Dr. Ken Staley, Palantir: “We have a lot of cool stuff on the horizon.”

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Dr. Ken Staley, Palantir, has served in health security positions in the George W. Bush and first Trump administrations, with time in-between in private sector biopharma. Palantir was founded after the 9/11 Commission to bring together data streams to enhance security and protect liberties. As director of the President’s Malaria Initiative in the Trump first term, Ken oversaw an effort to use data faster and in a more integrated way, to understand outbreaks, supply chains, and health impacts. He participated in the Lancet Commission as it looked forward on how to make malaria eradication a strategic end-goal. As Covid-19 coordinator at USAID during the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, Ken shifted communications to the cloud to permit continuity of operations. Technology innovations in malaria control – vaccines and bacteria to disrupt mosquitoes – hold considerable promise. “We have a lot of cool stuff on the horizon.” In regard to WHO, the pandemic treaty, and reforms of the International Health Regulations (IHR), “missions are sacred, organizations are not.” On foreign aid, “the context has changed.”