[HN Gopher] MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of governmen...
___________________________________________________________________
MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to
UK security
Author : vrganj
Score : 558 points
Date : 2026-03-16 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenerve.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenerve.news)
| cjs_ac wrote:
| TIL that the head of Palantir's UK arm is the grandson of Sir
| Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of
| Fascists in the 1930s.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Sins of the father are not sins of the (grand)son.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Of course, but this lineage should indeed encourage some
| scrutiny.
| graemep wrote:
| Especially as multiple people in his family have had
| fascist sympathies.
|
| Given his ancestry wearing a black shirt for a TV interview
| was pretty bad judgement.
| persedes wrote:
| If it quacks like a duck...?
| graemep wrote:
| To an extent, but with caution and charity. A lot of
| exceptionally good people have come from bad families -
| one of the Borgias was a saint, for example. A lot of
| exceptionally nasty people seem to have perfectly nice
| families.
|
| Of course sometimes people who are, for example, brought
| up to be racist, are racist.
| nisegami wrote:
| Of course not, the grandson is hard at work on his own sins.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| My point exactly.
| coldtea wrote:
| You'd be surprised how often the beliefs of the
| father/grandfather are those of the son/grandson, not to
| mention how often they feel the need to avenge for the
| perceived injustices or slights done to their parents
| e2le wrote:
| Given the history of his family, one would expect them to
| avoid risque associations and activities. I think it deserves
| some scrutiny.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| He's in good company.
|
| MI6 head is Blaise Metreweli whose grandfather was Constantine
| Dobrowolski, the Nazis' chief informant in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| Apples don't usually fall that far from the tree.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... I'm sorry, what?
|
| If this was a political drama, that would be written out on the
| basis that it wasn't believable.
| padolsey wrote:
| Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive
| people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It
| feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about
| Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat
| CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients
| feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Why does Palantir specifically need to exist? To funnel those
| juicy government budgets into shareholders' pockets.
|
| Why does anyone bother to use them? Because they have
| convincing marketing (which may or may not include buttering
| government palms with, um, "incentives" ...)
|
| Occam's razor: It's a big pile of "list of things being handled
| by an outside entity so I neither have to think about it, nor
| hire for them."
| edgyquant wrote:
| If Palantir wasn't highly effective at aggregating data no
| one would care about the. They are considered a threat to
| privacy and freedom because they are a good product
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's part of it, but not the whole story. If Palantir
| were a book, explaining how to implement data aggregation
| systems effectively, people wouldn't be so wary of it.
| (Critics would still criticise that data aggregation was
| performed in the first place, of course, but there wouldn't
| be the additional "and it's Palantir".)
| gonzo41 wrote:
| They have magic consultant power mode.
|
| In government you have to deliver, most of the time the mode of
| delivery is boring, small, conservative, and disjointed from
| other government groups because large efforts of work attract
| big budgets, oversight and doubt.
|
| Consultants are magic, because they come with no baggage and
| promise the world. They take you hostage with sunk cost fallacy
| and then after years they deliver something.
|
| At the end you're so tired you think that what they did was
| beyond your government agency and the cycle continues.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Companies need databases lol.
|
| I don't know how you think a b2b company could run sales
| without a CRM like Salesforce.
|
| To give your question a generous interpretation, Salesforce is
| more valuable than Apptio or your home grown CRM because it
| already has all the features any sales org needs, and all the
| fragmented sales and marketing tooling are already integrated
| with it.
|
| And Sales is a very expensive and also high ROI activity. You
| don't want your sales team hung up trying to figure out how to
| get the random CRM to do something. You're not looking to cut
| costs in this area, you're looking to enhance the overall
| productivity of the org. Sales tooling overall is very
| expensive for this reason, any marginal edge is worth a lot.
|
| It's also worth noting that a big value of things like
| Salesforce is that it lets management check up on what people
| are doing, because as much as HN doesn't like to admit it,
| people are often not very careful or diligent, and you need to
| perform supervision on the vast majority of people to improve
| their performance.
|
| Jira is similar, in that eng is very expensive, and its
| probably better than what these companies were doing
| beforehand, even if it is suboptimal.
| threetonesun wrote:
| It's true, literally no b2b sales companies existed before
| Salesforce. We must all continue to pay for Salesforce and
| support its workflows for now until the endless future, lest
| b2b sales vanish again.
| oncallthrow wrote:
| Palantir's product is light years ahead of anything any
| government IT project has ever, and in my opinion can ever,
| deliver. They're not even in the same league.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Seems unlikely. I've seen teams at GDS + teams based on the
| GDS way of working in other UK gov departments solve some
| really knarly problems.
| Tinkeringz wrote:
| Counter to that I've seen a PS37m contract for a form on
| gov uk with absolutely no change in process, just going
| from a letter received to a online form
| crimsoneer wrote:
| They most definitely won't spend time on military bases
| though, whereas Palantir devs will essentially live there.
| dgroshev wrote:
| GDS is amazing. However, unless we double/triple the GDS
| salary grades, it'll inevitably be hollowed out. From what
| I heard, that might've already happened.
|
| Look for yourself, GDS is hiring a "Lead Technical
| Architect" for PS67,126-PS91,453
| https://gds.blog.gov.uk/jobs/ . FAANG (and Palantir) pays
| up to triple that. How can GDS compete for talent?
| _joel wrote:
| They've reworked some planning and a reduced the waiting
| list, slightly. Not exactly worth the money (and letting them
| have ALL of our data).
| rithdmc wrote:
| iOS is light years ahead of anything any government IT
| project has ever, and in my opinion can ever, deliver.
| They're not even in the same league.
|
| I hope you can see why that's a nonsensical statement.
| Palantir is a private intelligence company.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Horseshit, mate ... basically just pumped up database
| software aided and abetted by "consultants" parachuted into
| the client org ... like the industry has been doing since the
| 80's ...
|
| Edit: I found the following on Glassdoor and, while I don't
| know the poster personally, it pretty much sums it up:
|
| "If you are in Business Development (BD) - i.e. Delta or Echo
| - this job will be your life. They deliberately underhire -
| they claim it's to maintain the culture, but really it's to
| squeeze every ounce of productivity out of you. You are
| thrown into chaotic situations with no way out but to "chew
| glass and excrete product". Don't let the flat heirarchy and
| encouragement of confrontation / open debate deceive you.
| Karp has majority founder shares and calls the shots. The
| company is a dictatorship, not a democracy. Resourcing is a
| black box. If you are a U.S person without a clearance, you
| will be bait-and-switched into defense even if you thought
| you could avoid it. With clearance, you'll end up on
| something much worse. Trust your gut - the company's
| leadership are not wise, nuanced philosophers - they are
| spineless, shifty edgelords with no ethical red lines. As a
| FDE, you will spend half your time working around stupid
| limitations in the platform you could not foresee when making
| grand promises to the customer. Foundry is not a cutting edge
| product, just like Microsoft Suite is not a cutting edge
| product. Its just too broad for any other company to easily
| copy it. Palantir just brought middle-of-the-road Silicon
| valley tech to old-school government, slapped some AI
| integration onto it and shrouded it in a veil of mystery to
| make it seem cool and mysterious and appeal to retail
| investors."
| Angostura wrote:
| > light years ahead of anything any government IT project has
| ever,
|
| But specifically in terms of what?
| angiolillo wrote:
| Plenty of companies don't "need to exist". A company exists
| because someone decided to start it (usually to make some
| money) and lasts until someone decides to end it (usually when
| it stops making money).
|
| If you're asking why Palantir (and Salesforce, Jira, etc)
| continue to make money despite not having any novel or complex
| technologies, my experience has been that these are not
| prerequisites for solving the vast majority of business
| problems. Usually network effects, customer relationships,
| brand identity, user interface, inertia, etc are all more
| important than the technology.
|
| It is not always easy for a technologist to admit, but
| companies whose ongoing success is primarily due to some sort
| of (non-UX) technological superiority are the exception rather
| than the rule.
| readitalready wrote:
| This discounts the value of user experience, which people
| will pay a premium for.
|
| A good design is valuable, and this applies to business
| processes as well.
|
| How would you design the user experience of constructing a
| submarine?
|
| Good design IS technological superiority.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > This discounts the value of user experience, which people
| will pay a premium for.
|
| The people making purchasing decisions at this level aren't
| the ones using it and don't care one whit about UX.
|
| That isn't to say that it isn't valuable, but it's
| basically a non-factor. The technology itself is a non-
| factor. Everything is about connections, buzz words and
| pretty slide decks.
| readitalready wrote:
| They literally do, since the people making purchasing
| decisions are usually the ones that ranked up through a
| system they used and know the intricacies of, including
| all the pain points.
|
| Randos don't become general managers.
| krupan wrote:
| People who actually care about the day to day pain points
| of jira also do not become general managers
| rsynnott wrote:
| > This discounts the value of user experience, which people
| will pay a premium for.
|
| Have you ever used jira? They are very much not selling
| that thing on the basis of UX.
| krona wrote:
| They're just a systems integrator with extra marketing full of
| empty promises. Think IBM, but less shit.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Like how Tableau is a great UI for grammar of graphics,
| Palantir is a great UI for ontological expert systems.
| Technically you could do everything without it but
| organizations and especially government typically don't
| cultivate that level of expertise in their staff.
|
| In my view expert systems typically failed because the
| organizations would degrade bureaucratically faster than any
| expert system could accommodate. With AI there isn't a pre-
| requisite need for organizational expertise so the tooling will
| still work in largely dysfunctional orgs which is a property
| that did not previously exist. With the help of AI people who
| don't understand ontologies can still successfully build one.
|
| Separately it is my opinion that Palantir is a CIA cut-out for
| the Peter Thiel faction. So paying Palantir is like paying
| tribute to that particular faction. Similar to how other large
| military purchases are less about the military hardware and
| more of a client state subscription to 'align interests' such
| that the US is more likely to act in the donor countries
| interest.
| generic92034 wrote:
| > Similar to how other large military purchases are less
| about the military hardware and more of a client state
| subscription to 'align interests' such that the US is more
| likely to act in the donor countries interest.
|
| I have a feeling this is no longer a viable model. If
| "subscribers" get threatened every other day, they will be
| looking for alternatives.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > they will be looking for alternatives.
|
| Who do "they" as in Europe go to?
|
| China also views the EU as a junior partner [0], is running
| an ongoing disinfo campaign against the industrial exports
| of an EU member state [1], and has doubled down on it's
| support for Russia [2] in Ukraine in return for Russia
| backing China's claim on Taiwan [3].
|
| And the EU is uninterested in building domestic capacity
| for most critical technologies.
|
| Heck, last week [4] the EU excluded AI, Quantum,
| Semiconductors, and other technologies from the Industrial
| Accelerator Act (aka the "Made in EU" act) in order to
| concentrate on automotive and "net-zero" technologies.
|
| Given that Chinese technology imports are already under the
| radar in the EU due to the Ukraine war, this is basically
| the EU creating a carveout for the US.
|
| Even the major European Telecom and Space companies like
| Eutelsat, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefonica bluntly stated
| that they view the EU's digital sovereignity strategy as
| dead in the water [5] in it's current form.
|
| Edit: can't reply
|
| > They/we will go to domestic producers as much as
| possible, then China, then US, then rest of the world in
| that order. At least that would make a rational approach
| since (for now) unique things like f-35 can become an
| expensive paperweight on a whim of a lonely sick man. You
| can't build any sort of defense strategy on that, can you
|
| But as I clearly showed, the EU is doing otherwise.
|
| And the EU cannot work with China as long as China backs
| Russia and undermines European industrial exports.
|
| All the rhetoric about digital sovereignity and domestic
| capacity has been just that - rhetoric.
|
| [0] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/
| page.ht...
|
| [1] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-
| analyses-froi...
|
| [2] - https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-
| commentary/2025-01-...
|
| [3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russias-shoigu-
| chinas-wa...
|
| [4] - https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/eu-axes-ai-chips-and-
| quantum...
|
| [5] - https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/europes-digital-
| sovereignty-...
| kakacik wrote:
| They/we will go to domestic producers as much as
| possible, then China, then US, then rest of the world in
| that order. At least that would make a rational approach
| since (for now) unique things like f-35 can become an
| expensive paperweight on a whim of a lonely sick man. You
| can't build any sort of defense strategy on that, can
| you.
| generic92034 wrote:
| > And the EU cannot work with China as long as China
| backs Russia and undermines European industrial exports.
|
| I mean, that is not that huge a difference compared to
| the USA (lifting sanctions against Russia, no tariffs
| there either, but plenty tariffs for "allies";
| threatening NATO members in several ways; taking over
| Russia's "peace" plans for Ukraine 1:1 and putting the
| pressure solely on Ukraine; (I could go on for pages)).
|
| I am not sure Americans really understand how much trust
| is already gone.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > that is not that huge a difference compared to the USA
|
| It is for the EU.
|
| The EU dislikes the current deprioritization of the
| Ukraine Conflict by the US, but _also_ recognizes that
| the PRC is directly providing material support and
| subsidizing Russia 's military industrial complex [0].
| That is the red line for much of the EU.
|
| Similarly, for the PRC it's continued support of Russia
| in their war in Ukraine is _also_ a non-negotiatable [1],
| and the CCP 's foreign mouthpieces continue to reiterate
| that "the mainstay of EU foreign policy -- supporting
| Ukraine in a conflict to defeat Russia -- has turned into
| a quagmire of sunk costs with little hope of success"
| [2].
|
| > I am not sure Americans really understand how much
| trust is already gone
|
| We know. And we don't care.
|
| As long as the EU views Ukraine's territorial integrity
| as non-negotiable and a large portion of EU states view
| Russia as the primary national security threat, the US
| will remain the less bad option than the PRC or Russia.
|
| Both the US and China are aligned in that we view the EU
| as a junior party that can be pressured [3].
|
| If the EU views Russia as a threat, it will have to
| accept American vassalage becuase the PRC will continue
| to back Russia [1].
|
| If the EU views America as a threat, it will have to
| accept Chinese vassalage, give up Ukraine, and accept
| Russia as the primary European military power.
|
| Based on the carveouts within the Industrial Acceleration
| Act, the EU has chosen American vassalage.
|
| [0] - https://ecfr.eu/article/funding-war-courting-
| crisis-why-chin...
|
| [1] - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3
| 316875/ch...
|
| [2] - https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202603/16/WS69b7
| f2e2a310d...
|
| [3] - https://www.economist.com/china/2025/11/17/europe-
| sees-china...
| generic92034 wrote:
| Very bold words. I am not even convinced the USA will
| stay relevant on the world stage, in the long run.
| Cutting ties hurts, but the process is underway. Also,
| "vassalage" is a bold word, if the US cannot make the EU
| give up Greenland or come running to help them in the
| Strait of Hormuz (there are also other examples). It is
| almost as if European politicians are playing it smart.
| alephnerd wrote:
| And my question is - are _you_ fine sacrificing Ukraine
| in return for a Russian and Chinese military umbrella?
| This is the hard requirement for China to engage with the
| EU [0].
|
| The answer in Poland, the Baltics, Czechia, and Finland
| is NO and that Russia is worse and that Ukraine must be
| supported, and will back the US no matter how
| transactional we become.
|
| The answer in Hungary, Slovakia, and Belgium [1] is YES
| and that sacrificing Ukraine for Russia is acceptable.
|
| [0] - https://scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/33168
| 75/china-...
|
| [1] - https://www.ft.com/content/4ce01938-a671-4433-83a7-
| dada2b3ba...
| generic92034 wrote:
| The question is if the Chinese support for Russia can be
| broken, by economical incentive or threat.
|
| But anyway, over short or long the EU needs to build its
| own military to a strength it can at least work as a
| strong deterrence for aggressors.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > if the Chinese support for Russia can be broken, by
| economical incentive...
|
| China is not interested in breaking with Russia.
|
| Russia helps China put pressure on Japan [0], helps China
| put pressure on South Korea [1], allows China to expand
| it's influence in Central Asia [2], acts as a backchannel
| for China-India diplomatic normalization [3], gives China
| the ability to access ONG without dealing with Hormuz or
| Malaccas [4], and allows China to run the Chongqing-
| Xinjiang-Europe railway [5] which continues to supply
| Europe with no sanctions despite the ongoing war in
| Ukraine.
|
| On the other hand, the EU is tariffing Chinese goods [6];
| signing FTAs with Chinese rivals like India [7], Japan
| [8], and South Korea [9]; and signing defense pacts with
| Japan [10], South Korea [11], and India [12] which allow
| them to participate in ReArm Europe 2030.
|
| Additionally, China-EU trade only represents a little
| over 10% of all Chinese trade [13], and is easily
| replaceable with expanded trade with ASEAN, Japan, South
| Korea, and India.
|
| China views Russia the same way America views the EU - a
| weak junior partner who can be bullied. The US is
| somewhat trying to pull Russia to our side, and China is
| somewhat trying to pull the EU to their side, but the
| reality is both the US and China view the EU and Russia
| as junior partners.
|
| > the Chinese support for Russia can be broken, by ...
| threat
|
| What threat can the EU give to China? Chinese foreign
| policy _already_ views the EU as sanctimonious [14], weak
| [15], and declining [16].
|
| > over short or long the EU needs to build its own
| military to a strength it can at least work as a strong
| deterrence for aggressors
|
| Yep. But that will takes decades, which is why the US and
| China can both bully the EU with complete impunity today.
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-
| defense/russian-b...
|
| [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxq38028djo
|
| [2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china-looks-
| strengthen-ties-ru...
|
| [3] - https://eastasiaforum.org/2020/10/23/how-russia-
| emerged-as-k...
|
| [4] - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-
| economy/article/3345920/m...
|
| [5] - https://carnegie.ru/commentary/?fa=64555
|
| [6] - https://www.ft.com/content/eb677cb3-f86c-42de-b819-
| 277bcb042...
|
| [7] - https://commission.europa.eu/topics/trade/eu-india-
| trade-agr...
|
| [8] - https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-
| markets/en/content/eu-j...
|
| [9] - https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-
| markets/en/content/eu-s...
|
| [10] - https://www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/pressite_0000
| 01_00703.h...
|
| [11] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-
| defence-partner...
|
| [12] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-
| defence-eu-and-...
|
| [13] - http://www.customs.gov.cn/customs/2025-12/14/artic
| le_2026011...
|
| [14] -
| https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202603/1356666.shtml
|
| [15] - https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202603/16/WS69b7f2
| e2a310d686...
|
| [16] - https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202512/22/WS694882
| 70a310d686...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| So long as not subscribing is worse than subscribing
| countries will still do it. Even if it not in the interest
| of the country the decision makers can and do still get
| kickbacks / speaking engagements.
|
| It's interesting to read of the ineffectiveness of
| influence the gulf states thought they had, though I think
| that speaks more to the relative cost effectiveness of
| tributes versus blackmail. These states don't have the
| security apparatus to both blackmail US politicians and
| prevent others from blackmailing those same politicians.
| This second part is essential as it is what maintains the
| relative advantage.
|
| I do think they will be less enthusiastic subscribers in
| the future, and perhaps even shop around for more cost
| effective approaches. Modi in India is intentionally
| creating an Indian diaspora as one example and I believe he
| is bribing politicians to help make this happen.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > read of the ineffectiveness of influence the gulf
| states thought they had
|
| The primary players in the Gulf - Saudi and the UAE -
| have been aligned with the ongoing Iran strikes.
|
| KSA's Mohammad Bin Salman has been lobbying Trump to
| strike Iran [0], just like his predecessor King Abdullah
| was doing [1]. Similarly, the UAE has an ongoing land
| dispute with Iran [2].
|
| [0] -
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/28/trump-
| ira...
|
| [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-
| politics/cut-off-he...
|
| [2] - https://www.uae-embassy.org/foreign-
| policy/occupied-uae-isla...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| So is it your stated position that the reason the US has
| decided to go to war with Iran is because of Saudi Arabia
| and the UAE?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nope. And that is quite a leap in logic.
|
| The larger Gulf States are aligned with the US in
| striking Iran. And we have an incentive also to prevent
| another nuclear breakout from happening.
|
| Edit: can't reply
|
| > I do note that a similar reason was given for North
| Korea which did end up rather peacefully acquiring
| nuclear weapons
|
| Because we were in Iraq and Afghanistan when North
| Korea's nuclear breakout happened in the early 2000s.
|
| > the primary reason?
|
| There is no primary reason (there never is), but there
| are clearly a multiple interests that aligned with
| striking Iran
|
| 1. Iran's eventual nuclear breakout (already mentioned)
|
| 2. The operationalization of the Iran-Central Asia-China
| railway in 2025 [0], which allows China to bypass Malacca
|
| 3. Iran's relative weakness following the collapse of the
| Assad regime, the death of much od Hezbollah's
| leadership, and the Houthis comparative weakness
|
| 4. Continued anger amongst policymakers in the Gulf,
| Israel, and the US that Iran-backed Hamas launched the
| 10/7 attack barely 3 weeks after the US+EU launched the
| IMEC project and were about to loop Saudi Arabia into the
| Abraham Accords [1]
|
| [0] - https://caspianpost.com/iran/china-kyrgyz-iran-
| rail-link-cut...
|
| [1] -
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/09/g20-eu-and-
| us-...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I felt giving a primary reason would add clarity, which
| is why I asked. So is "prevent another nuclear breakout
| from happening" the primary reason?
|
| I do note that a similar reason was given for North Korea
| which did end up rather peacefully acquiring nuclear
| weapons.
|
| Edit: so to confirm that is your stated primary reason?
| Any other reasons you can think of?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Primary reason is because Israel and American zionists
| (mostly evangelical christians) lobby for it. The KSA and
| friends also lobbying for it is just icing on the cake
| for American politicians.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I was hoping to hear the case made as to why Israel was
| not the primary reason but instead you seem to have
| chosen to elide it altogether. It seems to be a
| conspicuous omission especially when both the US and
| Israeli admin have repeatedly made the case that Israel
| was the primary reason.
| harvey9 wrote:
| The UK NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world. It
| absolutely could choose to hire and cultivate that level of
| expertise but then how would senior management retire into
| Palantir sinecures?
|
| (It actually has quite a few expert staff who are not
| delighted with the tools they have been given but they don't
| have the lobbying power of Palantir and the cluster of
| consulting firms around it)
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Sounds emblematic of a degraded bureaucracy to me, lots of
| wasted potential.
| robertkoss wrote:
| There is a fairly recent demo of Maven Smart System, which is
| the military product offering on top of Gotham (their
| government product)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrtDgoqWmgM
|
| The commercial product, Foundry, is very well documented and an
| extensive Data Platform that allows to build data pipelines
| (similar to Databricks) and build low code / no code
| applications on top. If you master it, its incredibly powerful
| but complex
| ctolsen wrote:
| It's 100% laziness on the side of procurement, aided by some
| good marketing and a complete lack of guardrails. Exactly the
| same mindset that has led to every European government now
| being tied to US big tech.
| pdpi wrote:
| > Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD
|
| It's not rocket science. Those particular database schemas,
| together with those particular CRUD layers, do something
| useful, and neither building nor maintaining those applications
| is part of the core business for most companies, so buying
| prebuilt from somebody else, and letting them maintain it for
| you, makes perfect business sense.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Their reason for existing is: they provide a source for
| consultants willing to work with cops and surveillance
| agencies.
|
| The software exists because it's now convenient and easier to
| build their own than depend on a contractor.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Sometime back, someone described in a way that was interesting
| to read. So, I bookmarked it
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44896367
|
| Reproducing it verbatim;
|
| "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."
| amelius wrote:
| So they are data brokers with data analysis combined.
|
| Why don't we ban data brokers in the first place?
| halleo wrote:
| https://www.palantir.com/palantir-is-still-not-a-data-
| compan...
|
| > Contrary to some media reports, we are not a surveillance
| company. We do not sell personal data of any kind. We don't
| provide data-mining as a service.
| fastball wrote:
| Why would you ban data brokers?
| amelius wrote:
| At this point the question should be: why not?
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| They're also missing the tidbit that, like any other
| consultancy, they provide a means for laundering a conclusion
| that middle management has already come to, confirmation bias
| be damned. Unsurprising that they're also useful for parallel
| construction for LEOs.
| basket_horse wrote:
| This is a somewhat misleading description.
|
| The first half is true. They bring in their FDEs to clean and
| organize your data.
|
| But the difference in what they leave behind is what
| separates them from classic consultancies and pure tech
| companies.
|
| They don't leave behind "insights." They leave behind a suite
| of operational (ie have write capabilities not just
| dashboards) applications that are "custom" built to actually
| solve those insights. I put custom in quotes because while
| the applications are usually bespoke to your company, they
| are built in Palantir's app-building product Workshop, which
| significantly lowers the cost of building these custom apps.
|
| https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/workshop/overview
|
| So in the end, your company's processes are improved because
| your employees are using the apps that the FDE's built.
|
| This is distinct from traditional consultancies because those
| will only leave behind the insights. Also distinct from most
| SaaS because those have a one-size-fits all approach, so you
| wind up having to change your company to fit the design of
| the application, where as Palantir builds its applications to
| fit your company.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Because it's hard for the government[1] to build computer
| systems.
|
| Government salaries are pretty low compared to dev salaries. If
| the government wants to hire devs and pay them as much as
| private industry does, they'd have to pay them much more than
| what their superriors (and their superriors' superriors) make,
| which would destroy workplace morale. They could raise
| everyone's salaries, but that's deeply unpopular, as a large
| part of the population view all high-level government
| functionaries as crooks by definition.
|
| The way you get around that is by using contractors.
| Contractors let you hide the cost of software development.
| Instead of paying $150k to a software developer (which is
| probably more than the director makes), you pay $10m to a
| company, not unusual when you also hire companies to build you
| planes and bridges. How that company allocates that 10m and how
| much they pay their engineers is no longer your concern, and no
| longer an embarrassment to your hierarchy and salaries.
|
| However, writing contracts for software is hard, for the same
| reason waterfall is hard. You just don't really know what the
| requirements are before the project starts, and in a
| traditional RFP process, you can't accurately model what
| requirements are the costliest and should perhaps be
| reconsidered. This means contracted government projects usually
| turn into an exercise in checkbox-checking and terrible,
| unusable UIs which technically fulfill the acceptance criteria,
| and therefore have to be accepted.
|
| Palantir has somehow managed to actually collaborate with the
| government, sending forward-deployed engineers to figure out
| what their actual needs are, and then writing software which
| fulfills exactly those needs, bringing techniques which modern
| tech companies have learned along the way. I don't actually
| know how they managed to circumvent the RFP process well enough
| to do this.
|
| [1] "The government" here can apply to any government you like,
| not necessarily the US government.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| It is insanity that any country would give an iota of data, much
| less any sort of control, to an org like Palantir. Any government
| representative for countries outside of the US or Israel that
| recommends such a vile trojan horse needs to be outed as the
| traitorous plant that they are. Every element of their personal
| life needs to be scrutinized, because the only scenario where
| they would come to such a recommendation is corruption.
|
| Quite aside from that fact that Palantir is basically an arm of
| the US government -- which has proven to be an enemy to the West
| and a thoroughly busted idiocracy -- just look at the sociopaths
| that lead that company. Alex Karp's public appearances are
| dystopian, and the guy comes across as a vile, self-involved
| crackhead that has no comprehension how reprehensible he is to
| 99% of the planet. Thiel is utterly deranged, and that goblin
| shouldn't come within a parsec of any influence or power.
| captainbland wrote:
| Honestly it's really weird that it was ever allowed to get this
| stage. Their leadership has been pretty "mask off" for a good
| while now.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| That's what you get when decisions are made by people who don't
| understand anything about the stuff they vote on.
| coldtea wrote:
| ...but understand and appreciate bribes very well
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| You only need to buy one or two to get it on the agenda,
| then everybody votes along party lines, on stuff they don't
| understand. It's not even that expensive.
| _joel wrote:
| Just ask Wes Streeting and Peter Mandelson.
| mosura wrote:
| The fact Alex Karp has any security clearance at all boggles the
| mind.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Isnt this required anyway for everybody doing military & gov
| contracts?
| wavefunction wrote:
| Not for Jared Kushner and I expect he's not the only one.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very
| distinct things. But - exposure to whatever Palantir does is very
| likely bad for the second regardless of whether or not it's bad
| for the first.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are
| very distinct things.
|
| "Everything in the name of man, everything for the good of
| man!" -- The 3rd Program of the CPSU, 1961. As the joke went,
| "and if you get to visit the Party Congress in Moscow, you will
| even get to see that very man!"
| tablets wrote:
| Related meeting launching today about Palantir and the NHS -
| https://www.medact.org/event/briefing-launch-the-risks-of-pa...
| mentalgear wrote:
| Thiel - the dark data lord - tries to get his fingers in any
| data source imaginable.
| graemep wrote:
| The NHS is also heavily dependent on AWS.
| _joel wrote:
| Also, LBC exclusive about PS250 million contact that came about
| because of Mandelson breaking today.
|
| I mean if it wasn't obvious from the get go they're, well,
| dubious, given the grandson of Owsald Mosley is the UK CEO.
| _joel wrote:
| Always interesting when you criticise Palantir on here you get
| downvoted, almost as if they have an "outreach department"
| pirate787 wrote:
| No the downvote is from smearing an individual for the
| political activities of his grandfather.
| _joel wrote:
| Smearing, hah, yea. The company is dodgy as fuck and you
| know it.
|
| edit: just looked at your comment history too, explains a
| lot.
| spot5010 wrote:
| I feel like there's a lesson to be learnt by reading Lord of the
| Rings and seeing what happens to Saruman and Denethor.
| mystraline wrote:
| Yep, Palantir of NOTHANKS.
|
| (Play on words of Palantir of Orthanc)
| sifar wrote:
| The corruption of LoTR is the saddest part here.
| iheartbiggpus wrote:
| Why do the worst companies have the best names.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Fascism puts a heavy emphasis on aesthetics
| navane wrote:
| They're better at selling ideas than having fleshed out
| ideas. One could say they sell before they build.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Italian fascists did have fashion forward uniforms.
|
| So did the German Nazis back then now I think about it.
|
| Maybe there is something with cult-like thinking, fascist or
| not, where the aesthetics seduces more people into wanting to
| be a part of it all?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| No doubt the smart uniforms, the rallies, the flags, the
| songs etc were a factor in many young men joining the SS.
| energy123 wrote:
| They like purity. Purity of the body (fitness and
| lifestyle) and purity of society (regimentation,
| conformity, single race, single ideology, single sexuality,
| standardized architecture).
|
| It's neurological. They feel emotional disgust if the
| regimentation isn't there.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Oh, it was 100% marketing.
|
| It's not just fascists, either; totalitarian regimes _in
| general_ tend to be very keen on this sort of thing.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| There's a bit of writing in that direction if you're
| curious. I like Benjamin quite a but and have gotten a lot
| out of his thinking. Here's the wiki-level entry to it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticization_of_politics
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Palantir isn't a good name. It's a disastrously bad one, if you
| ask me. It's a _constant_ scandal as every five minutes
| somebody gets the bright idea that "ackshually the Palantir
| were a tool for evil made by a demon!!"
|
| They're never able to live it down. It always comes up. And it
| makes them seem, in a way, careless.
| gzread wrote:
| It's a great name if your target customer base is people who
| _want_ to be evil by surveilling everything. Behold my next
| company, "Eye of Sauron LLC"
| munk-a wrote:
| Nah - that customer base would much rather a mean-nothing
| name like "Salesforce". The real evil people don't revel so
| much in their evilness they're much more in the "ends
| justify the means" camp where they can try and hide their
| evilness from their conscience. Nobody wants to wear a pin
| saying "I am, in fact, a terrible person that the world
| would be better without."
| Cpoll wrote:
| Ackshually the Palantir were made by the Elves of Valinor,
| and weren't made as a tool for evil.
|
| In fact, there's a very interesting theme there: The Palantir
| are only as useful as their users are wise. The power to see
| is disastrous if you don't know where to look and how to
| interpret what you see.
|
| _If_ they named it with that in mind, I 'd say it's a very
| thoughtful name, and a prescient caution. But I doubt it.
| XorNot wrote:
| You're talking about it. Right now along with a solid dozen
| other people as the only comments on this thread.
|
| People barely understand what the company does, but boy do
| they want to tell you all about the name.
|
| It's marketing gold. Because rather then "who was that? Some
| firm named something corp" instead you're spending 5 minutes
| reinforcing how bad the name is..just building a ton of word
| association games for a name derived from a well known
| fiction work and really building up the message that the
| company is named Palantir and they sell products to the
| government.
| epistasis wrote:
| At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the
| classic sci-fi novel Don't Invent The Torment Nexus.
| basisword wrote:
| We're not a serious country anymore. We build very little. We
| control very little. Three years ago the war in Ukraine broke out
| causing the energy price crisis and the short term solution was
| the government paying a portion of everyone's bills. Three years
| later we're in the same situation again thanks to the US and
| Israel's warmongering. Are we prepared? No. What's the solution?
| Freezing the price caps and paying a portion of peoples bills.
| IshKebab wrote:
| You say that as if a "serious" country would have a better
| solution. Which countries are "serious" in your view?
| mhlansx wrote:
| The history of Palantir:
|
| Christine Maxwell and Alan Wade found Chiliad, a database
| surveillance application that was used in the FBI. Then Alan Wade
| became CIO at the CIA. Then In-Q-Tel (CIA) co-founded Palantir
| with Thiel.
|
| Karp, who was at Haverford college with Epstein's neighbor
| Lutnick, became the philosophical ideologue for Palantir.
|
| With these overt and easily verifiable connections it is beyond
| belief that any European state would even consider using
| Palantir. The governments do not even work any better with all
| that surveillance software, they work worse than 20 years ago. So
| even the "we need it" argument is a fallacy.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| "it is beyond belief that any European state would even
| consider using Palantir".
|
| Germany's PM was formerly at BlackRock. What exactly do you
| find so hard to believe?
| qweiopqweiop wrote:
| Can someone explain why Palantir are seen as such a threat? My
| understanding is their product is a PowerBI++ and they don't host
| any user data themselves. Are people scared of backdoors?
| vrganj wrote:
| Two Reasons:
|
| 1) It holds deeply sensitive data and does so in the US. In
| times of increased mistrust of the US, many (including myself)
| see that as a risky choice.
|
| 2) Speaking of mistrust in America and American corporations,
| have you heard their execs talk? It's absolute cuckoo-town:
|
| > _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._
|
| Well, you've convinced me. I'm scared of America, I'm scared of
| American companies and I'm scared of your company in
| particular.
|
| Good job, I guess?
| qweiopqweiop wrote:
| Are you sure they hold sensitive data themselves though? My
| understanding was they integrate their tools with customers
| own data and don't have access to it themselves (at least in
| theory).
|
| Of course I agree that quote is insane and you can dislike
| them for political reasons, but I want to understand the
| technological fears and see if any are unfounded.
| iinnPP wrote:
| Part of the core offering is data washing.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| they most definitely do not, and especially not on-prem,
| national security systems like are being discussed here.
| They sell software.
|
| https://www.palantir.com/palantir-is-still-not-a-data-
| compan...
| sizero wrote:
| The article mentions "while the underlying data may remain
| under the MoD's control, any insights derived from that
| data do not. The implications of this, the insiders say,
| are far-reaching, especially because of the vast quantity
| of personal and other data the company has access to across
| UK government departments."
| mborch wrote:
| Deployments can be on-prem or cloud-based depending on
| needs and constraints.
| empath75 wrote:
| The United States is no longer a reliable ally.
|
| That is the reality that the world is having to adapt to. Even
| when Trump is gone, it will take a long time to rebuild that
| trust.
| goku12 wrote:
| Would you trust Palantir if you're I'm the US?
| skciva wrote:
| Surely this time around, technological advancements in the
| name of "national security" won't end up used on its
| citizens ;)
|
| Genuinely a bit shocked at the naivety on HN on this topic
| but maybe thats a misunderstanding on my part. Happy to be
| shown otherwise. Alex Karp, if you're reading this, please
| don't send your fent laced urine spraying drones after me!
| aunty_helen wrote:
| You shouldn't assume trust will naturally just regrow. This
| may be it, we may have passed peak USA.
| munk-a wrote:
| Hence the Carney strategy up here in Canada. We can realize
| in hindsight that we were far too dependent on a single
| ally. We're diversifying - and even if America wants to
| become reliable again we've learned and will (hopefully)
| never be so dependent again.
|
| In the post WW2 era most western countries grew lazy about
| sovereignty due to America's open-handed approach - this
| has been a wake up call and has severely lowered America's
| soft-power globally.
| stefan_ wrote:
| For a company that tries exclusively to sell to people that are
| very far removed from the use (government), yet have onerous
| reporting standards for all spending (government), there sure
| is very little independent reporting on the efficacy of
| whatever it is they are even selling. Even the contract with
| NHS was heavily censored. So frankly I oppose it on that ground
| alone.
| efxhoy wrote:
| I've only had their platforms explained to me by them
| (palantir) at a conference but the mental model that stuck with
| me was more of an operating system than a single tool. Think
| AWS managed services + databricks + whatever library of ready
| made intelligence software they have already built for others.
|
| They also have "forward deployed engineers" to help
| organizations actually use the platform. It looked complicated
| enough to probably be completely useless without these
| specialists, even in a "self hosted" setup.
|
| The managed hosting also seems like a major selling point so
| many deployments that probably should be self hosted probably
| aren't because muh managed services added value.
|
| And the backdoors of course. There is no way it isn't full of
| plausibly deniable "metrics endpoints" that helpfully spew out
| all the internal data if the right key comes knocking. There's
| no way it's auditable at the level of detail you would need
| compared to the value of the data and the sophistication of the
| potential attacker (NSA).
| rainworld wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Distribution_of...
|
| It's just the latest implementation of a winning formula.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Even if the software is mundane I don't think most people
| should want their country offloading sensitive spy stuff to a
| guy who's obsessed with the antichrist to the extent the
| Vatican itself is complaining he's going to Rome and giving
| secret speeches about it.
| XorNot wrote:
| The loudest people about this have no idea what they're talking
| about essentially.
|
| It's not sufficient but the first thing you can filter by is
| anyone who comments on the name first (literally one of the
| most effective marketing strategies in government contracting
| history basically).
| crimsoneer wrote:
| "Palantir does not need to own the data or even have stewardship.
| They can extract, transform and exploit the metadata to build
| their own rich picture."
|
| Sorry, but this is full on into conspiracy theory here. Are we
| seriously arguing that Palantir are doing _very much illegal_
| analysis on air-gapped national security systems, and somehow
| exporting those and aggregating them?
|
| The exact same concerns could be articulated for
| Google/AWS/Azure, but nobody does because they would quite
| rightly be called out as conspiracy theorists.
| watwut wrote:
| > Are we seriously arguing that Palantir are doing very much
| illegal analysis on air-gapped national security systems, and
| somehow exporting those and aggregating them?
|
| Is there any reason to think they would not do something
| illegal? Or that they would be above exporting secret data?
| crimsoneer wrote:
| At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a very profitable
| company that has spent 20-ish years working with intelligence
| agencies from a bunch of different countries, I find it hard
| to believe they'd just casually commit some incredibly
| serious crime without evidence beyond "well, they
| theoretically could".
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > has spent 20-ish years working with intelligence agencies
| from a bunch of different countries
|
| This is supposed to count towards their integrity? There is
| no way your posts aren't satire, actually great job you
| almost convinced me lmao
| pjc50 wrote:
| > very much illegal analysis on air-gapped national security
| systems
|
| They're hosted by the US. It would be illegal for them _not_ to
| comply with orders to hand data over to US security services.
| This has been a concern since the Microsoft "safe harbour"
| GDPR case. It's now the same thing with much higher stakes.
|
| Since this:
| https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...
| , no US tech company can give a meaningful guarantee that they
| won't just turn off critical UK defence systems if ordered to
| by Trump. Such as if we tried to carry out actions against the
| invasion of Greenland. I admit that was a couple of months ago,
| so it now seems like ancient history, but the US picks a new
| invasion target every month.
| alxhill wrote:
| They are _not_ hosting UK government data in the US. They
| offer on-premise and self-managed cloud offerings, which are
| often used where data sovereignty is important. Additionally,
| customers often manage access control - including for
| Palantir employees - themselves, so it would not be a simple
| "pull the power plug" if the US/UK relationship went awry.
| strbean wrote:
| They don't need to host the data for systems they develop
| to be subject to a national security letter.
| strbean wrote:
| > Sorry, but this is full on into conspiracy theory here.
|
| "Corporation says they aren't doing a bad thing so any
| assertion to the contrary is _crazy_. "
|
| Corporations actually tend to lie when they are engaged in
| illegal or repugnant behavior.
|
| > The exact same concerns could be articulated for
| Google/AWS/Azure,
|
| The leadership of those corporations aren't publicly supporting
| the dissolution of democracy to impose neo-feudalism, so that's
| a big difference.
|
| To quote:
|
| > I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are
| compatible.
|
| - Peter Thiel
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is a complete no-brainer that Thiel and his minions shouldn't
| be let anywhere near anything health or security related.
| gzread wrote:
| ... if the goal is to have good health and security.
| iso1631 wrote:
| https://www.ft.com/content/fc1e7e9a-9d5d-4217-b9b2-38069eb11...
|
| > US tech billionaire and Maga donor Peter Thiel is starting a
| series of closed-door lectures about the antichrist in Rome on
| Sunday, putting him on a collision course with Pope Leo XIV,
| the Catholic Church's first American pontiff.
|
| This sort of stuff might go down well with fundamentalists in
| america, but it has no place in the advanced world.
| prox wrote:
| How is this not shut down in any form? This is actual
| insanity.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Normalization of deviance. They've shifted what is
| considered normal so far out of bounds that they can now
| pretend this is just fine. So no more fig-leafs. It brought
| down the Space Shuttle, and it will bring down society if
| left unchecked.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This sort of thing has been widespread in US fundamentalist
| Christian circles for a long time. He probably goes (or
| went) to a church surrounded by people who also believe
| that.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Why is it any of our business what this guy says in his
| free time if it's not advocating for violence?
| onraglanroad wrote:
| Because he made it our business by deliberately making it
| public.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Calling people "harbingers of the antichrist" is
| tantamount to advocating violence, not to mention
| slander.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| If this guy was some raving lunatic on a corner I
| wouldn't care. But he's got a country sized megaphone
| thanks to money and has also bought the government. So it
| does unfortunately matter that he's an insane christian
| cretin that wants to see the current form of government
| destroyed.
| Lapra wrote:
| Frankly the other cofounders are just as bad as Thiel but don't
| draw the headlines quite as much.
|
| "Yesterday, Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale agreed with an X post
| suggesting communists in the Western hemisphere should be blown
| up. "Exactly," he wrote. "What did you think founding Palantir
| was supposed to be about?"" -
| https://responsiblestatecraft.org/defense-companies-maduro/
|
| ""We support warfare and we are proud of it," Karp stated
| bluntly during the conversation with German media outlet
| Heise.de." - https://zetbit.tech/news/209/pentagon-backing-
| palantir-ceo-k...
|
| "In a CNBC interview Thursday, Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex
| Karp opined that AI will undermine the influence of "highly
| educated, often female voters" and empower working class men
| instead. And anyone who doesn't realize this political reality,
| he added, belongs in an "insane asylum."" -
| https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ceo-palantir-ai...
| jacquesm wrote:
| They're all certifiable.
| epistasis wrote:
| Whenever I see Alex Karp speak I wonder why they can't even
| _pretend_ to put on sheep 's clothing.
|
| It says a lot about the breakdown of current US society and
| democracy that Palantir's leadership feels free to speak in the
| way that they do. People will not forget, because we all
| suspected that they were like this, but when given a tiny bit
| of power by electing a transient and weak president, they
| pulled their masks off fully.
|
| Seems like a crucial miscalculation on their part, as they lose
| all international revenue and will likely lose all US revenue
| as soon as democratic check and balances are restored.
| conception wrote:
| It seems clear that the assumptions they are working off is
| that they will not be restored.
| rescripting wrote:
| Not just an assumption, but a goal. If some semblance of
| democratic society returns they know they'll be held
| accountable, so they'll fight with every means available to
| prevent that from happening.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Whenever I see Alex Karp speak I wonder why they can't even
| pretend to put on sheep's clothing.
|
| Because he's speaking to his investors aiming to keep the
| stock price up. He's not selling his products or himself to
| the world. His investors are rewarding him for the way he
| talks and acts.
| SlinkyOnStairs wrote:
| > Whenever I see Alex Karp speak I wonder why they can't even
| pretend to put on sheep's clothing.
|
| Because shedding the sheepskin is the point. It's
| performative. A display of power.
|
| It doesn't matter that Karp has destroyed his brain with
| cocaine, nor that he's a massive bigot. It's a signal. "We
| have won. You can't stop us".
|
| > will likely lose all US revenue as soon as democratic check
| and balances are restored.
|
| The gamble and taunt being that they're stating that this
| will not happen. Thiel has won. US democracy is dead. The
| moment Trump croaks they try to seize the fed entirely.
|
| The actual miscalculation is deeper. They may seize the US
| government. It won't save them, they'll only drag it down
| with them.
|
| Globalism is not some evil ploy by which [we all know exactly
| who they're accusing] try to subvert the US. _It is the
| foundational mechanism of the US ' imperialism._ And in
| trying to unmake globalism, they're unmaking the American
| Empire.
|
| Similarly with democracy. Democracy is not some weakness
| forced upon the west. _It is the winning system of government
| after all others have collapsed_. Even the smartest god-king
| is useless if all his advisors are coked out nutjobs. Thiel
| 's idea of disposing of democracy will doom not only the US,
| but himself personally as well.
| usrusr wrote:
| In Germany we have a term for entities headed by people who
| publicly say things Thiel and his gang say. It's
| verfassungsfeindliche Organisation. I really don't understand
| how they can still be considered government suppliers to
| purchase from. Just because they are on the stock exchange and
| not some secret conspiracy? (they are not on the stock
| exchange)
| gzread wrote:
| It's simple - nobody actually cares about the constitution.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| The UK doesn't have a constitution.
| gzread wrote:
| Germany does, and that's what verfassungsfeindlich refers
| to. Germany also uses Palantir.
| phpnode wrote:
| The UK doesn't have a _written_ constitution, it does
| have one though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituti
| on_of_the_United_Kin...
| zipy124 wrote:
| Right but if you read that page you quickly come to the
| quote "Parliament can make or unmake any law".
| Technically there is judicial review now, so there is
| some restrictions, but not like in a USA style
| constitution.
| phpnode wrote:
| Same is true in the US though? Surely that's what all
| those amendments are
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Obviously, just look at what the Palantir stones did to Saruman
| and Denethor. They're a corrupting force, both in the middle-
| earth case and in the our-earth case.
|
| Thiel has made no secret of his intent to use technology to
| dispense with that pesky democracy problem that billionaires
| have, and Palantir is pretty obviously his attempt to do just
| that. It's a reductio-ad-absurdum argument against listening to
| your citizens:
|
| You put it in the hands of a populist demagogue, the power to
| apply hyper-targeted pain to their enemies amplifies their darker
| tendencies, and when evil happens you say: "look, the people
| can't be trusted." Meanwhile, you use it to direct the pointy end
| of the state's stick towards people you don't like (because the
| demagogue is too lazy to actually use those hyper-targeting
| features themself) so you can interfere with democratic attempts
| to limit your power without bothering to pay for the pepper
| spray.
|
| Nobody in their right mind would want their government anywhere
| near it.
| Calavar wrote:
| I still don't understand why Theil and Karp decided to name
| their surveillance tech company after a device that is best
| known for being used by an evil dark lord to decieve and
| corrupt. It's like the Mitchell and Webb skit "are we the
| baddies" except they're the ones who designed the uniforms with
| skulls on them.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Well, it's not inherently any more evil than Fanta, is it?
| ljm wrote:
| I don't think you have to understand why they made that
| decision, you just have to understand who they are and what
| they believe in. Just have a look at what they talk about,
| and what they are quoted as saying.
|
| Then it will start to make sense.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It'd help make your point to actually share the ominous
| quotes you're referring to.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Because it's funny and they genuinely don't care whether or
| not they're bad guys
| b800h wrote:
| Thiel apparently gives talks about the Antichrist. He's
| actually a very thoughtful Christian, following the works of
| Rene Girard. I think he's just got a rather dark sense of
| humour.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| I think that's more about trying to attract christian rubes
| than it is reflective of his actual humor
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Sounds deranged to me. Like, seriously, has had a psychotic
| break from reality.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| > constantly talks about the anti christ and getting rid of
| democracy
|
| "He's just got a quirky sense of humour"
|
| Where does this inclination to completely brush off what is
| pretty clearly exceedingly weird and concerning behaviour
| come from?
| skciva wrote:
| A very thoughtful Christian..seems his actions differ a lot
| from my interoperation of the faith.
| groby_b wrote:
| I'm not sure you can describe somebody who supports ICE in
| its current incarnation, who profits from surveillance of
| vulnerable populations, who believes in revenge (cf
| Gawker), who abuses wealth (NZ citizenship shenanigans) as
| "a very thoughtful Christian", unless you do a lot of
| definitional work on "Christian".
|
| Talking about the antichrist doesn't make you Christian.
| gebalamariusz wrote:
| I see the UK government hasn't been on a good run lately. Google
| recently released the Cloud Threat Horizons H1 2026 report. A
| vulnerability in the OIDC trust policy can be exploited to gain
| admin access to AWS. The UK Government Digital Service was one of
| the affected organizations. Datadog found their IAM role
| misconfigured the same way.
| sschueller wrote:
| Palantir is dragging a small independent Swiss investigative
| newspaper to court because they reported[1] about Palantir
| getting the door slammed in their face in by several Swiss
| government agencies including the military over the last years.
| No one wants this turd of a company.
|
| [1] https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-
| palantir-...
| infinitewars wrote:
| Now with Golden Dome, Palantir is a _global_ security threat
| not just a national one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
| bigyabai wrote:
| Palantir has been integrated with global-scale ISR for
| several years, in the US.
| themafia wrote:
| Oracle 2.0.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| Weak authoritarians who don't understand how to govern seem to
| _adore_ palantir
| gjm11 wrote:
| I think there may be a bit less to that one than meets the eye.
| In Swiss law there's some kind of right-of-reply thing where if
| someone puts something about you in print and you think it's
| wrong you may be entitled to have some sort of response
| printed. And AIUI the way this works is that you go before a
| court and say "we want our response printed, please", and
| that's what Palantir's done in this case.
|
| (Note 1: For all I know it may well be true that the reporting
| is 100% accurate and Palantir's claim to deserve a reply is
| 100% bullshit. I'm not saying they're _in the right_ here! But
| I think the actual story is a bit less horrible than "Palantir
| is taking these guys to court because they didn't like their
| reporting" sounds without the relevant context. They're not,
| e.g., trying to get damages from the newspaper, or trying to
| get what they wrote retracted, or anything like that.)
|
| (Note 2: I am not an expert on Swiss law or on this case, and I
| am accordingly not 100% confident of any of the above. In the
| unlikely event that whether I'm right about this _matters_ to
| anyone reading, they should check it for themselves :-).)
| catigula wrote:
| I gathered from this article that Palantir apparently has
| complete transparency into - a "profile" of - every UK citizen.
|
| This is glossed over and not really mentioned as an issue...
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