Palantir

Image copyright PA Media Data collected via the NHS's 111 telephone service is to be mixed with other sources to help predict where ventilators, hospital beds, and medical staff will be most in need.The goal is to help health chiefs model the consequences of moving resources to best tackle the…

The contract to help stem covid-19 will cause a stir. But if the work is done in the open, it could be a boonPALANTIR TAKES its name from crystal ball-like artefacts in the “Lord of the Rings” novels. The secretive Silicon Valley data-analysis company is used to working with governments.…

Chinese-style surveillance is coming to a neighborhood near you. From drones barking orders at park-goers to tracing people's movements through cellphones, Western governments are rushing to embrace sophisticated surveillance tools that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. In the European Union, home to the world's strictest privacy…

Today, there are no clues as to the danger lurking outside my front door except for the eerie absence of people. Our lives are being restricted by a virus that is invisible to the naked eye, verging on abstraction, and yet it is terrifyingly real. Compare this to all the…

March 18, 2020 12:38 PM ET The data-mining company that was responsible for locating terrorist Osama bin Laden is reportedly working with the Trump administration on a bold plan to measure the coronavirus outbreak. Palantir is aiding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to deploy geolocation technology as…

Medical personnel take a sample from a person at a drive-thru covid-19 testing station at a Kaiser Permanente facility on March 12, 2020 in San Francisco, California (Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images) For many people in the U.S. who fear they’re already sick with covid-19, the past few weeks have…

Two handy things to know, when you’re reporting on an ultraweathy individual, is whether that person owns a private jet, and where that jet has been. So last year, when an editor assigned me to report on tech billionaire and major right-wing donor Peter Thiel, I set out to find…

Recent surveys, studies, forecasts and other quantitative assessments of the progress and impact of AI highlight the growing respect for data and its uses by businesses everywhere and the increasingly positive—but still mixed—attitudes towards AI by US consumers. 46% of US consumers have changed how they feel about AI and…

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption This pandemic is the first to be played out via smartphones It's the first pandemic of the smartphone era - and that means governments have access to new ways of tracking the spread of Covid-19. On this week's Tech Tent, we find out about…

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption This pandemic is the first to be played out via smartphones It's the first pandemic of the smartphone era - and that means governments have access to new ways of tracking the spread of Covid-19. On this week's Tech Tent, we find out about…