TL;DRFrance and Germany pledged to develop a sovereign alternative to Palantir’s military software. France’s Arcadia is the model. Both countries already dropped Palantir for ChapsVision.
France and Germany pledged on Friday to develop a European alternative to Palantir’s military AI software. A joint declaration signed after talks between Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz committed the two countries to examine “a European sovereign digital backbone” covering data-centric security, AI, and cloud solutions. France’s Arcadia, an AI-powered command-and-control platform, was named as the starting point, alongside unspecified “comparable German solutions.”
The declaration arrives after both countries moved to drop Palantir from their intelligence services. France’s DGSI announced in June it was replacing Palantir with ChapsVision’s ArgonOS, six months after renewing the American firm’s contract. Germany’s BfV chose ChapsVision for the same role. The Bundeswehr has excluded Palantir from its defence cloud procurement entirely. A top NATO commander recently told Politico there was no real European alternative to Palantir’s Maven software, which the alliance uses for battlefield data processing. Friday’s declaration is Paris and Berlin’s answer: build one.
