Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company.
Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company.
I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.
> Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company
I can't imagine any of them are confused about this. I'd expect most are proud to support our military.
The line that's been crossed is the military being turned against Americans. Palantir helping ICE surveil and round up folks who turned out to be, in many cases, innocent American citizens, seems to be what's prompting–correctly, in my opinion–the crisis of faith.
This makes it sound as though doing business with Palantir is akin to doing business with Lockheed Martin, RTX Corp (Raytheon), Northrop Grumman etc. This ignores important, qualitatively different ways that Palantir is worse: eg intentional white supremacist goals from Karp (Oswald Mosley fan) and Thiel (dismantling of multiculturalism), as well as Palantir's role in the surge of surveillance capitalism that treats US citizens as the opponent, rather than the more classic statist-aligned goals of US Govt/US Capital whose contempt for human life and human rights was pointed externally - so, while harmful, was still esstentially compatible with democratic principles.
They're defense contractors the same way IBM and Oracle are. Palantir has a huge USG business, but they're also widely used across the Fortune 500. From the coverage of Palantir online you'd think the company actually manufactured Palantirs, but they are in fact a database consultingware company; one person described them to me as "Oracle but with the benefit of the Web 2.0 technology stack".
People read things like this and a switch flips in their brain, that they're being told to be more charitable to Palantir, and that's not at all where I'm coming from. Rather: the attention paid to Palantir does a very effective job of running cover for Oracle, IBM, and Cisco.
Obviously, the ludicrous marketing/communications operation Palantir is running doesn't make any of this any simpler to reason about. Imagine getting a manifesto from AWS alongside your S3 bill urging you to reconsider Apostolic succession in the traditional Catholic church; that's the vibe they've managed to create.
The Elephant Graveyard video that went viral a while back, that was a comedic troll of Rogan, Musk, Theil, etc (also a half-serious commentary) - had an entertaining sequence at the end about Palantiri/LOTR
I think this is a weird side effect of how we portray evil corporations in fiction and in journalism. We imagine that everyone working there is a moustache-twirling villain. And then we get a job at Meta or Flock or Palantir, look around, and don't see any moustache-twirling villains. There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys.
Even if some of the outcomes seem reprehensible, it's not really evil because we're good people. We do it in a responsible and caring way. We're truly sorry that your grandma is now hooked up on endless AI-generated slop, but shouldn't the media be talking about all the other grandmas whose lives are enriched by our AI? We have strict safety rules for the types of cryptocurrency ads that can target the elderly, too.
Everyone know what Palantir was. The name is a dead-give-away.
I think it is really time that the superrich are downsized.
Certain companies that are working against the people also
need to be removed. Key considerations in any democracy need
to be consistent. Palantir (and others) create inconsistencies.
Granted, none of this will be fixed while the orange king is
having his daily rage-fits, but sooner or later this is an
inter-generational problem, no matter which puppet is taking
over.
Their stock is up something like 1500% since IPO. I can't imagine most employees there feeling like they're undervalued with that sort of equity valuation.
Weird. I worked near a Palantir office in 2017 and I remember thinking it would be "morally challenging" to work there. 9 years later, it's just becoming apparent?
It was always really obvious but that recent full-throated-fascist manifesto has left no doubt. One thing Palantir have going for them is this deranged movie-villain-style transparency about their intentions, they don't even care about hiding it.
When your product is used by a military occupation to target and kill civilians and their families [1][2], it's kind of shocking that there's any doubt. But as Upton Sinclair said:
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I would go further and argue that Palantir employees are just as valid military targets as occupation soldiers are.
Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positive company inside Facebook and she just had to navigate the politics to make it known despite all evidence to the contrary.
You’re probably right about the book either way, but I think the comparison has an obvious limitation. At best, Meta’s mission is “social connection.” Held up in an equally charitable light, a defense contractor is “protecting American interests.” The positive case is so much more stark that it’s probably easier to convince yourself of.
But I also think that’s partly because it’s actually true. (I concede I work in defense and am biased.)
There’s certainly a necessary debate to be had about whether these companies are doing the right things, whether they’re going about it the right way, and whether the United States’ actions are moral and legal.
But it’s very hard to argue that national security itself isn’t necessary. Whereas you can much more easily argue that a social-media-based ad company has no reason to exist in the first place.
> Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?
Their framing is wrong. The beliefs and internal politics of the people making the surveillance tools don't matter.
The fact is they're making tools to assist government overreach, and anyone with any political awareness (or maybe more importantly here, objectivity) could have seen that. They're just the enablers.
How do you determine if they are mentally convincing themselves they are the good guy, when in fact it is you who is the good guy.
From either perspective, if the roles were reversed, wouldn't it look the same? Both parties thinking they are doing the right thing.
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms out there, they seem to be vastly outnumbered by illegitimate criticisms, no matter what position you hold. It's easy to hold your opinion when you are inundated with a constant stream of invalid arguments that say little more than "I don't like the tribe you chose". Any valid argument is easily overlooked without a sense of guilt in that environment.
Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a book with a similar theme. A guy trained by NSA to be sent to poor countries, making deals through false projections with the goal to extract their natural resources.
I got very far into this book, but didn’t finish it, in large part because the author clearly needed to work through her problems a little more before publishing it. The biggest “I’m not ACTUALLY like them” complex ever.
I remember seeing postings for "Forward Deployed Engineers" and thinking that this naming convention targets folks who don't like to work out but still have a military fetish and want to feel important.
It's self-aggrandizing egos all the way down/up (to Alex Karp).
130 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 68.9 ms ] threadAlso Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company.
I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.
I can't imagine any of them are confused about this. I'd expect most are proud to support our military.
The line that's been crossed is the military being turned against Americans. Palantir helping ICE surveil and round up folks who turned out to be, in many cases, innocent American citizens, seems to be what's prompting–correctly, in my opinion–the crisis of faith.
any time you're flying on a Boeing 737, 787, 777 etc you're doing the same. Just like every time you turn on a GE light bulb.
People read things like this and a switch flips in their brain, that they're being told to be more charitable to Palantir, and that's not at all where I'm coming from. Rather: the attention paid to Palantir does a very effective job of running cover for Oracle, IBM, and Cisco.
Obviously, the ludicrous marketing/communications operation Palantir is running doesn't make any of this any simpler to reason about. Imagine getting a manifesto from AWS alongside your S3 bill urging you to reconsider Apostolic succession in the traditional Catholic church; that's the vibe they've managed to create.
Uh... don't you mean U.S. attack company?
Also, yes, they are.
Wasn't the the problem that Sauron had one so he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?
https://youtu.be/ewvRS3NwIlQ?t=4629
Even if some of the outcomes seem reprehensible, it's not really evil because we're good people. We do it in a responsible and caring way. We're truly sorry that your grandma is now hooked up on endless AI-generated slop, but shouldn't the media be talking about all the other grandmas whose lives are enriched by our AI? We have strict safety rules for the types of cryptocurrency ads that can target the elderly, too.
Everyone know what Palantir was. The name is a dead-give-away.
I think it is really time that the superrich are downsized. Certain companies that are working against the people also need to be removed. Key considerations in any democracy need to be consistent. Palantir (and others) create inconsistencies. Granted, none of this will be fixed while the orange king is having his daily rage-fits, but sooner or later this is an inter-generational problem, no matter which puppet is taking over.
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I would go further and argue that Palantir employees are just as valid military targets as occupation soldiers are.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
But I also think that’s partly because it’s actually true. (I concede I work in defense and am biased.)
There’s certainly a necessary debate to be had about whether these companies are doing the right things, whether they’re going about it the right way, and whether the United States’ actions are moral and legal.
But it’s very hard to argue that national security itself isn’t necessary. Whereas you can much more easily argue that a social-media-based ad company has no reason to exist in the first place.
> Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?
Their framing is wrong. The beliefs and internal politics of the people making the surveillance tools don't matter.
The fact is they're making tools to assist government overreach, and anyone with any political awareness (or maybe more importantly here, objectivity) could have seen that. They're just the enablers.
From either perspective, if the roles were reversed, wouldn't it look the same? Both parties thinking they are doing the right thing.
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms out there, they seem to be vastly outnumbered by illegitimate criticisms, no matter what position you hold. It's easy to hold your opinion when you are inundated with a constant stream of invalid arguments that say little more than "I don't like the tribe you chose". Any valid argument is easily overlooked without a sense of guilt in that environment.
It's self-aggrandizing egos all the way down/up (to Alex Karp).