> 19. America created the first global surveillance state, but it will not be the last. Too many have forgotten, or perhaps taken for granted, the revelations of Wikileaks and Snowden. States across the world from China to Russia are creating even more powerful global surveillance systems and propaganda machines. Leveraging private defense contracts in countries across the world, Palantir seeks to make itself the operating system of a cross-border global secret state while it pushes its own farcical version of ethno-nationalism.
If you're honestly thinking the US surveillance state is used to the same extent that those in China and Russia are to act upon enemies of the state at home and abroad, it makes me take you less seriously.
Could it be? Absolutely. Would Alex Karp gladly direct his company to program it even if it imprisoned/killed his own family for the benefit of shareholders? Probably. But when SCOTUS just told the government this week that they need warrants for geofenced surveillance operations, this doesn't point to the existence of a surveillance state like that in those nations. At least, not yet.
Which recent jailings were made for social media posts? Are you talking about the ones where people invited violence against migrants in hotels by calling for things like setting fire to their dwellings etc? Because that's a crime regardless of posting it on social media.
I wonder what is the contextualization of the OP's preference of the "Palantir as a data/power broker" narrative to that of "Palantir as a highly profitable staffing agency".
My strong feeling while reading this “philosopher CEO”’s manifesto: consumer VPNs primarily help customers fight for their right to stream Netflix. This doesn’t strike me as effective advertisement.
> 5. Surveillance can only be defeated by building software and hardware to defend ourselves.
Here's where it went off the rails. Once you've abandoned the idea of democracy and peaceful self-governance, you're just another technofascist. You are Palantir, just in an earlier stage.
The fear of an imminent surveillance state just rings so hollow to me. It used to appeal to me as an existential threat, but then real world experience made me realize how implausible this is, not due to technological limitations but political will.
We already have surveillance states. Walk into any chain drug store in the country and you'll be met with cameras tracking your every movement, deodorant under lock and key and a security guard at the door. You walk in and the overseers know who you are and track your every move.
However, people walk in to drug stores every day and walk out with stuff. They're often unmasked and repeat offenders. The drug store chain gladly hands over all identifying information to police as well as their patterns. Yet nothing happens.
People comment on forums exactly how and where scams take place. YouTubers bait car and package thieves within hours. Whenever a horrific crime occurs, 9 times out of 10 the perpetrator has had dozens of arrests.
> The “enemy within” continually expands until it encompasses the entire population of a nation regardless of their status and beliefs, justifying evermore paranoid and totalizing surveillance.
So the police doesn't go after known criminals who have been arrested for the umpteenth time, but I'm made to believe they're about to come after me any day now for my innocuous offense, they just need one more Palantir camera.
Be real, there's just no political will to enable a police state.
So now on to technology. Technology should make our lives better. Police should use it to capture and stop the 1% of the population that's making life much more difficult for the rest of us. And they should lock them up for a considerable amount of time, not as rehabilitation or punishment, just to make the lives of ~99% of us better off. Maybe not 3 strikes, but can we settle on 10? 20? Anything would help.
So these theoretical arguments about a surveillance state where some hypothetical political dissident is getting doxed and raided just strikes me as fantasy.
>> Unlike the generations that fought in the world wars, most of our current rulers are degenerate pedophiles who would sacrifice the well-being of the youth and the entire planet due to their infantile desire for wealth and power. Technologies of surveillance and automated warfare reflect their increasingly desperate attempts to maintain archaic forms of domination.
Tell us what you think, Harry, please don’t hold back
the author lost me at "muh immigrants". stopped reading. its like the only people who agree with me on resisting evil tech companies and surveillance ai are open borders fanatics who refuse to accept that regulating who is able to access your home is something that people have always done. go on and "resist" big tech for the poor immigrants sake while big tech and every other corporation goes out of its way to replace you with cheaper labor in the form of illegal migrants, scammy visa guest workers, foreign labor, etc.
Some of these are valid arguments against Palantir and the weaponization of surveillance.
But too many others are bullshit as the author was getting full of themselves.
"6. We are ruled by a senile gerontocracy. Unlike the generations that fought in the world wars, most of our current rulers are degenerate pedophiles"
This is just wrong. Donald Trump may be a senile pedophile, Howard Lutnik may be a pedophile but is not senile, Joe Biden was too old but wasn't senile or a pedophile, but we are largely not ruled by a cabal of senile pedophiles. The Trump Administration is protecting pedophiles, but most Americans, Europeans, and people throughout the world, are not ruled by pedophiles, either in their day or day or civic life.
"Today, new regional powers directly challenge the United States as its empire dissolves in the face of internal economic stagnation, political corruption, and the inflation of the dollar."
Regional powers don't directly challenge the United States. The United States has lost a war against Iran, but it was one we foolishly started. There isn't yet economic stagnation or inflation of the dollar. Even in the post-COVID period of significany inflation, from about 2022-2023, this was modest by historic measures and largely less severe than most other places in the world. Since Donald Trump has reintroduce inflation through his national sales tax (Tariff) policy and pointless foreign wars, inflation is up to ~4.x%, which is higher than it needs to be, but not remarkable historically. The national rate of inflation in 1980 was 13.5%. China certainly challenges the United States, but it is not a regional power, it is a world power, and the challenge is largely just economic and influence.
"8. In a real war, fantasies of total technological dominance always backfire. When a faceless drone kills a child’s father, that child will one day take revenge regardless of the cost."
This idea, itself, is the stuff of fantasy fiction. Most children whose parents are killed by a missile, drone, bomb, or whatever else, grow up as orphans, in extreme poverty, and rarely emerge from it in any sort of revenge narrative.
"9. Oddly enough, proponents of fully automated warfare support a universal draft."
I don't think that this is true and the author doesn't make the case.
"14. The State will not help us. The state is a dying pre-Internet institution that increasingly resembles nothing but a Ponzi scheme fueled by taxes and debt."
This is techno-libertarian bull shit and simply false. The state remains as our ("big our") best tool to regulate and control technology. There is no other lever.
"17. Digital identity is the next step in their system of control."
This may be true, but it is in conflict with the gerontocracy of senile pedophiles argument. There has been no greater gift to pedophiles than the anonymity of the internet combined with the (relative) untraceability of effective encryption. These two things, liberty and safety, are genuinely in conflict with one another and I don't see the internet or state regulators finding the right solution.
"18. Only when one can be anonymous is one truly free."
This is trite and false, and tritely false.
"20. Culture wars are a psyop."
This is not true, and similarly trite. There are culture wars in every civilization and community on earth, throughout history, and they're not exclusively well organized psyops. I'd encourage the author to read Richard White's The Republic For Which It Stands, which I think the author would find a lot of common ground with White, but one thing that is particularly clarifying is in our current 21st century gilded age, just how much was similar 130 years ago before there was a mass media or national intelligence cabal.
I think that the author should workshop a lot of these arguments and focus on the ones that they're knowledgable about, particularly in terms ...
22 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 45.7 ms ] threadThere’s no common theme, very little justification of any of the claims, and frankly very little to do with palantir
If you're honestly thinking the US surveillance state is used to the same extent that those in China and Russia are to act upon enemies of the state at home and abroad, it makes me take you less seriously.
Could it be? Absolutely. Would Alex Karp gladly direct his company to program it even if it imprisoned/killed his own family for the benefit of shareholders? Probably. But when SCOTUS just told the government this week that they need warrants for geofenced surveillance operations, this doesn't point to the existence of a surveillance state like that in those nations. At least, not yet.
Why are you posting this on your company's site, littered with ads for the company's product?
Post it on a personal blog, or just say that these indeed are the company's beliefs.
Ask anyone in jail for social media posts in the UK.
Ask any Chinese citizen about their social score and how it's adjusted.
So this sounds like an Anti-American and Anti-Palantir rant.
Here's where it went off the rails. Once you've abandoned the idea of democracy and peaceful self-governance, you're just another technofascist. You are Palantir, just in an earlier stage.
We already have surveillance states. Walk into any chain drug store in the country and you'll be met with cameras tracking your every movement, deodorant under lock and key and a security guard at the door. You walk in and the overseers know who you are and track your every move.
However, people walk in to drug stores every day and walk out with stuff. They're often unmasked and repeat offenders. The drug store chain gladly hands over all identifying information to police as well as their patterns. Yet nothing happens.
People comment on forums exactly how and where scams take place. YouTubers bait car and package thieves within hours. Whenever a horrific crime occurs, 9 times out of 10 the perpetrator has had dozens of arrests.
> The “enemy within” continually expands until it encompasses the entire population of a nation regardless of their status and beliefs, justifying evermore paranoid and totalizing surveillance.
So the police doesn't go after known criminals who have been arrested for the umpteenth time, but I'm made to believe they're about to come after me any day now for my innocuous offense, they just need one more Palantir camera.
Be real, there's just no political will to enable a police state.
So now on to technology. Technology should make our lives better. Police should use it to capture and stop the 1% of the population that's making life much more difficult for the rest of us. And they should lock them up for a considerable amount of time, not as rehabilitation or punishment, just to make the lives of ~99% of us better off. Maybe not 3 strikes, but can we settle on 10? 20? Anything would help.
So these theoretical arguments about a surveillance state where some hypothetical political dissident is getting doxed and raided just strikes me as fantasy.
Tell us what you think, Harry, please don’t hold back
Fuck Palantir and fuck Peter Thiel.
And fuck you to who flagged the article.
But too many others are bullshit as the author was getting full of themselves.
"6. We are ruled by a senile gerontocracy. Unlike the generations that fought in the world wars, most of our current rulers are degenerate pedophiles"
This is just wrong. Donald Trump may be a senile pedophile, Howard Lutnik may be a pedophile but is not senile, Joe Biden was too old but wasn't senile or a pedophile, but we are largely not ruled by a cabal of senile pedophiles. The Trump Administration is protecting pedophiles, but most Americans, Europeans, and people throughout the world, are not ruled by pedophiles, either in their day or day or civic life.
"Today, new regional powers directly challenge the United States as its empire dissolves in the face of internal economic stagnation, political corruption, and the inflation of the dollar."
Regional powers don't directly challenge the United States. The United States has lost a war against Iran, but it was one we foolishly started. There isn't yet economic stagnation or inflation of the dollar. Even in the post-COVID period of significany inflation, from about 2022-2023, this was modest by historic measures and largely less severe than most other places in the world. Since Donald Trump has reintroduce inflation through his national sales tax (Tariff) policy and pointless foreign wars, inflation is up to ~4.x%, which is higher than it needs to be, but not remarkable historically. The national rate of inflation in 1980 was 13.5%. China certainly challenges the United States, but it is not a regional power, it is a world power, and the challenge is largely just economic and influence.
"8. In a real war, fantasies of total technological dominance always backfire. When a faceless drone kills a child’s father, that child will one day take revenge regardless of the cost."
This idea, itself, is the stuff of fantasy fiction. Most children whose parents are killed by a missile, drone, bomb, or whatever else, grow up as orphans, in extreme poverty, and rarely emerge from it in any sort of revenge narrative.
"9. Oddly enough, proponents of fully automated warfare support a universal draft."
I don't think that this is true and the author doesn't make the case.
"14. The State will not help us. The state is a dying pre-Internet institution that increasingly resembles nothing but a Ponzi scheme fueled by taxes and debt."
This is techno-libertarian bull shit and simply false. The state remains as our ("big our") best tool to regulate and control technology. There is no other lever.
"17. Digital identity is the next step in their system of control."
This may be true, but it is in conflict with the gerontocracy of senile pedophiles argument. There has been no greater gift to pedophiles than the anonymity of the internet combined with the (relative) untraceability of effective encryption. These two things, liberty and safety, are genuinely in conflict with one another and I don't see the internet or state regulators finding the right solution.
"18. Only when one can be anonymous is one truly free."
This is trite and false, and tritely false.
"20. Culture wars are a psyop."
This is not true, and similarly trite. There are culture wars in every civilization and community on earth, throughout history, and they're not exclusively well organized psyops. I'd encourage the author to read Richard White's The Republic For Which It Stands, which I think the author would find a lot of common ground with White, but one thing that is particularly clarifying is in our current 21st century gilded age, just how much was similar 130 years ago before there was a mass media or national intelligence cabal.
I think that the author should workshop a lot of these arguments and focus on the ones that they're knowledgable about, particularly in terms ...
What is a CEO-Philosopher?
It's clear the author has NO IDEA what Palantir is actually building.