France’s domestic spy agency will swap software from US defense tech giant Palantir for a French-made alternative, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has said. Palantir, however, has said that the change won’t happen for years.
In a video statement released on Tuesday, Lecornu said that the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) had hired French firm ChapsVision to “replace the American giant Palantir.”
Lecornu did not say when the switchover would take place. The DGSI has used Palantir software since 2016, and renewed its contract with the Silicon Valley defense firm last year. The current contract is set to expire in 2028, and Palantir insists that it will remain “fully in force” until then.
In a statement, Palantir said that its cooperation with the DGSI “continues under the existing contractual commitments and in full compliance with the highest standards of security, data protection, regulatory compliance and transparency.”
Palantir’s flagship product, Gotham, is an operating system that pulls together data – for example surveillance footage, archived case files, and reports from agents in the field – that would otherwise take an agency such as the DGSI days to sort through. It then uses AI to analyze this data to recommend targets for surveillance, arrest, or other law enforcement actions.
However, Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s close relationship with US President Donald Trump’s administration, and his recent ‘manifesto’ espousing American military supremacy, have panicked some European leaders. Last month, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, reportedly chose ChapsVision over Palantir to handle its data analytics.
The growing mistrust of Palantir comes amid a broader EU-wide push for what French President Emmanuel Macron terms “digital sovereignty.” Macron has taken this push further than most European leaders, with the French government ditching US videoconferencing software – including Zoom and Microsoft Teams – earlier this year, swapping Microsoft Windows for Linux, and leading prosecution efforts against Elon Musk’s X platform.
Much of this effort is aimed at shoring up domestic support. The French left has been fiercely critical of the US tech industry, and Macron is facing a likely presidential challenge from center-left MEP Raphael Glucksmann, who has made opposition to the Silicon Valley titans a centerpiece of his campaign.
“Our enemy has a face,” he told a crowd on Saturday. “And he has a name. His name is Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Zhang Yiming,” he said, referring to the CEOs of SpaceX, OpenAI and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.
