I get the concern bout Palantir but this is not new: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, AWS, have all been extending their reach into government for over a decade. Palantir is the boogey man right now, and it's under a lot of scrutiny because of its work and its political ties, but let's try turning some of the ire to all of the other tech companies empowering the government against people. The others shouldn't get a pass just because of their perceived political leanings.
I wonder if the VCs have given up on growth. AI isn’t really profitable. Unless you can get government to pay for it (“socialism for me, capitalism for thee”). That means military contracts. So we have a top heavy system with a perverse incentive to justify itself with war. Unsurprisingly, I guess, the US is gearing up to do just that in 2027 with China.
> Following massive contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead.
Just swapping different big consulting firms around.
I remember when Booz Allen was the bad guy. I just checked and apparently this is what they call themselves these days "an American company specializing in digital transformation and artificial intelligence" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton
We received a presentation/demo of their products when I worked in the gov (not the US gov. though) a couple of years ago.
They seemed, okay? I mean nothing seemed mind-blowing. I worked on surveillance in a specific sector, where interagency collaboration is important. Hence why Palantir pitched their tools.
I'm not sure how they've managed to blow up like that. Do they have some extensive network with gov. officials, in the same way top management consulting firms operate?
EDIT: Basically their pitch was that if agency A and B (and C, D, etc.) connected their data sources to the tool (I think it was Gotham), then identifying and catching threat actors would be much easier, and that their software would streamline this.
just speculating, but part of the "nothing special" piece may be that the best engineers/software devs who dream of "changing the world" for the better won't give them the time of day, but they can do "just good enough for government work" analytics / software dev for government work
Most countries use Palantir or similar data-analysis systems today. This fear-mongering spiel is aimed squarely at most uninformed peasants, but I guess they do it because it works.
I will comment only on the Foundry stack that we work extensively with, at my company.
Given the complete havoc that the other IT ecoaystems has become, we are constantly struggling with proper data access data exchange data transformation and data alignment. To a point where a political layer has appeared on top of that, which looks like the middle age baronies.
Foundry has been in the company for the last ten years, and I will be frank: this is the only source of truth that I believe in the company.
The integration of data, its lineage, its semantics, its consumption stack, the community who makes the enterpriseData work for real, all of that is simply much more efficient and sane than going for yet another war with data barons and IT (so-called) enterprise architects.
And now my personal comment on this: Foundry is definitely the vision I was expecting from the Linked Data initiative. And it is [stupidly expensive but] simply SOOOOO good !
We must see the privatisation of government not as a new Palantir project but as a long ongoing effort by most major tech companies and a growing number of politicians, republicans and billionaires. I suggest researching Dark Enlightenment and Neo-feudalism
To give my own view of Foundry and the products - pipeline buider, Ontology Manager, and workshop.
I think that pipeline builder is a good tool for building pipelines - however maybe its just my company but there is a sea of very similar tables that have been generated and pipeline builder makes things a lot messier. Personally I would prefer to use data bricks or even M$ Fabric to do pipeline processing - its like a lego version of those tools.
At my company I don't think that the ontological layer is really any more useful than a strict RDBMS warehouse system. It feels like marketing speak when I hear engineers/product managers talk about it. I certainly don't think that it has added any more insights/interlinking. I would like to see clear examples of benefits to this data structure over traditional warehousing approaches rather than hype.
I'm not blown away by Workshop - for reporting/visualization I would use PowerBI/Tableau (far superior). For app development (i.e. some kind of intelligent spreadsheet to allow opps people to use it) its ok - but quite clunky. Its a lego like system - and I'm not convinced as an app its better than excel on sharepoint (broadly speaking its worse). Again I think its all marketing.
Palantir is aiding and abetting multiple instances of genocide and repression worldwide. Their entire upper leadership should be thrown in prison. Along with other holocaust tabulation machine companies such as Microsoft and Oracle.
It's still wild to me that someone named their company "dangerous and corruptive object that will lead you to ill ends while making you believe you are powerful and wise" and people go, "yeah, that company seems above board."
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 50.6 ms ] threadJust swapping different big consulting firms around.
I remember when Booz Allen was the bad guy. I just checked and apparently this is what they call themselves these days "an American company specializing in digital transformation and artificial intelligence" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton
They seemed, okay? I mean nothing seemed mind-blowing. I worked on surveillance in a specific sector, where interagency collaboration is important. Hence why Palantir pitched their tools.
I'm not sure how they've managed to blow up like that. Do they have some extensive network with gov. officials, in the same way top management consulting firms operate?
EDIT: Basically their pitch was that if agency A and B (and C, D, etc.) connected their data sources to the tool (I think it was Gotham), then identifying and catching threat actors would be much easier, and that their software would streamline this.
Yes, in that one of their cofounders and his buddies bankrolled the current administration...
Do facebook or google do this to their users?
Foundry has been in the company for the last ten years, and I will be frank: this is the only source of truth that I believe in the company. The integration of data, its lineage, its semantics, its consumption stack, the community who makes the enterpriseData work for real, all of that is simply much more efficient and sane than going for yet another war with data barons and IT (so-called) enterprise architects.
And now my personal comment on this: Foundry is definitely the vision I was expecting from the Linked Data initiative. And it is [stupidly expensive but] simply SOOOOO good !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism
I think that pipeline builder is a good tool for building pipelines - however maybe its just my company but there is a sea of very similar tables that have been generated and pipeline builder makes things a lot messier. Personally I would prefer to use data bricks or even M$ Fabric to do pipeline processing - its like a lego version of those tools.
At my company I don't think that the ontological layer is really any more useful than a strict RDBMS warehouse system. It feels like marketing speak when I hear engineers/product managers talk about it. I certainly don't think that it has added any more insights/interlinking. I would like to see clear examples of benefits to this data structure over traditional warehousing approaches rather than hype.
I'm not blown away by Workshop - for reporting/visualization I would use PowerBI/Tableau (far superior). For app development (i.e. some kind of intelligent spreadsheet to allow opps people to use it) its ok - but quite clunky. Its a lego like system - and I'm not convinced as an app its better than excel on sharepoint (broadly speaking its worse). Again I think its all marketing.
Palintir's reach is worrying