On the morning of August 27–28, 2026, registered nurses with the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United carried out coordinated acts of civil disobedience across the country. In Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., Portland (Maine), Asheville, Austin, and New Orleans, nurses and community allies blocked traffic and staged protests outside hospitals that hold contracts with Palantir Technologies.
The demonstrations, described by NNU as their largest-ever action against a single technology company, came after months of growing frustration about how Palantir's data-analytics platforms are being deployed inside hospital systems — with little nurse input and even less transparency.
What Is Palantir Doing in Hospitals?
Palantir Technologies is best known for its defense and intelligence contracts — the company holds a $1 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security, signed in February 2026, and has worked with Israel's Ministry of Defense. But over the past two years, Palantir has aggressively expanded into healthcare, winning contracts with major health systems to deploy its AI-powered data platforms in clinical settings.
Nurses say the problem isn't AI itself — it's that these platforms are being used to inform staffing ratios, flag care decisions, and allocate hospital resources, all without meaningful nursing input into how the systems are built or governed.
"Nurses want more transparency and a greater say on the use of AI in hospitals, including Palantir's platforms, noting it's affecting staffing decisions and care decisions in ways that are not in line with what healthcare should be." — National Nurses United
Why Nurses Are Specifically Targeting Palantir
For nurses at Kaiser Permanente — who are separately planning informational pickets for September 1 over safe staffing and AI protections — the Palantir issue is part of a broader pattern. Health systems are buying AI tools that promise efficiency gains, but nurses on the floor see a different reality: systems that underestimate acuity, suggest discharge too early, or automate tasks that require clinical judgment.
NNU's specific demands include:
- Full public disclosure of every Palantir contract held by U.S. hospitals
- Binding language giving nurses veto power over AI tools that affect clinical staffing and care decisions
- Immediate termination of any Palantir contract at facilities where nurses have raised patient-safety concerns
- Congressional hearings on Palantir's role in healthcare data and clinical AI
The Palantir-Healthcare-ICE Connection
Nurses have also raised concerns about Palantir's broader government partnerships. The company's contracts with DHS and ICE — which use Palantir's Gotham and Foundry platforms for immigration enforcement — create what nurses describe as a conflict of interest for hospitals serving undocumented patients. CNA's "Purge Palantir" campaign argues hospitals cannot credibly claim to be safe spaces for immigrant patients while paying a company that also helps ICE identify and detain people.
Why This Matters for Nurses
I've been at the bedside long enough to watch administration roll out one technology tool after another — Epic, predictive analytics, early warning systems — with almost zero nurse input until after go-live. The Palantir situation is that same pattern, only bigger and with a company whose other contracts should give every clinician pause.
What nurses are asking for isn't radical: transparency, input, and accountability. When an algorithm influences my staffing assignment or flags a patient for early discharge, I need to know how it was built and what its error rate is. That's not anti-technology. That's nursing practice.
If your hospital uses Palantir tools, find your union rep or shared governance council and ask: what exactly does the contract cover? Who on the nursing staff was consulted? Those are fair questions — and management should have answers.
What Happens Next
NNU has not set a deadline for hospitals to respond to their demands. The September 1 Kaiser pickets — separate from today's Palantir actions but part of the same AI-safety conversation — will put additional pressure on one of Palantir's largest potential healthcare clients. Labor attorneys say the legal terrain is complex: nothing currently requires hospitals to disclose AI vendor contracts, and nurses have limited formal leverage unless AI tools are named explicitly in collective bargaining agreements.
That's exactly what NNU is trying to change — through direct action if not yet through contract language.