[HN Gopher] What does Palantir actually do?
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What does Palantir actually do?
Author : mudil
Score : 165 points
Date : 2025-08-13 23:03 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/6ljwy
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > Palantir's employees are also sometimes called "hobbits."
| According to one former employee, a common internal motto in
| Palantir's early days was "Save the Shire," a reference to the
| hobbit homeland, which they say was a rallying cry that reflected
| the company's ethos at the time.
|
| this seems so delusional and divorced from the source material
| that i sometimes wonder if any of these people are familiar with
| it _at all_.
|
| edit to clarify:
|
| "They do not and did not understand or like machines more
| complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom,
| though they were skilful with tools."
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Or you could try to understand why they would think this way,
| and perhaps get an understanding of how people you utterly
| disagree with reason and think.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i'm not talking about whether i think palantir or its
| employees are good or bad.
|
| "They do not and did not understand or like machines more
| complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-
| loom, though they were skilful with tools." - Concerning
| Hobbits
|
| The Scouring Of The Shire is the account of anti-industrial
| direct action, for Iluvatar's sake.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Elon Musk is a huge fan of Iain Banks' Culture books and
| completely misses the fact that it's profoundly anti-
| capitalist and that the villain in _Surface Detail_ is
| basically _him_. Rich tech nerds are _really good_ at
| missing the points being made by the sf /f books they claim
| to love.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Coming soon: The Left Hand of Darkness, where manly men
| cross the ice together!
|
| Sigh.
| gdbsjjdn wrote:
| We've finally built the Torment Nexus from the sci-fi
| classic, Don't Build The Torment Nexus.
| sidibe wrote:
| It's possible he never actually read them? Another thing
| Elon would hate that I vaguely remember from one of the
| Culture books is one of the characters is considered
| weird for never having been the other sex.
| becurious wrote:
| And then there's the apex sex in The Player Of Games.
|
| I think at least Excession has one of the protagonists
| transition at the end of the novel.
| grafmax wrote:
| Being willing to use any means necessary means to fight your
| enemies - building software to support mass surveillance,
| genocide, and concentration camps - means you're no longer
| fighting for moral principles - you're fighting for power. In
| that regard I do think a closer reading of the source
| material does have something to teach these people.
| thrown-0825 wrote:
| Peter Thiel is a an authoritarian loser and Tolkien would have
| hated his guts.
| therobots927 wrote:
| I think he is more than aware of the fact that he's the
| villain in this story. The kool-aid drinking employees of his
| portfolio companies on the other hand are a different
| story...
| thrown-0825 wrote:
| I dont think so, hes pretty obviously a sociopath and they
| typically struggle with self awareness and tend to view
| themselves as victims.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| He named his data company after the seeing stones that
| are almost exclusively associated with the Eye of Sauron.
| I get the impression he doesn't much care if people see
| him as a villain.
| qzw wrote:
| Some people read a story like LotR and think, "If I were
| Sauron, I would do such and such, and I would've won." A
| few of these people have the means to actually live out
| that scenario.
| qaq wrote:
| Palantir is a consulting shop that positions itself as a tech
| company
| Duhck wrote:
| Yes, but...
|
| They also have one of the most profitable business models the
| world has ever seen. Their RPE (revenue per employee) is
| roughly $1mm and growing at a 50% YoY rate...
|
| They heavily use technology as leverage for insane margin
| growth. 90% rule of 40 as well.
| elliotto wrote:
| Yeah turns out leeching off the surveillance state makes
| heaps of money. Great business model
| qaq wrote:
| and yet they made a monstorus 214 mil in Q1 and Accenture
| Plc: $2.2 billion
| cowpig wrote:
| How much of their revenue is from government contracts?
|
| Is their profitable business model based on the fact that
| they're good at enabling & profiting from authoritarianism
| and corruption?
| throwforfeds wrote:
| > Their RPE (revenue per employee) is roughly $1mm and
| growing at a 50% YoY rate...
|
| Meanwhile OnlyFans is at something like $30mm per employee,
| which is wild.
| eCa wrote:
| > Meanwhile OnlyFans is at something like $30mm per
| employee
|
| Revenue 2023: $1.30 billion[1]
|
| Employees: ~1000
|
| So they are at Palantir levels, which still is wild.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyFans
| Jolter wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
| Most of the people producing value for OnlyFans are not
| employed at (or contractors for) OnlyFans. I'm sure other
| gig platforms also do really well "per employee". A
| comparison between them and Palantir makes little sense to
| me.
| anon191928 wrote:
| $1MM is nothing if you compare that to Valve or Hyperliquid.
|
| so yeah not the top of chain
| some_furry wrote:
| If you want to know what Palantir actually does, ask its critics.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/survei...
| ianks wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear a follow-up article about what Palantir
| _doesn't_ do. For better or worse, I think we are living in a
| time where companies should take principled stands about anti-
| features.
|
| It's good to build in all of these optional data and privacy
| knobs, but I fear that's not enough.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| There is literally nothing the company won't do. We're talking
| IBM and the Third Reich levels of greed an immorality here.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Adjust your tin foil hat
| hatthew wrote:
| TFA mentions the most important points, which are that Palantir
| doesn't provide any data or act on any data.
| Lammy wrote:
| They sell the capability to do this on a global scale:
| https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
| jmclnx wrote:
| From the article
|
| >What it's ultimately selling them is not just software, but the
| idea of a seamless, almost magical solution to complex problems
|
| Sound like to me all it does is funnel our tax dollars to the top
| 1%.
|
| They seem to be involved with the project below. So I cannot help
| to believe these people with Trump's Admin. is a massive
| corruption operation on steroids.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-unraveling-two-pentagon...
|
| No wonder the deficit is expanding.
| LearnYouALisp wrote:
| > WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - ...to cancel two nearly
| complete software projects that took 12 years and well over
| $800 million combined [for HR systems]...
|
| > The reason for the unusual move: officials at those
| departments, who have so far put the existing projects on hold,
| want other firms, including Salesforce and billionaire Peter
| Thiel's Palantir, to have a chance to win similar projects,
| which could amount to a costly do-over, according to seven
| sources familiar with the matter.
|
| "To have a chance"?!
|
| > Exodus 23:8 ESV > And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe
| blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who
| are in the right.
| yunwal wrote:
| Ok so like what does Palantir actually do?
|
| From what I understand Palantir is basically a data consulting
| company with a suite of data mining/visualization tools at its
| core. Essentially, it sends an engineer armed with these tools
| into the customer organization's various disparate databases,
| funnels all that data to one tool, and then gives you some nice
| graphs or whatever.
|
| IMO it's mostly bullshit, which is why they make all their
| customers sign ndas. I've still never met anyone who worked with
| them that could tell me any significant value they brought.
| jinushaun wrote:
| Sounds like a lot of government contractors.
| thrown-0825 wrote:
| What do you think DOGE was for?
| birn559 wrote:
| Dismantling/Crippling institutions and fulfilling wet
| dreams of power of narcissistic people.
| thrown-0825 wrote:
| its no longer a dream
| jeltz wrote:
| To dismantle efficient government agencies and oversight so
| it is easier for companies like Palantir to scam the
| government.
| stephencoyner wrote:
| I'd recommend watching any of the AIP demos given by customers.
| The commercial customers seem to be quite open about what they
| do with the tech
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmKm_LhXXgqRbNwHCSD4Wb-lI...
| peroids wrote:
| If anyone wants inside info on what they actually dm me, I have
| to work with their products and can probably give you all the
| dirt
| Tiberium wrote:
| HN doesn't have DMs :)
| mgh2 wrote:
| Article: > "Got a Tip? Are you a current or former Palantir
| employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to
| hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the
| reporter securely on Signal at carolinehaskins.61."
| jpfromlondon wrote:
| seems like a trap.
| neilv wrote:
| Don't do this.
|
| Use Wikipedia to vet the close connections of whatever news
| outlet you were considering, and stop vetting only once you
| realize that you almost made a terrible mistake by talking to
| a reporter there.
|
| Forget whatever dirt you think you know (it doesn't matter in
| the current political environment), donate your blood money
| to a good cause, and go do something you feel better about,
| but without stepping on the toes of the scariest people.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Is there software any good? By good I would use Splunk as a
| reference, which I consider very good.
| htrp wrote:
| Palantir is a tech platform that consumes data from their clients
| in return for providing high level data-driven insights. They
| assign FDEs (or consultants) to really learn the details of a
| customers data. Foundry allows them to get single pane view of
| the data in an org and they actually have both the tech and
| engineering skills to do the dirty data cleaning jobs.
|
| For an extravagant fee, you give them your data, they clean it
| for you, and then those same FDEs can tell you interesting things
| that you should have known, had you actually done proper data
| architecture in the first place.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| > had you actually done proper data architecture in the first
| place.
|
| so beautiful.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _For an extravagant fee, you give them your data, they clean
| it for you, and then those same FDEs can tell you interesting
| things that you should have known, had you actually done proper
| data architecture in the first place._
|
| AFAIK, this is the most succinct description of Palantir I've
| read. A looser-fitting analogy is they come in, replace
| whatever the hell you were trying to use SAP for with actually
| competent software. Most "FDEs" can't explain what the company
| does because what they did was work at $CLIENT for 18 months
| ripping apart all their internal software with Palantir
| building blocks.
| gundmc wrote:
| It sounds like fundamentally SAP and Palantir target
| different use cases though? While SAP has OLAP functions,
| their bread and butter is highly domain-specific and
| transactional.
| utilize1808 wrote:
| So it's outsourced data science?
| 2d520075 wrote:
| Closer to outsourced data engineering
| internetter wrote:
| yes, and they also make user interfaces for killing people
| kccqzy wrote:
| Yes but if you don't have enough budget to pay for their
| engineering time, they also provide good UI to do data
| science. It's like a fancier version of Excel for data
| wrangling: imagine Excel but your data is not necessarily
| tabular; it may be a graph; it may contain images and
| multimedia, etc.
|
| I once interviewed at Palantir and at the same they gave a
| demo of their software to every candidate.
| mitchbob wrote:
| FDE = Forward Deployed Engineer
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Forward Deployed Engineer = Consultant
|
| I will not allow Palantir to extend their reality distortion
| field to me. They are consultants. They are also engineers.
| Other places call them FEs. But they didn't invent some new
| class of engineering, they just rebranded one.
| geetee wrote:
| Reality distortion, or they're just using military
| terminology?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| One and the same. It would be like if I tried to call my
| product _Tactical Software as a Service_
|
| It would still only be software as a service, but I would
| just brand it in a way to make it more appealing to
| certain buyer personas without any actual investment or
| commitment on my part.
| djeastm wrote:
| >They are consultants. They are also engineers.
|
| Good lord the egos must be massive.
| dogman144 wrote:
| "Forwarded deployed" is just national security jargon
| adopted by to a tech co, as I recall.
| sunrunner wrote:
| As opposed to the more commonly known 'Reverse Deployed
| Engineer', who sits behind the product manager who can deal
| with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The product manager deals with the god damn customers so
| the engineers don't have to. He has people skills; he is
| good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that?
| What the hell is wrong with you people?!?
| leobg wrote:
| They take an exorbitant fee to clean up the mess government
| created when they outsourced their tech infrastructure to
| private sector companies preying on dumb government money.
|
| That's the thing with government: They always believe you can
| drown out problems with taxpayer money. They don't get that
| what solves problems is never money, but competence, hard work,
| and having skin in the game.
| jeltz wrote:
| At least in my country the reason is that the politicians
| force them to outsource in various ways like not letting them
| pay their employees market rate salaries.
|
| It is not that they believe more money will solve the
| problem. It is often cost cutting which makes things this
| expensive.
| leobg wrote:
| My take is that government is like a really lazy college
| student. Goimg to the library to study would be hard, and
| you'd need vision and motivation to do it. Instead, you
| take the money given to you by your parents, buy the best
| textbook there is on the subject, and put it on your shelf.
| You haven't actually achieved anything. But you still feel
| a sense of accomplishment. You paid money. You bought
| something. That counts. Or at least so you tell yourself.
| And so does the government. It's basically all Y Combinator
| rules, reversed.
| 2d520075 wrote:
| If by "you give them your data" you mean "your data never
| leaves your data warehouses and never touches a Palantir
| server", then you're close
| samrus wrote:
| Their FDE embeds in your org yeah. Thats worth noting maybe,
| but not that novel
| UltraSane wrote:
| Best I have been able to determine is they use an in-house
| developed graph DB and ontologies and a lot of experience to link
| and analyze data in very powerful ways.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| I highly suspect all these Big Data companies are consulting for
| Big Companies that are doing things that if the average citizen
| was aware of, would be absolutely horrified
|
| Which is why they speak in business lingo / vague generalities
| and not give examples, its to hide the real intent
| xenospn wrote:
| The average citizen cares about the cost of eggs and not much
| else.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Upon what evidence are your suspicions based?
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| I don't think its all that sophisticated. The reason Palantir
| pairs up its services with consultants is that it's not that
| useful or sophisticated, the consultant's job is to spice it up
| so it seems like the data and tooling is more valuable than it
| actually is.
|
| It's the same model as McKinsey etc, the value add is in
| feeling like you're getting value out of the money you're
| spending and half of that is being marketed to personally by
| the consultant and getting glossy presentations, reports, and
| dashboards.
| mirzap wrote:
| Recently, I have been increasingly associating Palantir with the
| 'Samaritan' from Person of Interest, an evil entity monitoring
| everyone in the digital world, collecting data, and selling it to
| authoritarian regimes.
| tamishungry wrote:
| such a great show!
| fleaaa wrote:
| I've always associated Palantir with Dark Knight Sonar vision
| system. This one might be working better than the fictional one
| I suppose.
|
| It's such a disgusting modern day leviathan, I roll my eyes to
| the back of my head when people casually say you should buy
| their stock
| supercanuck wrote:
| I was joking with a friend that one of their competitive
| advantages is that it is a mediocre data platform but their
| critics get gang stalked.
| raffael_de wrote:
| Given that the world is headed towards a surveillance dystopia
| and Peter Thiel being involved I think I should buy some stocks
| now. What happened end of 2024 that kicked off its price hike?
| GloriousMEEPT wrote:
| Palantir donated millions to the Trump campaign and he won.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Vance worked for Thiel and was funded by him. They're both
| friends with Curtis yarvin.
| platevoltage wrote:
| I hope that's a rhetorical question.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >What happened end of 2024 that kicked off its price hike?
|
| Owning the vice president tends to look pretty damn good on a
| balance sheet. Especially when that admin is pretty openly
| running pump and dumps on wall street.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Mix of Trump winning, prospects for investing in ICE, policing,
| defense and AI hype
|
| Another stock on this trend:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/axon-reports-q2-2025-revenue-...
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Revenue growth of 20-40% a quarter EPS Growth of 100% a quarter
|
| Earning beat after earning beat, increased guidance after
| increased guidance
| dash2 wrote:
| Maybe not... given its Price/Sales ratio, it's pricing in about
| 10 years of 30% growth. It's a great company (bracketing the
| ethics issue which has produced a lot of boring discussion
| here). But even a great company can be severely overvalued.
|
| Put another way: if you buy, be very ready to sell fast, and
| very confident that you can gauge when a market turns.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| You can just look at their website -- it's surprisingly in depth
| even with their targeting systems and stuff. It's wild how open
| they are about it.
| progbits wrote:
| https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/ ctrl-f "kill chain"
| and watch the video.
|
| They have a fucking kanban board for bombing people.
| geetee wrote:
| I mean, let's be realistic.... should they just use an excel
| spreadsheet?
| progbits wrote:
| Back in my day we killed people using the waterfall method
| and we liked it.
| infecto wrote:
| Is it that surprising? Ignoring war being good or bad, you
| would assume there needs to be some method to the madness. I
| assume before computers this meant a central com center that
| kept track of everything using humans and chalkboards or
| tables.
| kmijyiyxfbklao wrote:
| War should be done by government, including dashboards for
| killing people. And then the focus should be on improving
| representation and accountability in the government. Doing
| this with private companies avoid accountability, the same
| way payment networks can regulate merchants, or the FBI
| outsources spying Americans to private contractors.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Is that surprising or bad ?
|
| Sure war is bad and killing people is bad, but can we stop
| acting like it's a choice ? Unfortunately, wars will happen
| as long as humans exist and it's much better to be on the
| winning side. So yeah, there are a lot of people building
| dashboards for killing people and it's not necessarily bad. I
| would even argue that it's much better than a lot of people
| whose work is to make kids and adults addicted to screens.
| w_for_wumbo wrote:
| "wars will happen as long as humans exist" - I
| fundamentally disagree with this premise. I never once saw
| a child murder another, so why do we assume it's inevitable
| when people are grown? Why do we hold adults to lower
| standards than children.
|
| These assumptions when they go unquestioned create the
| landscape for war to be accepted.
| milchek wrote:
| Perhaps OP meant that the military industrial complex
| will always ensure wars happen?
|
| Incentives are there to make money from weaponry and
| defense contracts. Further incentives are there to take
| land or resources, or to simply destabilize competing
| nations. To stop all of this requires a pretty
| fundamental shift in a human machine that is still
| hardwired for survival.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Nope, I mean humans are like that. We always want more,
| we are jalous of what another one have, there are
| countless unsolvable issues involving race, religions,
| history.
|
| Sooner or later those transform into wars, inevitably. If
| by some miracle you could get all nations to agree not to
| arm, that would work, but of course it's unrealistic. As
| soon as there is 1 that don't agree (or worse, agree but
| arm secretely) everybody needs to arm as well.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Because we have a lot of resources, I want to keep the
| amount of resources that I have or increase it, and they
| want the same for themselves
| wrboyce wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger
|
| There are, unfortunately, many examples of child
| murderers.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There will always be single things that two groups feel
| they both entitled to, and both sides can't share it.
| Death is the only tool we were given to ensure a single
| side wins.
| afroboy wrote:
| So if you where living in Nazi Germany you still saying
| these words?
|
| I know a nation need to be powerful to defend it self from
| evil but you don't have to be evil murdering millions of
| people because you don't like their faith.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| I'm just stating the obvious - wars are inevitable and
| hence every nation is directing significant ressources to
| self defense (and quite a lot to offense too).
|
| What does it have to do with Nazi Germany ?
| araes wrote:
| This was actually surprisingly clear. This, and htrp's
| comment are much clearer than the entire noise article.
|
| They make dashboards and apps for killing people. With a lot
| of technical jargon like "integrating disparate weapons and
| sensor systems for a kill chain".
|
| Somebody in America says "we want to kill somebody" ->
| satellite gives real-time imagery on location -> weapons
| systems available nearby are recommended -> user clicks
| orders and telemetry go out to field operators and ex: drone
| systems -> predator fires up and flies to location and bombs
| target -> real-time imagery confirms explosion and results.
| dogman144 wrote:
| A helpful framework I've liked is
|
| - Palantir was incredible technology during the wars in
| Afghanistan and Iraq for putting the proverbial warheads on
| foreheads of insurgents with terrible SIGINT practices and a lot
| of generated data. You could build and analyze graphs of
| insurgent networks that were tangibly powerful
|
| - After that, in my mind what was very similar tech was sold to
| US domestic police, corporate insider threat teams, whatever. As
| I recall it had uneven adoption due to expense
|
| - Now in 2025, that same tech is slated to have broad access to
| American citizen data under an entirely trustable and stable
| executive branch.
|
| With those face value facts, a capable technical mind like those
| in hackernews could draw logical conclusions.
|
| To put a pin in it - threat modeling for what you say and do
| online as this era progresses is interesting to consider. Now
| with tech like this, your threat model is now you + your friends.
| Who's the "radical" in your friend group, and is the group chat
| on unencrypted systems? Consider what your graph would be, and
| how much do you trust tech like this ran by either the current
| team or the other team.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Related:
| https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lwekzzruji2j
| dogman144 wrote:
| Military integration with law enforcement -> military tech
| licenses -> focus on cities -> cities have troves of SIGINT
|
| Unencrypted group chat -> one friend hates one party ->
| another friend loves to talk about illegal habits -> tool
| hoovering it all up -> illegal habits friend is the pretext
| to look at politics friend
|
| Clear as day, as this is what caused a bad time for
| insurgents in an actual war. Makes a lot of sense to apply it
| domestically! Tread on me.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Apparently crime only happens in big cities. It's weird,
| because where I grew up in rural Missouri, every-other
| dipshit was a meth junkie, robbing houses to support their
| addiction. But, well, maybe I just invented all that with my
| crazy imagination.
| tempodox wrote:
| IOW, they facilitate killing people. Got it.
| dogman144 wrote:
| And facilitated it well. And now US fed law enforcement
| likely will have it.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| It gave them targets but was it correct? Afaik people in LA
| are targeted by police simply for living in the area of
| known drug gangs. Guess it's a lot like Israel and Hamas
| targets.
| dogman144 wrote:
| You should look into how the LA targeting works, and what
| vendor drove data-driven policing like this. If I recall,
| it might have been Chicago PD or NYC that dumped Palantir
| bc the issue you note + cost.
| LearnYouALisp wrote:
| Or just being on the street and appearing Latino:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=citizens+abducted+by+ice
| (See the Guardian story)
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I figured this was coming. It'll get really bad if we
| eliminate birthright citizenship because then you'll have
| to supply papers proving you're a citizen like your
| parents' or their parents' birth certificates. Good luck
| providing those to anyone from a prison in Nicaragua or
| El Salvador.
| lazide wrote:
| Do you really think the current admin cares?
| artursapek wrote:
| b2g software (body to ground)
| LearnYouALisp wrote:
| > ...incredible technology during the wars in Afghanistan and
| Iraq
|
| > - Now in 2025, that same tech is slated to have broad access
| to American citizen data
|
| Speaking of which, only loosely-related, but is there any
| indication of where the 'recent' leak of British special
| forces, contractors and/or informants (?) happened? (est. 2022,
| discovered later, now in news)
| incone123 wrote:
| News reported it was data getting passed around as a
| spreadsheet attached to emails. Ironically it would have been
| possible to build a case management tool with rbac on
| Palantir Foundry and avoid that screwup.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Don't forget that Lavender AI, the "cool system" that
| automatically targets all Hamas fighters (with probably 1000%
| civilian casualties because it destroyed all hospitals,
| churches, mosques and schools along the way) was developed by
| Palantir.
|
| The irony is that this really bad SIGINT graph flags also
| relatives, e.g. cousins of cousins of fighters, just because
| they had e.g. family events where they attended together, even
| though all other intelligence data would point to the contrary.
| The documentary that got banned from BBC highlights this with a
| lot of stories where e.g. hospital workers were specifically
| targeted because a distant relative was associated with hamas.
|
| Palantir had a video on YouTube where they were even bragging
| about this graph, though not under its now-leaked codename.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| That "incredible" tech didn't seem to help all that much in
| Afghanistan. Not only did the US lose, I never got the sense we
| were even particularly close to winning, even if we'd stayed
| there for another 20 years and trillion dollars. In terms of
| tangible wins, what was Palantir's "incredible" tech actually
| delivering?
| dogman144 wrote:
| It delivered two things, and the easy response to your fair
| point is tactical tools -- a rifle, great software -- don't
| win wars on their own.
|
| 1) Palantir was the first breath of fresh air that brought
| actually good tech with modern tech support practices to the
| warfighter, and by extension put the big defense contractors
| on notice. I personally believe this impact was tremendously
| important as there were real safety connotations involved,
| and anyone with a family member downrange could appreciate
| this.
|
| 2) Palantir was great targeting software that worked like
| modern tech vs a custom Linux distro with a GUI from 1970 and
| required 5 months of finagling to get vendor support for.
|
| So Palantir just brought standard 2010's tech to soldiers
| betting their safety on it. This was incredible although
| ordinary.
| ml-anon wrote:
| "Putting the warheads on foreheads"
|
| Who the fuck talks like this, seriously?
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Palantir is a FAAS, fascism-as-a-service provider.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| What kind of fascists are they?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| They track you, and not to sell you stuff.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Wasn't there a blog post on HN a while back from someone who
| worked there early on in their career, where they traveled around
| and built a bunch of tools to help manage data etc.? I thought it
| was an interesting lens to look through. Can't recall the post,
| though.
| asveikau wrote:
| It made it sound like what they did is drop ship into a
| company, destroy all their existing procedures, and rush
| through a half assed piece of software to replace them.
|
| It sounded a lot like the DOGE playbook. From that vantage
| point I became skeptical that they did anything good for their
| clients. It's like "douchebag outsourcing consultant as a
| service".
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| This one?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44785708
| kherud wrote:
| It's probably "Reflections on Palantir"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41855006
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Nice find, that's it.
| Fomite wrote:
| "Evil"
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| They aggregate data and use it to hurt people. They use Facebook
| data for instance. If they collected the data or a "customer" did
| it does not really matter to me at least.
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