Rory Stewart

Often the data entry is no good.

You type in a prisoner's name wrong, or you don't format it right.

And what Palantir developed to do is to develop plumbing to connect all these database systems together.

So maybe a good illustration was after the debauch in Afghanistan, where the US were trying to evacuate people from Afghanistan,

Palantir was brought in to connect information on which American planes were currently in maintenance, which had spare capacity, who was on the runway.

They would even connect this with social media, and they were able to, they argue, bring together a much more efficient operation.

Now, why are they controversial?

They're controversial because that pitch that came to me in Prisms

has been successfully made to the NHS, to the Ministry of Defence, to police forces and others.

And what are they saying?

They're saying to a police force, listen, there will be a lot of data and information that you have, which will give you a lot of ways of predicting where crime is likely to occur, when it's likely to occur, what kind of crime will help you target resources.

NHS, you'll be able to manage your waiting lists much better and you'll be able to do patient aftercare much better if you can put together all the complicated information

Well, this is another question of debate, right?

So Palantir claims that there are reductions in X percent.

I mean, they're not like President Trump-style percentage reductions, right?

We're talking about, you know, somewhere 12 percent, 18 percent increase in efficiency in particular types of post-op and stuff.

I think it's delivering and it's improving.

My instinct, before I get sued by Palantir, is that it's making a difference at the margins and probably, if you're running the NHS, the difference at the margins actually results in saving hundreds of millions over time.

What was the cost going to be to the prison service?

Initially, they were pitching to come in almost for free.