Germany's military shuns Palantir for now

Germany's armed forces do not plan to award contracts to US data analytics and defense software company Palantir for now, a leading military officer told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

"I don't see that happening at all at the moment," Thomas Daum, in charge of the German military's cyber defense, was quoted as saying in the paper's Tuesday edition.

"As much as we are interested in the functionality for our own database, it is simply inconceivable at the moment to grant industry staff access to the national database," said Daum.

Last month, Reuters reported that Palantir's artificial intelligence system will become an official program of record for the Pentagon, locking in long-term use of the company's weapons-targeting technology across the US military.

The German army has been looking into artificial intelligence tools to analyze battlefield data more rapidly than humans.