isn't palantir just a bottom-tier consulting company (ie a body shop) with a brand, track record & contacts that get them on those "evil" projects?
if not them, someone else would staff the grunts to fill up the demand in manpower
it's not like they have a magic box that "does evil" that they sell to others, even though in the beginning that's what they seemed to market (only for good causes on the right side of history, obviously)
Yes, and that's why we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a 1935 Buick Century.
These "anything can be anything (if you try hard enough)" arguments are so tired and elementary.
Yes, you're technically right. But don't go bragging yet. That "if you try hard enough" tidbit is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Effort isn't free, nor is it infinite. Everything is a matter of scale.
That's why I can own a kitchen knife, and even a gun, but not a minigun. That's why even if I was granted a minigun, I surely wouldn't be granted a nuclear warhead. Would you trust Americans with a nuclear warhead? Second Amendment 2.5: everyone has the right to bear legs, and by legs we mean nuclear warheads. Sounds great.
There's a difference between doing something small, and doing something big. Doing something small and bad is bad, but it's less bad than doing something big and bad. If that sounds like goo goo ga ga level logic, that's because it is. I think children learn this pretty quickly.
If you want to live in a uni-polar world, you should support companies like Palantir which bolster American hegemony over global security. If you would prefer to live in a multi-polar world, with multiple superpowers vying for supremacy, then you should support Chinese espionage operations and invest in Indian oil refineries.
If you think wanting to live in a unipolar world is "evil", then there's no helping you.
The world is very techy these days. Someone is going to do the business where tech, AI and defence interact, and it happens to be Palantir.
So... is the complaint that a company fills this niche, or is it that of all possible companies doing this business, Palantir is particularly immoral?
I'm not sure it is possible for effectively a (cyber-)weapon producer to say, ah youre using our weapons immorally, we wont sell them to you. This is the domain of government regulation and export control.
So I personally wouldnt expect the contractor in this space to stand up to some high moral standard. I think the best we can hope for is compliance with laws, and there's your problem. US doesnt care how badly people get abused by the weaponry it exports, so long as IP and military secrets aren't leaked. Palantir is safe from US regulation.
Are other countries better? Some for sure. Germany blocked Eurofighter exports on ethical grounds. I'm not judging if they were right or wrong, but merely that they forewent cash for ethical points.
But most will sell anything to anyone, so long as the price is right.
Im not saying Palantir is a nice cuddly company, only, hate the game not the player.
I posted this a few days ago on a separate Palantir-related thread, but it probably is more relevant here. The world could use fewer Alex Karps.
--
This quote from the CEO of Palantir (Alex Karp) haunts me. ---
> “I actually am a progressive,” he said. “I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers — I’m trying to be nice here — out of our adversaries. If they are not scared, they don’t wake up scared, they don’t go to bed scared, they don’t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.”
Progressive dementia, perhaps. If you get human beings who are ideologically programmed to go on suicide missions and believe they're reaping an eternity in heaven it blows the most enormous hole in such transparently self-serving, as cartoonishly idiotic as insane logic.
Is it really evil - or is it just the messenger. If you take humanity, datamine it all through the seeing stones (cellphones) and then give honest advice, the advice is gonna be harsh.
This species constantly gets high on idealization of others and self-idealization, constantly crashing and burning from the unrealistic plans it makes with this unrealistic self-image. And it is unable to learn from all these retardations. We are not really governable and thus fail as soon as push come to shove. And we then try to bury this lessons - without learning anything from them. What good is it to have a Fauci, if his plans do not have the actual behavior of the humanity baked in when the great plague hits?
What good is it to invade another country, to build a democratic state - when you do not have a realistic behavior model to build a democratic state with other cultural backgrounds.
What good is it to wish for socialist economics, when it all boils down to centralized authoritarianism with witch hunts and collapsing economy.
Palantir is just the messenger for a uncomfortable message. We are not ready at all, not ready for climate change, for singularities, for high-tech where one can destroy half the planet. We are not ready for going off-planet, which is one and the same.
What is needed, is not unrealistic SciFi Visions, but basic measures to raise survive-ability of the species in crisis to come. Decentralize knowledge, create a panopticon by the people for the people, so order can be upheld even when the state collapses.
The scenario-tress roots must be hardened, so we dont fall down never to recover.
There are plenty of reasons to critique Palantir but this article comes across as so ham-fisted, conspiratorial, and wanting facts that it actually makes me more sympathetic.
Critiques of Govt contractors really need to be grounded in first principles. Namely:
- should the government be able to wage war?
- should the government collect data? How much?
- how effective do we want these companies providing these services to be?
- how integrated do we want these different govt and non-govt tools and datasets.
Finally should these tools start or stop working when leaders you don’t like are democratically elected?
Palantir also did great work with hospitals and vaccines delivery during the pandemic and continues to do great work with hospitals.
Most of the critiques of Palantir come down to them being good at a job or mission the critic doesn't agree with.
Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. who profit off intoxicating abilify are very evil. New York's Northwell for-profit hospital monopoly said they would inject me for asking for a Quran, "Muslims are a delusion," they will decide who is Muslim, etc. 1 million New Yorkers are psych patients at risk of losing all freedoms and getting face spasm, painful headaches and diabetes. Even worse companies in bigger Florida, Texas, California.
Was supporting Operation Warp Speed and the delivery of Covid vaccines evil? General Perna, the logistics lead for OWS regularly called out Palantir as being instrumental in helping the extract and loal local and state data into a single national dashboard, making the rapid rollout possible without losing vaccines to a poorly planned cold chain
"Perna: The system we set up was based on the foundation and the collaboration of local and federal government and industry. We did this, really, with almost perfection. Never been done before. We opened up over 70,000 locations across the country that could receive and administer vaccine. We had to create data-use agreements with the states in order to put an ERP in place to track the vaccine. Then we had to validate the 70,000 locations through the CDC, so that they could receive it and administer it. Because our goal was, we wanted people to have access in places they were comfortable being: a local doctor’s office, a hospital, CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart.
Gilsinan: They say plans don’t survive first contact with the enemy. I’m curious what adjustments became warranted in those first few weeks and why.
Perna: That plan worked. We brought in Palantir. Palantir created a system that allowed us to see ourselves from manufacturing all the way down to the distribution sites."
Yes. It was. Railroading pharmaceutical products (lipid nanoparticles and RNA therapeutics) which had failed to pass safety tests for years when they were within cancer drug research is not a good thing.
I argue that Google and Apple are the most evil companies by making phones so very vulnerable in many ways to extensive tracking and hacking. Without the technical loopholes to provide data to Palantir, it would be more in the dark. Fwiw, Iran did the right thing recently in getting rid of smartphones.
20 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] threadif not them, someone else would staff the grunts to fill up the demand in manpower
it's not like they have a magic box that "does evil" that they sell to others, even though in the beginning that's what they seemed to market (only for good causes on the right side of history, obviously)
Anything can be used for good and bad reasons.
Yes, and that's why we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a 1935 Buick Century.
These "anything can be anything (if you try hard enough)" arguments are so tired and elementary.
Yes, you're technically right. But don't go bragging yet. That "if you try hard enough" tidbit is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Effort isn't free, nor is it infinite. Everything is a matter of scale.
That's why I can own a kitchen knife, and even a gun, but not a minigun. That's why even if I was granted a minigun, I surely wouldn't be granted a nuclear warhead. Would you trust Americans with a nuclear warhead? Second Amendment 2.5: everyone has the right to bear legs, and by legs we mean nuclear warheads. Sounds great.
There's a difference between doing something small, and doing something big. Doing something small and bad is bad, but it's less bad than doing something big and bad. If that sounds like goo goo ga ga level logic, that's because it is. I think children learn this pretty quickly.
Historically people considered such companies to be in the business of building & selling defense equipment (like bombs).
But nowadays, this also includes cyber & AI.
https://www.palantir.com/offerings/defense/
If you think wanting to live in a unipolar world is "evil", then there's no helping you.
So... is the complaint that a company fills this niche, or is it that of all possible companies doing this business, Palantir is particularly immoral?
I'm not sure it is possible for effectively a (cyber-)weapon producer to say, ah youre using our weapons immorally, we wont sell them to you. This is the domain of government regulation and export control.
So I personally wouldnt expect the contractor in this space to stand up to some high moral standard. I think the best we can hope for is compliance with laws, and there's your problem. US doesnt care how badly people get abused by the weaponry it exports, so long as IP and military secrets aren't leaked. Palantir is safe from US regulation.
Are other countries better? Some for sure. Germany blocked Eurofighter exports on ethical grounds. I'm not judging if they were right or wrong, but merely that they forewent cash for ethical points.
But most will sell anything to anyone, so long as the price is right.
Im not saying Palantir is a nice cuddly company, only, hate the game not the player.
This species constantly gets high on idealization of others and self-idealization, constantly crashing and burning from the unrealistic plans it makes with this unrealistic self-image. And it is unable to learn from all these retardations. We are not really governable and thus fail as soon as push come to shove. And we then try to bury this lessons - without learning anything from them. What good is it to have a Fauci, if his plans do not have the actual behavior of the humanity baked in when the great plague hits? What good is it to invade another country, to build a democratic state - when you do not have a realistic behavior model to build a democratic state with other cultural backgrounds.
What good is it to wish for socialist economics, when it all boils down to centralized authoritarianism with witch hunts and collapsing economy.
Palantir is just the messenger for a uncomfortable message. We are not ready at all, not ready for climate change, for singularities, for high-tech where one can destroy half the planet. We are not ready for going off-planet, which is one and the same.
What is needed, is not unrealistic SciFi Visions, but basic measures to raise survive-ability of the species in crisis to come. Decentralize knowledge, create a panopticon by the people for the people, so order can be upheld even when the state collapses. The scenario-tress roots must be hardened, so we dont fall down never to recover.
Critiques of Govt contractors really need to be grounded in first principles. Namely:
- should the government be able to wage war?
- should the government collect data? How much?
- how effective do we want these companies providing these services to be?
- how integrated do we want these different govt and non-govt tools and datasets.
Finally should these tools start or stop working when leaders you don’t like are democratically elected?
Palantir also did great work with hospitals and vaccines delivery during the pandemic and continues to do great work with hospitals.
Most of the critiques of Palantir come down to them being good at a job or mission the critic doesn't agree with.
"Perna: The system we set up was based on the foundation and the collaboration of local and federal government and industry. We did this, really, with almost perfection. Never been done before. We opened up over 70,000 locations across the country that could receive and administer vaccine. We had to create data-use agreements with the states in order to put an ERP in place to track the vaccine. Then we had to validate the 70,000 locations through the CDC, so that they could receive it and administer it. Because our goal was, we wanted people to have access in places they were comfortable being: a local doctor’s office, a hospital, CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart.
Gilsinan: They say plans don’t survive first contact with the enemy. I’m curious what adjustments became warranted in those first few weeks and why.
Perna: That plan worked. We brought in Palantir. Palantir created a system that allowed us to see ourselves from manufacturing all the way down to the distribution sites."
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/12/gus-perna-...
¹ https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#core/components/tree