When the American entrepreneur Alex Karp and the PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel co-founded a data analytics company 18 years ago, they decided to call it Palantir.

At the time, the name — a reference to the palantíri, the seven “seeing stones” used in The Lord of the Rings to monitor the world from great distances — was considered whimsical by some, downright cute by others. Today, it has turned into rather a double-edged sword. Just as the stones in Tolkien’s novels were used for both good and evil, so the modern Palantir inspires admiration but also loathing.

Last week, I interviewed Karp at the FT Weekend Festival in London, where a group of angry protesters had assembled. The reason? During the Covid-19 pandemic, Palantir was asked by the UK government to run its vaccination data platform. “If you were vaccinated in the UK, you used [us],” Karp told the audience.