Palantir Tells Swiss Magazine to “Lawyer Up, A**Hole” After Armed Forces Snub Raises U.S. Data Fears

“You better lawyer up, a**hole!” -Alex Karp next week to your local newspaper, probably

Somewhere between stealing your personal data and a call with the Pentagon, it appears somebody at Palantir (read: Alex Karp) read a small Swiss magazine and muttered, “Forget about our ongoing war with shortsellers… we need to shut down a very specific printing press… ASAP.”

Which brings us to the villain of the week… an online publication called Republik. What’s their crime, you ask? Publishing two December articles detailing how Switzerland’s federal government basically kept Palantir in the lobby for years… and never let them into the building.

According to reports, Swiss authorities repeatedly rejected Palantir’s approaches over concerns about data sovereignty and whether sensitive military information could, in theory, end up within reach of U.S. authorities. 

In fact, one internal Swiss Armed Forces review from December 2024 reportedly concluded that using Palantir for military data posed a risk that American agencies could access those files. That’s not exactly the testimonial Peter Thiel’s gonna frame and hang in the office. So what did Palantir do? I’ll let you take a quick guess. Spoiler: they sued.

But before you picture a billion-dollar libel war, get this… Alex Karp isn’t actually seeking damages and he’s not crying defamation. Instead, they’re invoking Switzerland’s “right to reply” law, arguing they weren’t given adequate space to publish their counterstatement. Translation: “You printed the documents. Cool. Now print our rebuttal too.” -signed, (Palantir’s army of lawyers)

(Source: Financial Times)

In a statement, Palantir said all it wants is for Republik to publish its “concise, fact-on-fact counter statement.” Republik’s managing director, Katharina Hemmer, essentially called that a bunch of BS. She said the company wanted to run very lengthy counterstatements to each article, and the magazine didn’t believe those statements fairly addressed the reporting.

So now a judge gets to decide whether this is a media rights dispute… or just one of the most powerful companies in world history trying to rewrite the narrative.

This whole thing lands right after Palantir acknowledged Europe has trust issues “real hesitance” about its tools. European leaders have been increasingly vocal about reducing reliance on U.S. tech infrastructure, especially for sensitive government systems.

Republik framed Palantir’s outreach as a multiyear, cross-ministry effort to embed itself into core Swiss state infrastructure… from the defence ministry to the Federal Office of Public Health and even money-laundering reporting authorities. Swiss officials, according to the documents, repeatedly said “no thanks.”

Even the Brits are speaking out against Karp and Co. Last week in the UK Parliament, Labour MP Clive Lewis cited the Swiss report during a debate on British defence contracts, saying “even the Swiss army has rejected Palantir as a platform on national security grounds” and urging Britain to stay clear away from the firm.

There’s no mystery about where Palantir’s core money comes from… Washington signs most of the checks. The issue is that overseas growth hasn’t kept pace, and Europe was never meant to be an afterthought. That’s why this Swiss storyline carries more weight than it seems on the surface.

What makes this saga fascinating isn’t the lawsuit itself. Right-to-reply actions are common in Switzerland. What’s unusual is a massive U.S. data intelligence firm pulling that lever against a small local outlet. It’s what I like to call a David-and-Goliath dynamic… except Goliath is arguing about column inches. Reason #1,384 that Alex Karp is a national treasure.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News doesn’t hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.