Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

TBC

In this hands-on workshop, we will unpack our year-long collaborative investigation into the US data-analytics company Palantir Technologies in Switzerland. We uncovered how the tech giant tried over multiple years to sell its products to various Swiss government institutions and how it failed nearly a dozen times.

At first, our written requests to the authorities all received the same answer: "We have no contracts with Palantir." We went on to extensively FOIA the authorities and found traces of just how hard the company had tried to wriggle its way into Swiss administration, including the Armed Forces. Documents from 59 FOIA requests across 41 federal offices, combined with additional research, exposed the corporate sales playbook of one of the most controversial companies in the world.

The workshop is built around three things we want to share: First, the specifics of the methodology: how we ran a cascading FOIA strategy keyed to the name "Palantir" rather than to specific documents, letting one office's release point us to the next. And how that approach finally surfaced our crucial piece of proof: a classified Swiss army assessment warning against the procurement of Palantir's products on data-sovereignty and reputational grounds. Second, what a year of reading Palantir's correspondence with authorities taught us about how the company actually sells: high-stakes meetings between Palantir executives and senior officials at international security forums and the World Economic Forum, pro-bono pitches that arrive in moments of public crisis, and the persistence with which the company cycles between federal offices after each rejection. Third - in hindsight, which aspects of our research and reporting proved most important once Palantir sued Republik before the Zurich Commercial Court. The interview in Zurich, the extensive right-of-reply process before publication, and the documentation of every exchange. We will share what the litigation has looked like from the inside, and what we would do differently in hindsight.

Links to the investigation:
• Part 1: https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-palantir-courted-switzerland
• Part 2: https://www.republik.ch/2025/12/09/warum-palantir-zum-risiko-fuer-die-schweiz-wird
• English adaptation on swissinfo.ch: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/war-peace/why-palantir-is-becoming-a-risky-bet-for-switzerland/9066633518:25

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