No plans to use Palantir in emerging defence-tech space, government says

Source: Radio New Zealand

A briefing shows former Defence Minister Judith Collins met US defence technology powerhouse Palantir in February on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to talk about an ongoing “partnership”.

Palantir had become the go-to tech company for the Pentagon and its AI technology had been key for targeting missiles in the war in Iran.

But the government here on Wednesday said the NZ Defence Force had “no existing plans” to use the company’s emerging technologies.

Collins’ meeting was revealed in a one-page briefing released under the Official Information Act to AUT law lecturer Dr Marco de Jong.

Collins met Palantir’s international president Laurence Lee, a former senior official in the UK’s defence and intelligence agencies.

The meeting on 13 February was an “informal discussion”, her office told RNZ on Wednesday.

The briefing to her ahead of the meeting suggested two “key messages” from Collins – who is also space and spy agency minister – to Lee.

The first was blanked out while the second said: “I acknowledge the importance of an ongoing effective partnership.

“Do you see any upcoming opportunities of interest for New Zealand in new technologies and emerging capabilities in this sector.” [sic]

Several paragraphs of ‘background’ were blanked out.

Collins’ office passed questions about the partnership with Palantir on to Chris Penk who was taking over her portfolios soon. She did not address what if any “opportunities” she discussed with Lee.

Penk on Wednesday told RNZ, “The New Zealand Defence Force has no existing plans to use Palantir in the emerging technologies space.

“The NZDF uses Palantir as an analytics platform to aid with planning. The Government’s ongoing partnership with Palantir is led by the GCSB.”

Emerging technologies featured in the Defence Capability Plan to spend $12 billion by 2029.

The Palantir meeting did not appear in Collins’ ministerial diary because individual meetings overseas often changed so were not recorded, her office said.

Palantir’s Maven draws up strike lists

The US and Israel launched surprise airstrikes on Iran on 28 February.

Many of the thousands of targets hit were selected from a list produced by Palantir’s technology called Maven “after it analyzed information from drones, satellite imagery and other sources”, the New York Times reported.

On 21 March, Reuters reported that Maven was being adopted by the Pentagon as a “core US military system”.

Another report a few days ago by Defense Scoop said Maven would become the “cornerstone” of a fused network of battlefield sensors and weapons cross air, land, sea and space.

The network was called Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control or CJADC2, where “Combined” stands for US partners and allies. The NZ Defence Force had been helping build the network.

For instance, the NZDF had been helping plan the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, RIMPAC 2026, where tech would be tested under Project Overmatch, the US navy’s core contribution to CJADC2, a navy report said.

Collins meets Amazon

At Munich, Collins also met with cloud computing giants Amazon Web Services (AWS) and with German multinational SAP, a separate 80-page briefing showed.

It said SAP’s latest “suite” of defence and security products “represents a timely and essential upgrade for the NZDF that will improve our organisational readiness and interoperability”.

It also said public agencies were increasingly using Amazon – they spent $16 million with it last year – and though the NZDF’s partner was Microsoft, “this does not preclude the use of other suppliers, including AWS”.

Collins met with another Pentagon favourite, drone-and-software-maker Anduril, last July as Defence began work on its new capability plan. Drones were key to it, however defence leaders told MPs recently that most vital in future would be the data-synthesising software behind defensive and offensive weaponry.

Last month the Pentagon consolidated its AI projects with Anduril into a 10-year contract worth up to $34b.

Palantir’s partnership with the US government has been widely reported for years, especially since the firm co-founded in 2004 by NZ citizen Peter Thiel – who helped bring vice president JD Vance to power – in 2017 turned its powerful surveillance technologies to data crunching for the Pentagon.

Much less information was publicly available about the NZ-Palantir partnership. It was reported in 2018 the US firm got a contract in 2012 with the Defence Force covering software, hardware and training 100 staff. Its hardware was still in use by NZDF in 2024, an annual review showed. During Covid, Palantir pitched its pandemic-tracking software to the Ministry of Health.

The defence ministry last month told de Jong its strategic leadership team had not had any meetings in the last year with Palantir, or with Anduril, or with other major defence contractors L3 Harris and Hirtenberger, or with NZ drone maker Syos.

Maven and the network for US partners including NZ

Maven was central to Palantir’s fortunes and the firm and the Pentagon liked to show off online what it could do, outmatching the work of thousands of military analysts.

With NATO last year also acquiring the platform, critics have voiced fears the speed and scale of its target analysis would take the place of critical thinking.

Palantir said in 2024 that Maven provided the cloud infrastructure, software capabilities and AI that powered some CJADC2 initiatives.

The NZDF takes part in experiments and testing run in parallel by the US navy, army and air force’s CJADC2 projects.

New Zealand and its Five Eyes intelligence partners signed up 18 months ago to the US navy’s Project Overmatch.

Overmatch had been setting up a new US-based Cooperative Project Office that NZ personnel were expected to help man, alongside a “coalition lab” for testing shared tech, the navy reported.

“The coalition network enables resilient communication and network connectivity amongst the ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) in a distributed environment to close kill-chains and enable long-range fires,” it said.

The US Marines recently set up their own CJADC2 project, Project Dynamis.

The NZDF was embracing emerging tech underwritten by a much expanded budget at the same time its core partners Australia, the UK and the US had streamlined sharing military tech between themselves, and as US President Donald Trump had been issuing directives to speed up arms transfers and trade under ‘America First’ policies.

Many militaries were stressing the need for speed like never before.

Defence’s annual review to Parliament last month said, “There was a need to move to a different ‘risk appetite’ to keep up with quickly evolving technology, placing a higher value on speed of delivery” even if this involved a “fast fail, rather than be slow to act and left behind”.

The NZDF had $26m set aside to boost this including adding to its badly depleted workforce.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand