NATO commander: Europe has no alternative to Palantir’s warfare tech – POLITICO

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NATO commander: Europe has no alternative to Palantir’s warfare tech

Those seeking alternatives need to prove they can be delivered quickly, said Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

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Pierre Vandier speaks during a press conference after a Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on May 19, 2026. | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images

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May 20, 2026

2:03 pm CET

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Antoaneta Roussi

NATO has no viable alternative to Palantir’s battlefield AI technology, a top alliance commander told POLITICO, warning that Europe must move much faster if it wants to reduce its dependence on U.S. defense tech.

The alliance wanted to move quickly when it purchased its Maven Smart System from Palantir, the U.S. data analytics and defense giant, in March 2025 to improve intelligence, targeting, battlespace awareness and planning, while speeding up decision-making through artificial intelligence applications.

“So they said: we’ll take something off the shelf that the United States used,” Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, who is in charge of innovation and preparing NATO for the future of warfare, told POLITICO Monday. “As far as I know, today there is no real competitor for Palantir.”

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The deal was among the fastest in NATO’s history, taking just six months from defining the requirement to procuring the system. It has been installed at Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands and at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium.

The purchase has sharpened concerns in Europe over dependence on U.S. defense technology, at a time when the Trump administration's threats to conquer Greenland and to punish NATO members who did not come to his assistance against Iran has called into question Washington's commitment to the alliance.

While NATO has said the system does not lock the alliance into Palantir, the company has faced criticism from governments and civil society, who argue that switching away from its platforms can be costly and time-consuming.

The purchase has sharpened concerns in Europe over dependence on U.S. defense technology. | Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

Earlier this month, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency picked the French AI firm ChapsVision over Palantir, after the country’s digital minister, Karsten Wildberger, called for a European alternative to reduce reliance on the U.S. company.

Palantir's CEO Alex Karp had dismissed the minister’s call, saying he didn't "understand how Germany believes it can afford this.”

Vandier, a French navy admiral, said the burden is on European companies and governments seeking alternatives to prove they can be delivered quickly.

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“The question for the alliance is to show up with equivalent solutions,” he said. “It’s a race. It’s the ability of Europeans to show that they are able to provide something which is relevant in a matter of months, years, and not a decade.”

The NATO commander cautioned that Europe’s debate over digital “sovereignty” often blurs several separate problems: dependence on single suppliers, reliance on non-European infrastructure, and control over data.

For NATO, the most immediate issue is avoiding dependence on a single supplier. Vandier said that risk can be reduced by pushing companies toward interoperable systems, allowing NATO countries to switch between vendors or rotate suppliers if they are dissatisfied.

Vandier said NATO is trying to reduce that risk by building open digital systems that let multiple companies plug into alliance networks — a model he said will become even more important as AI and robotics enter military operations.

A deeper challenge is Europe’s long-term dependence on foreign technology after decades of underinvestment. Europe does not produce many of the chips it relies on, lacks sufficient cloud infrastructure, and still depends on networks and systems built elsewhere, Vandier said.

In the short term, he argued, the most realistic goal for Europe is not full technological autonomy, but control over data. That means ensuring Europeans own and control processed data, including the intellectual property attached to it, and can decide what to share and with whom.

“That is what I would define as digital sovereignty,” Vandier said.

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