Hi all!

It’s Sarah here, writing in a rush as we’ve been working all hours getting our latest investigation over the line - a deep dive into the extent of Palantir’s contracts with UK government departments and agencies. You’ll see the detail in the piece by Carole Cadwalladr, scroll down for link, but suffice to say the UK state is enmeshed with Trump ally Peter Thiel’s surveillance company to a much greater extent than has previously been reported - and to the tune of nearly three quarters of a billion pounds minimum. We’ve also discovered that Palantir has been engaged to supply IT services to the agency that manufactures our nuclear warheads. What could possibly go wrong?

Our research team - shout out to Charlie Young and Max Colbert and their appetite for granular detail - has been working on this for many weeks, painstakingly combing government websites and research documents. Their spreadsheet is something to behold and we hope to make it public soon as a crowdsourcing database. Props too to our creative director Lynsey for her striking infographics and to our co-founder / investigative reporter Carole for writing the report on the plane to the Sundance film festival and dealing with notes and rewrites across the time zones.

We’ll have more soon on the investigation. This kind of highly-detailed work takes a lot of time and people power – and funds. Today’s report alone has been worked on by eight experts - two researcher / reporters, one lead reporter, two editors, one creative director, our industry-best news sub Ed (hi Ed!) and our lawyer. 12% of our newsletter subscribers are paying members and we are hugely grateful to every single one. But we need as many of the rest of you as possible to upgrade to ensure we keep funding these kinds of investigations. 🙏

Handing over to Jane now for an update on our members’ events programme before the links for today’s stories...

Hi! Since our launch in Liverpool last September we have been keen to get back out on the road (or the train) to meet Nerve members around the country. We’re thrilled to say that we are coming to Manchester on Thursday 19 February to host an event with the Turkish writer and political thinker Ece Temelkuran, who will be in conversation with Carole. Ece is the author of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism and is about to publish Nation of Strangers - described as “a book for anyone who feels alienated by an ever more monstrous world.” The venue is the Anthony Burgess Foundation; tickets are on sale now, initially exclusively to Nerve members (booking link will be sent out via separate email today). Hope to see some of you there. Jane

And here is today’s issue:

In the first part of our Palantir investigation, Carole and our research team report on the extent to which the UK’s state infrastructure relies on the controversial US data surveillance firm, including a previously undisclosed contract for IT services to the agency that manufactures the nuclear warheads carried by UK submarines. According to the MP Clive Lewis, this represents “a gaping national security vulnerability and, frankly, a scandal”. Another expert told us: “Instead of seeing Palantir as a vendor, the UK would be wise to instead see them as a vector of malign influence.” Read the full report complete with graphics showing the extent of Palantir’s contracts here.

Many of you will be enjoying watching Dennis Kelly’s acclaimed BBC prison drama Waiting for the Out, centred on Dan who teaches philosophy to prison inmates. It’s based on a memoir called The Life Inside by Andy West, who was born into a family involved in crime and who later became a philosophy teacher. For today’s edition Andy spoke to Nerve writer Ursula Kenny about shame, survivor’s guilt and how it feels to have his life turned into a drama. He says: “Often the kind of stoicism I’ve found in prison isn’t a stoicism that comes from a university library: it’s ‘these are the vicissitudes of my life, this is the way I have found to survive them…’. It's philosophy from the ground up, rather than the top down.”  Read Andy’s interview with Ursula Kenny here.

If you're after escapism, something a little chic and French perhaps, then you're in luck: the much-loved director of Boyhood and the Before trilogy Richard Linklater has turned his lens on the French New Wave for his latest film, Nouvelle Vague, out this Friday. A recreation of the making of Godard’s 1960 classic À Bout de Souffle, it's "imbued with awe and affection for cinema" says Nerve film critic Ellen E Jones. Or, sticking with French cool, we can also recommend the "wistful, shimmering synth-pop" of Sébastien Tellier on his first album in six years. Elsewhere in our pick of the best culture to enjoy this week, there are two brilliant theatre shows, a free photography exhibition and more.

Thanks for reading! Please forward this email to anyone you think might find it interesting.

Sarah, co-founder