Many of those who expressed sympathy at Mike Kelly's decision to resign from Parliament due to ill health were probably surprised to hear he will now be working for American company Palantir Technologies, where he is expected to promote the firm's Australian operations.
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His former electorate of Eden-Monaro will no doubt be feeling hard done by.
Palantir is well known in the intelligence and special forces world for specialising in the collection and linking of big data (Palantir were the omniscient crystal balls in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy). Its software presents data linkages in colourful, easy-to-understand graphics that look like spider webs.
Palantir Technologies was founded in 2003 by a group of PayPal alumni and Stanford computer scientists, and is headquartered at Palo Alto, California. The company's data-mining wizardry dazzled investors, who valued it at $30.8 billion in 2015. However, in 2018, Morgan Stanley valued the company at a more modest $9.24 billion.
Palantir has never reported a profit - but of course that doesn't necessarily mean its business is unprofitable.
It operates less like a conventional software company than like a consultancy, deploying roughly half its 2000 engineers to client sites. That works at well-funded government agencies seeking specialised applications, but has been less well-received by corporate clients.
It is now promoting two software platforms in particular - Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry.
Palantir Gotham is used by, among others, the US intelligence community, the US Department of Defense and police. The software integrates structured and unstructured data, provides search and discovery capabilities, assists knowledge management, and facilitates secure collaboration.
On at least two occasions in recent years, Dr Kelly has publicly praised the work of Palantir, including its involvement in helping track down Osama Bin Laden.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, Gotham helped the US military avoid roadside bombs, track insurgents for assassination, and even participated in hunting down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Its military successes have led to several US federal civilian contracts, including with the US Department of Health and Human Services (to detect Medicare fraud), the FBI (for criminal probes) and the Department of Homeland Security (to screen travellers and monitor immigrants).
In Australia, Palantir's software has reportedly been used by our Department of Defence since 2011, and the company is said to have secured millions of dollars in contracts with intelligence agencies such as the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.
Palantir Foundry is the company's newest product. It aims to finally break through the profitability barrier with more automation and less need for on-site engineers. Deeper adoption of Foundry in the international commercial market is crucial to Palantir's hopes of greater profitability.
However, Palantir's success does not come without its critics.
The company has been involved in several data-collection controversies. During a British parliamentary inquiry in 2018, Christopher Wylie, the former research director of Cambridge Analytica, confirmed that employees from Cambridge Analytica and Palantir had shared data in the same offices. [In early 2018, Cambridge Analytica had harvested millions of Facebook users' personal data without consent to be used predominantly in political campaigning.]
Palantir has also been criticised for developing software for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is allegedly used to facilitate deportations.
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Nevertheless, the company's upbeat and folksy Australian website notes:
"Our office in the heart of the Sydney CBD serves as the launchpad for our growing business in Asia-Pacific and is home to a multinational team from across Australia and around the world. We work with critical institutions to protect networks from cyber attacks, disrupt money laundering rings, and fight terrorism and organised crime. Alongside this important work, you can find us hitting the waves at Bondi or teaching visiting Palantirians where to find the best coffee."
It also claims:
"Organizations across the healthcare system are currently deploying Palantir to accelerate and strengthen their ability to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, from tracing the spread of the virus to accelerating production of critical medical supplies."
Mike Kelly has presumably been offered a senior position by Palantir because of his longstanding national security associations and connections to government - although the company is also keen to promote Foundry to the Australian business sector.
On at least two occasions in recent years, Dr Kelly has publicly praised the work of Palantir, including its involvement in helping track down Osama Bin Laden.
"Companies like Palantir, for example, effectively vectored Osama Bin Laden's location, so these are companies and capabilities that we need to work with," he told Federal Parliament in 2018.
The average salary for Palantir employees in 2019 was about $192,212 per year, but managers and those leading its overseas operations would presumably be earning considerably more.
- Clive Williams is a visiting professor at the ANU's Centre for Military and Security Law.
