviet oligarchies/various forms of corruption in the global south. The countries where the money flow out from often lack the means to actually pursue and prosecute overseas, especially for what boils down to "white collar" offences/corruption. It's only when anything like terrorism/organized crime/anything involving Uncle Sam's tax revenue occurs then the banks AML processes might become useful for more than just check-the-box compliance.
You will often find that entrepreneurs and digital nomads get caught in this sort of of AML debanking web because the paltry 6-7 figs of business/personal transactions across countries often resemble mules/illegitimate businesses and the banks are not allowed to talk about it. (Just go to the subreddit for wise or PayPal and search for the keyword "frozen")
Meanwhile international students can easily bring in 8 figs to buy houses and that's perfectly fine because it's "clean" as far as the compliance department is concerned. It's also a cultural issue, fintech platforms and neobanks try very hard to use heuristics to automate compliance. This is why I recommend digital nomads to use a proper cross border bank like HSBC Premier. You pay a lot more but you get a lot less of the "account frozen" bullshit.
Countries that are caught in between corruption and terrorist threats and Uncle Sam are the worst generally. E.g. transfering money both into and from Turkey are a pain in the ass.
Genuine question to people more knowledgeable: Why are politicians/technocrats doing this?
Also generally speaking e.g. in relation to chat control and so on. Do they think this is what the people actually want because of lobbying or are they aware and believe they know better? Is it literally just corruption? Or are there actual benefits and we are just in the HN bubble where most people think its a bad idea?
Businesses and politicians don't care about (you), the little guy. They want your demographic, the individual outrage you feel is pointless. Nobody is going to throw away their iPhone or protest the internet because NSO Group and Palantir exist. Your outrage is Palantir's commodity.
Even among tech-obsessed ideologues, both sides roll over and accept this because it's less flattering than arguing over CPU specs. Would we really break up with Big Tech over a gold trophy and a few backdoors?
I don't think politicians across the board are corrupt. I think they're just surrounded by syncophants and special interest. Also the old absolute power corrupts, absolutely sort of thing.
I can't be convinced people go into politics twiddling their mustaches like a cartoon villain. I think that they go into it either to genuinely help, or because they like the attention. Then the system surrounds then with people who either take small bites of their ethics, or agree with anything for the chance to be powerful as well.
> Palantir has previously defended its work, saying it has led to about 99,000 extra operations being scheduled in the NHS
No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
> helped UK police tackle domestic violence
And precisely how was this done?
> Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract
Contractual obligations that are not practically enforceable will not be honored. I don't think these individual administrative agencies have the acumen necessary to correctly negotiate these contracts.
Can't find the article atm, but it was basically pre-crime from Minority Report (without the pre-cogs, obviously). They looked at large datasets and built a predictive model, correlating things like race and prior criminal history to infer who was more likely to re-offend. At scale, this works. Ethical issues abound, however.
We're going to need a definition of "works." The false positive rate seems to be notable since those stories readily percolate into media whenever these schemes are implemented and the damage done from those is absolutely massive.
The idea that criminals are likely to re-offend is not new. What to do about this has always been the challenge. Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Unless, of course, you are invested in the "private prison" industry.
> No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.
Epstein's friends who had appointments in the WTC on 9/11 mysteriously canceled last minute or had other excuses.
- Lutnick, whose whole Cantor & Fitzgerald was obliterated, brought his son to school after a last minute "argument with his wife".
- Sarah Ferguson was "stuck in traffic" and late.
- Michael Jackson "overslept".
There is another one whom I don't remember. Maybe the Bayesians here can calculate the probability using a control group of all well connected people who miraculously survived. There aren't that many.
Epstein and Maxwell's other friends of course were connected to funding Palantir.
Feelings about Palantir aside, this is a really misleading headline. The FCA has hired Palantir to "investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data", which presumably requires Palantir to have access to that sensitive data.
Saying that Palantir is "reaching" into the British state, and then having the article image be "billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel" literally holding a wad of cash is... not exactly a high standard of reportage.
And that's the most believable thing in the image. From the banknotes, to the rather visible outline on Thiel himself, to what I can only describe as an out-of-focus picture of the supernatural entity from Still Wakes the Deep.
He joked about Palantir killing people. I know Israel and the US have been using some sort of Palantir system for target designation and that speaks for itself.
During covid, palantir had to elbow its way to sell to the UK govt and replaced dilapidated “solutions” from the big four.
I love the whole “unexplained wealth” concept the UK developed, curiously enough after Abramovich had been running around buying Chelsea etc. If you are friend to MI6 this week you are allowed to do anything, but if you get on their wrong side you will be Berezhovskied.
Having worked at FinTechs and in finance in general that doesn't ring true at all. The FCA definitely takes anti-money laundering checks quite seriously.
e.g. (off the top of my head) NatWest were fined £264 million for AML breaches.
I'm no expert by any means but if I wanted to flout the rules I'd definitely consider a few other juristictions before the City.
Eg. Most AML checks are done because someone wrote some triggering keyword in the payment reference field. Do we honestly think a criminal mastermind won't manage to come up with something else to write there?
Here's a simple example: You lived in a former USSR/iron curtain state. During the chaos of '89 you managed to "acquire" lots of assets or finagle yourself into owning former public companies/real estate/factories. The paper trail is clean as far as your typical London banks are concerned because you are merely liquidating assets you own in your own country where there's a full paper trail (regardless of whether it was attained through illegitimate means). Alternatively, in a different narrative, you a rich international student from similar types of countries and you just happened to have "rich parents" who have plenty of money to throw around. It's a very different threat model than for example trying to prevent grassroots terrorism financing.
Money laundering vs tax evasion have a lot of overlap but don't get them confused. They are very different threat models from the perspective of the service provider (and it's also why many smaller foreign banks refuse to accept Americans as customers, partially because of the paperwork required to stay compliant with Uncle Sam).
If you want an actual no-questions-asked romp of organized crime type of money I believe the current main contenders are the middle eastern states like Dubai (pre Iranian conflict at least).
Rumor through the financial grapevine is that ironically there are many GCC middle eastern royalty/pseudo-royalty currently under house arrest who are trying to do the opposite i.e. get their assets out of the country because their main bank accounts are frozen domestically. So basically real life Nigerian princes.
(As for why they are under house arrest, it's kinda out of scope for HN but mostly because of domestic political purges, especially in Saudi Arabia from what I heard)
The rich international student pipeline has always stood out to me – we've seen dozens of 30, 40 or even 50 storey skyscrapers built for students, enjoying lifestyles usually reserved for those in high finance.
It just seems very suspect to me.
You will often find that entrepreneurs and digital nomads get caught in this sort of of AML debanking web because the paltry 6-7 figs of business/personal transactions across countries often resemble mules/illegitimate businesses and the banks are not allowed to talk about it. (Just go to the subreddit for wise or PayPal and search for the keyword "frozen")
Meanwhile international students can easily bring in 8 figs to buy houses and that's perfectly fine because it's "clean" as far as the compliance department is concerned. It's also a cultural issue, fintech platforms and neobanks try very hard to use heuristics to automate compliance. This is why I recommend digital nomads to use a proper cross border bank like HSBC Premier. You pay a lot more but you get a lot less of the "account frozen" bullshit.
You should also take a look at this
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001441
Countries that are caught in between corruption and terrorist threats and Uncle Sam are the worst generally. E.g. transfering money both into and from Turkey are a pain in the ass.
"US to embed Palantir AI across military" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47471655
"The singularity".
Also generally speaking e.g. in relation to chat control and so on. Do they think this is what the people actually want because of lobbying or are they aware and believe they know better? Is it literally just corruption? Or are there actual benefits and we are just in the HN bubble where most people think its a bad idea?
Even among tech-obsessed ideologues, both sides roll over and accept this because it's less flattering than arguing over CPU specs. Would we really break up with Big Tech over a gold trophy and a few backdoors?
Power is leverage.
Leverage is easily applied to corrupt people.
Politicians are corrupt.
Quod erat demonstrandum
I can't be convinced people go into politics twiddling their mustaches like a cartoon villain. I think that they go into it either to genuinely help, or because they like the attention. Then the system surrounds then with people who either take small bites of their ethics, or agree with anything for the chance to be powerful as well.
Is there a solution? I'm not sure there is.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/peter-mande...
I'm unsure why MI6, who is eminently familiar with the Maxwell spy family, allows this. So perhaps they are in on it.
No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.
> helped UK police tackle domestic violence
And precisely how was this done?
> Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract
Contractual obligations that are not practically enforceable will not be honored. I don't think these individual administrative agencies have the acumen necessary to correctly negotiate these contracts.
Can't find the article atm, but it was basically pre-crime from Minority Report (without the pre-cogs, obviously). They looked at large datasets and built a predictive model, correlating things like race and prior criminal history to infer who was more likely to re-offend. At scale, this works. Ethical issues abound, however.
We're going to need a definition of "works." The false positive rate seems to be notable since those stories readily percolate into media whenever these schemes are implemented and the damage done from those is absolutely massive.
The idea that criminals are likely to re-offend is not new. What to do about this has always been the challenge. Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Unless, of course, you are invested in the "private prison" industry.
That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.
And backed by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital (CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency of the US).
https://fortune.com/2025/07/29/in-q-tel-cia-venture-capital-...
- Lutnick, whose whole Cantor & Fitzgerald was obliterated, brought his son to school after a last minute "argument with his wife".
- Sarah Ferguson was "stuck in traffic" and late.
- Michael Jackson "overslept".
There is another one whom I don't remember. Maybe the Bayesians here can calculate the probability using a control group of all well connected people who miraculously survived. There aren't that many.
Epstein and Maxwell's other friends of course were connected to funding Palantir.
Saying that Palantir is "reaching" into the British state, and then having the article image be "billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel" literally holding a wad of cash is... not exactly a high standard of reportage.
And that's the most believable thing in the image. From the banknotes, to the rather visible outline on Thiel himself, to what I can only describe as an out-of-focus picture of the supernatural entity from Still Wakes the Deep.