Every leader faces the same challenge: getting people to actually absorb what you're saying - in a world of overflowing inboxes, half-read Slacks, and meetings about meetings.

Smart Brevity is the methodology Axios HQ built to solve this. It's a system for communicating with clarity, respect, and precision — whether you're writing to your board, your team, or your entire organization.

Join our free 60-minute Open House to learn how it works and see it in action.

Runs monthly - grab a spot that works for you.

Save your seat

The TLDR: After years of aggressive lobbying, Switzerland's military looked at Palantir's surveillance software and said "absolutely not." Not because it doesn't work—it does—but because handing your most sensitive intelligence data to a CIA-backed American company is, shockingly, a terrible idea.

Listen, Alex Karp—Palantir's CEO—really wanted this contract. We're talking multiple personal visits to Switzerland, opening a Zurich office, years of schmoozing senior officials. The full-court press. And Switzerland's military actually evaluated the software seriously. They commissioned a 20-page risk assessment. They looked at the capabilities. They acknowledged Palantir genuinely offers powerful data fusion and analytics.

Then they wrote this absolutely brutal recommendation: "The Swiss Army should consider alternatives to Palantir."

Here's the kicker—this wasn't about the software sucking. It was about something way more fundamental.

Switzerland identified what should be obvious but somehow isn't to most European governments: once your military intelligence enters a US company's systems, you no longer control it.

The mechanism is called the CLOUD Act, and it's beautifully sinister. Doesn't matter where your data physically sits—Swiss servers, Swiss encryption, Swiss everything. If the company holding it is American, US authorities can legally compel them to hand it over. Period.

The Swiss evaluation put it bluntly: data leaks from Palantir systems "cannot be technically prevented." Not "won't happen"—cannot be prevented. Because Palantir's security relies on administrative controls (permissions, access logs, the honor system), not technical architecture that makes your data genuinely unavailable.

So you're the Swiss military, processing intelligence about threats to your country, and there's a structural backdoor you can't close. What do you do?

But wait, it gets worse. The evaluation identified something even more insidious than data vulnerability: permanent dependency.

Once you integrate Palantir into your military operations, you need Palantir engineers to maintain it, upgrade it, troubleshoot it. The software is proprietary—you can't audit it, can't modify it, can't easily migrate away. And over time, the question shifts from "do we trust Palantir?" to "do we even control our own defense infrastructure anymore?"

Switzerland looked at this trajectory and said: nope.

Here's why this matters beyond Switzerland: they walked away after the courtship was already done. After years of lobbying. After opening offices. After demonstrating the software works. They still said no, explicitly choosing sovereignty over efficiency.

Compare that to Germany, which adopted Palantir Gotham despite civil rights concerns and is now using counterterrorism software to track routine property crimes. Or consider that Palantir just got $113 million in Trump administration contracts to build comprehensive databases of Americans' personal information—bank accounts, medical claims, student loans—potentially for immigration crackdowns.

The thing is, Switzerland's neutrality let them see clearly what NATO members can't quite admit: using intelligence platforms aligned with US geopolitical interests creates structural subordination, not partnership.

Switzerland's evaluation poses an uncomfortable question for Europe: If a small, neutral country with minimal security threats concludes Palantir's risks are unacceptable, why do larger democracies think they can manage what Swiss military experts say cannot be managed?

France figured this out in 2018, determining "the United States was no longer considered a reliable ally" and building sovereign alternatives. Norway's wealth fund divested from Palantir over its role in occupied Palestinian territories. Poland developed DataWalk specifically as a Palantir alternative that operates air-gapped with zero external access.

Switzerland just joined them with a simple principle: "What I can't control, I won't let out of my hands."

The wild part? This shouldn't be controversial. It should be obvious. But in a world where "digital sovereignty" is a buzzword most governments ignore in practice, actually acting on it—walking away from a capable vendor because you value autonomy over convenience—is radical.

Switzerland didn't reject Palantir's capabilities. They rejected the price: trading long-term control for short-term efficiency. Turns out some things are more valuable than good software.

Like, you know, deciding for yourself what happens to your own national security data.