Safe Harbour Initiative   ·   Canberra, Australia

Why NotAustralia?

Australia is letting foreign platforms embed decision logic into its institutions without a governed exit. When those relationships turn, and evidence shows they do, there will be no easy way out. The window to act is measured in months, not years.

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$26M Palantir contracts awarded without competitive tender
$103M Future Fund stake in Palantir Technologies
Zero Sovereign operating frameworks mandated across Commonwealth
Live Evidence
Switzerland formally rejected Palantir 9 times on sovereignty grounds Pentagon-Anthropic dispute: 6-month phase-out for a single AI vendor Australia's Future Fund holds $103M in Palantir Technologies shares Denmark intelligence services now seeking Palantir replacement UK MoD engineers warn Palantir poses "national security threat" Germany BfV chief: software must be "geostrategically correct" Palantir embedded permanently on-site at Australian Defence Anthropic sues Pentagon over supply chain designation: March 2026 Amnesty International calls for NHS to cancel Palantir contract AUSTRAC: 5 Palantir contract variations in 12 months Switzerland formally rejected Palantir 9 times on sovereignty grounds Pentagon-Anthropic dispute: 6-month phase-out for a single AI vendor Australia's Future Fund holds $103M in Palantir Technologies shares Denmark intelligence services now seeking Palantir replacement UK MoD engineers warn Palantir poses "national security threat" Germany BfV chief: software must be "geostrategically correct" Palantir embedded permanently on-site at Australian Defence Anthropic sues Pentagon over supply chain designation: March 2026 Amnesty International calls for NHS to cancel Palantir contract AUSTRAC: 5 Palantir contract variations in 12 months
6 months
Pentagon phase-out for a single AI vendor
9×
Times Switzerland formally rejected Palantir
£670M
UK Palantir contracts now under parliamentary review
5
AUSTRAC contract variations with Palantir in 12 months
The Case
01
The sovereignty question is not about data. It is about decision logic.
For over a decade Australia's digital sovereignty debate has focused on data residency: which servers hold which files, whether they sit on Australian soil. That framing misses the decisive risk. Data residency tells you where information is kept. It says nothing about who controls the logic governing how that information is used: how decisions are made, how authority is exercised. Unlike a submarine, a software platform can be switched off remotely, subpoenaed under foreign law, or updated without notice.
"Data residency tells you where information lives. It says nothing about who controls the logic governing how it is used."
02
Australia is already building the dependency it cannot afford.
Defence has awarded Palantir its largest contract without competitive tender, with staff embedded on-site and provisions allowing models to train on Defence analyst behaviour. AUSTRAC executed five contract variations in twelve months. The Future Fund holds $103 million in Palantir shares. This pattern of contract creep, sole-source justification and no competitive alternative is exactly what the Pentagon discovered it had built when it needed to exit and could not.
"That is not a procurement failure. It is a governance failure. And it is not unique to Palantir."
03
The answer is architecture, not exclusion. Australia can prove it.
Switzerland rejected Palantir nine times on jurisdictional grounds. Denmark is exiting. The UK, which did not act, is now managing £670 million in contracts it cannot easily unwind. The solution is not to exclude foreign technology. It is to separate what can be globally shared from the single layer that must remain sovereign: the operating ontology that governs how Australian institutions function, comply and exercise authority.
"Own the operating ontology and every AI tool becomes genuinely replaceable. Cede it and no contract changes the structural reality."
Where the state cannot inspect, audit, or exit the systems shaping its decisions, it has no sovereignty.
UK House of Lords, AI Governance Debate, January 2026
The Evidence

A sequence of decisions no one connected.

FEB 2026 Australia
Defence awards Palantir its largest contract: no tender
$7.6 million for the Cyber Warfare Division awarded through limited tender. Defence justification: no other software could match Palantir's capabilities. Total Australian spend with Palantir now exceeds $26 million since 2013.
⬡ Crikey · 17 February 2026
28 FEB 2026 United States
Trump orders all agencies to cease use of Anthropic
The Pentagon designates Anthropic a national security supply chain risk. The six-month phase-out reveals the most powerful military on earth had no governed layer between its mission and a single vendor. Former Trump AI advisor Dean Ball: "attempted corporate murder" and "a psychotic power grab."
⬡ NPR · Fortune · Reuters · 28 February 2026
9 MAR 2026 Australia
Crikey publishes the Palantir–Defence contract terms
For the first time, Palantir's operational terms with Australia are public: specialists permanently embedded on-site, penetration testing requiring vendor consent, models trained on Defence analyst behaviour. Senior Defence official, anonymously: "Why aren't Australians checking Australians?"
⬡ Crikey · 9 March 2026
16 MAR 2026 UK
Senior MoD engineers warn of "national security threat"
Two serving Ministry of Defence systems engineers tell The Nerve that ministerial assurances about data ownership "are ignorant and miss the point entirely." The real risk: the mosaic effect: Palantir's combined access across defence, health, policing and infrastructure creates a complete sovereign operational picture.
⬡ The Nerve · AOAV · 16 March 2026
23 MAR 2026 Australia
Safe Harbour Initiative launches at Parliament House
Safe Harbour Initiative presents the white paper and governance framework to Australian parliamentarians, building the case for sovereign AI infrastructure.
⬡ Parliament House · Canberra · 23 March 2026
Three Recommendations

What we are asking parliament to do.

01
Establish a Sovereign Infrastructure Framework
The Department of Finance should mandate that all Commonwealth agencies and critical infrastructure operators maintain sovereign operating ontologies: Australian-owned, Australian-governed and subject only to Australian law. Build the governed layer between institutional mission and tool that the Pentagon did not have when it needed it most.
02
Commission an Independent Review of Vendor Dependencies
A strategic review of current vendor dependencies across Defence, intelligence, law enforcement and critical infrastructure, modelled on the Swiss Army's 2024 Palantir risk assessment. Assess the sovereign risk profile of existing contracts, identify where operating logic has migrated into foreign-controlled platforms, and recommend managed transition strategies.
03
Position Australia as a Trusted Governance Partner
Engage proactively with companies seeking stable, values-aligned jurisdictions and develop sovereign governance frameworks that can be offered to partners globally navigating the space between US and Chinese platforms. Arrive at AUKUS and multilateral forums with a clear position on what sovereign AI infrastructure looks like.
The Paper
Safe Harbour Initiative · March 2026 · Canberra
Why Not Australia
The Case for Sovereign AI Infrastructure in the Age of Geopolitical Disruption

Grounded in the events of February and March 2026, and the international evidence that preceded them. This paper argues that Australia faces a version of the same structural vulnerability the Pentagon discovered, with a narrow window to address it before dependency hardens into constraint.

250+ copies in circulation

What the paper covers
  • Why data residency is no longer sufficient, and what the decisive question actually is
  • What the Pentagon-Anthropic dispute reveals about every institution that embedded a vendor without a sovereign control layer
  • What Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the UK each did, and what Australia has not
  • The two-layer architecture: execution infrastructure (globally shared) and the operations ontology (sovereign)
  • Three concrete recommendations, including a sovereign framework, independent review, and Australia's role as a global governance model
From the paper

"Flexibility without a defined destination is indistinguishable from drift, and drift is a luxury that nations do not have in a fast-closing technological gap."

Lowy Institute on Australia's National AI Plan, March 2026
Take Action

Contact your representative

Parliamentary pressure starts with constituents. Find your local MP, review the pre-written email, edit it as you like, and send it. Takes sixty seconds.

When you write, raise these three asks:
1Raise the sole-source AI contract pattern, particularly Palantir, at Senate Estimates.
2Support a call for an independent review of vendor dependencies across Defence and critical infrastructure.
3Engage with the policy case for a sovereign AI governance framework.
Open in email client →

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Suburb not in our lookup. Find your representative at aph.gov.au and use the template below as your email text.

Raise: Australia's sole-source AI contracts, the absence of a sovereign operational framework, and the need for an independent review of vendor dependencies across Defence and critical infrastructure.
International Voices

Others have noticed.
Some have already acted.

"
Palantir is a company based in the USA, where there is a possibility that sensitive data could be accessed by the American government and intelligence services. The company's specialists would be required permanently on-site, which could limit the army's ability to act independently in a crisis.
Swiss Army Internal Risk Assessment 2024 · Declassified · Palantir rejected nine times
"
Whether or not the UK technically owns the data is almost irrelevant. That is like reading a secret love letter and saying the secrets in it are safe, just because you have promised never to copy it word for word.
Senior MoD Systems Engineer Speaking to The Nerve · March 2026
⚓   Safe Harbour Initiative

The policy initiative behind this question.

Safe Harbour Initiative is building the case for sovereign AI infrastructure in Australia: the governance architecture that lets democratic governments use the world's best AI tools while retaining full control over the logic layer that governs how they function. Not isolation. Not unconditional dependency. A third way, and one Australia is positioned to prove works, and to offer as a model to governments worldwide facing the same choice.

Prepared by Kitbag Consulting, Canberra, Australia.

3 Concrete recommendations to parliament
9× Times Switzerland formally rejected Palantir
£670M UK Palantir contracts now under parliamentary review
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