Mosley's case for accepting dependence

Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir Technologies in the United Kingdom and Europe, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Thursday, 22 October, that Europe will have to accept a degree of dependence on the United States, at least in the short term. He argued that European countries need to acknowledge that reliance on US technology is close to unavoidable. Mosley added that the dependence is not limited to software, pointing to hardware bottlenecks that receive far less attention. He also said Europe's industrial needs leave it even more dependent on China.

Palantir began as a start-up backed by the CIA and, two decades later, is one of the most powerful technology firms of the Trump era. Its equipment serves intelligence and police services in the United States and Europe. Co-founder Peter Thiel and chief executive Alex Karp maintain close ties to the Trump administration, which has made the company a symbol of US tech dominance for European leaders.

Maven and the sovereignty question

Maven, an AI-optimised targeting system, is used by the US military and was widely deployed during US strikes against Iran. NATO selected the Maven software in 2025 to fuse intelligence from different sensors, prepare operations and speed up targeting. Mosley called Maven a powerful tool for many European defence and technology projects, which lose value for Europe unless they are connected to it.

For Europeans, relying on a US company to process the most sensitive military data raises a sovereignty question. Even when the data stays under the control of the armed forces, those forces depend on a foreign supplier to analyse it and turn it into usable information for commanders. Because the software remains subject to American export rules, the dependence could become strategic if policy in Washington changes.

Europe's push for alternatives

In June, France announced that the French group ChapsVision had been chosen to succeed Palantir at the DGSI, the country's domestic intelligence agency. Some European governments are routing more contracts to domestic suppliers in the name of technological sovereignty. Mosley played down that shift, arguing that more competition forces a sharper test of what actually works on real data for a specific problem. He said clients in eastern Europe are more engaged and determined to put Palantir-linked capabilities into operation. The European Commission is also working on a package on technological sovereignty, with a law on cloud computing and artificial intelligence at its core.