7 ms·

Peter Thiel and Palantir Are at the Heart of the Iran Nuclear Deal

53 points by petethomas 9y ago

tptacek 9y ago
Be a little careful about pieces in Bloomberg about the JCPOA. I read Bloomberg about as much as I read stuff like Slate, and the sense I have is that Bloomberg's editorial stance has been anti-JCPOA for a long time. As it stands, this article is basically saying "$DATABASE is at the heart of the Iran nuclear deal", which is about as interesting as saying "Excel is at the heart of such-and-such a merger deal". Like, yes, you do use databases to track stuff, indeedly-do.
- SiempreViernes 9y ago
  Yes, it's a weird piece, giving of a vibe of wanting to say "Palantir is super scary, don't support this deal guys", but it never makes this argument. Possibly this piece was about how people was getting worried about the IAEA turning into some sort of spy agency and then some editor slapped a JCPOA angle on it.
- olliej 9y ago
  JCPOA = justified comma partitioned ordinal .. um .. array? :)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - wrigby 9y ago
    I think it's the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" [1], which seems to be the official name of the Iran nuclear deal. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
  - dbtc 9y ago
    Close enough, "justified comma partitioned ordinal array" has just about as much inherent meaning as "joint comprehensive plan of action" https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/ https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- dbtc 9y ago
  Yes, thanks for the warning about Bloomberg spin. On a related note, Peter Thiel sounds like a strange and fascinated man. I would love to read an unauthorized biography or some deeper profiles on this guy and his business ventures. New Zealand seems like a good enough place to watch America burn...
tribune 9y ago
This is only tangentially related to the article, but... I'm all for preventing nuclear proliferation, but how long do we realistically think we can maintain a world order where only a few states have nuclear weapons? This technology has been around for nearly 75 years. It's still a dangerous frontier, but far from a new one.
- SiempreViernes 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean, it's not like we are in a world were we've successfully prevented most countries that desire nuclear weapons to get them; Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, India, South Africa all wanted nukes and (more or less) secretly got them. The current "world order" is certainly not an ideal to uphold, or even moving in the right direction with regards for nuclear proliferation.
- thisisit 9y ago
  Things were actually going well until A.Q. Khan happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#Proliferation_of_URENCO_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#Proliferatio...
NoGravitas 9y ago
> Whatever Trump decides, the “dirty” or unstructured data obtained by Mossad, which prides itself on deception, could serve as a stress test for Palantir’s nuclear analytics. Even a small amount of false information could trigger a flurry of unnecessary snap inspections and derail an agreement that took years to reach, Vaez said. This smells very strongly of policy laundering. The Trump administration doesn't like the Iran nuclear deal, and they don't like the IAEA, but they can't directly act against either of them. But one Trump ally (Thiel) controls a tool that the IAEA depends on, and another Trump ally (Israel) controls the inputs to that tool. So given the desired policy outcome, Palantir and Mossad wash the decision-making process so that the outcome appears to be arrived at independently and objectively.
- SiempreViernes 9y ago
  The intel haul Mossad released was interesting in that it fills out the details of the background to the treaty itself, but as the data is about activities up to 2003 it just doesn't impact verification of current activities. Most of appears to have been known in the intelligence community, this was just publication of it. Here is a podcast with some experts discussing the release and having a general good time with all the nerdy details: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1205128/netanyahu-and-the-atomic-archive/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1205128/netanyahu-an...

53 points by petethomas 9y ago

Be a little careful about pieces in Bloomberg about the JCPOA. I read Bloomberg about as much as I read stuff like Slate, and the sense I have is that Bloomberg's editorial stance has been anti-JCPOA for a long time. As it stands, this article is basically saying "$DATABASE is at the heart of the Iran nuclear deal", which is about as interesting as saying "Excel is at the heart of such-and-such a merger deal". Like, yes, you do use databases to track stuff, indeedly-do.

SiempreViernes 9y ago
Yes, it's a weird piece, giving of a vibe of wanting to say "Palantir is super scary, don't support this deal guys", but it never makes this argument. Possibly this piece was about how people was getting worried about the IAEA turning into some sort of spy agency and then some editor slapped a JCPOA angle on it.
olliej 9y ago
JCPOA = justified comma partitioned ordinal .. um .. array? :)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- wrigby 9y ago
  I think it's the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" [1], which seems to be the official name of the Iran nuclear deal. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
- dbtc 9y ago
  Close enough, "justified comma partitioned ordinal array" has just about as much inherent meaning as "joint comprehensive plan of action" https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/ https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dbtc 9y ago
Yes, thanks for the warning about Bloomberg spin. On a related note, Peter Thiel sounds like a strange and fascinated man. I would love to read an unauthorized biography or some deeper profiles on this guy and his business ventures. New Zealand seems like a good enough place to watch America burn...

tribune 9y ago

This is only tangentially related to the article, but... I'm all for preventing nuclear proliferation, but how long do we realistically think we can maintain a world order where only a few states have nuclear weapons? This technology has been around for nearly 75 years. It's still a dangerous frontier, but far from a new one.

SiempreViernes 9y ago
I'm not sure what you mean, it's not like we are in a world were we've successfully prevented most countries that desire nuclear weapons to get them; Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, India, South Africa all wanted nukes and (more or less) secretly got them. The current "world order" is certainly not an ideal to uphold, or even moving in the right direction with regards for nuclear proliferation.
thisisit 9y ago
Things were actually going well until A.Q. Khan happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#Proliferation_of_URENCO_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#Proliferatio...

NoGravitas 9y ago

> Whatever Trump decides, the “dirty” or unstructured data obtained by Mossad, which prides itself on deception, could serve as a stress test for Palantir’s nuclear analytics. Even a small amount of false information could trigger a flurry of unnecessary snap inspections and derail an agreement that took years to reach, Vaez said. This smells very strongly of policy laundering. The Trump administration doesn't like the Iran nuclear deal, and they don't like the IAEA, but they can't directly act against either of them. But one Trump ally (Thiel) controls a tool that the IAEA depends on, and another Trump ally (Israel) controls the inputs to that tool. So given the desired policy outcome, Palantir and Mossad wash the decision-making process so that the outcome appears to be arrived at independently and objectively.

SiempreViernes 9y ago
The intel haul Mossad released was interesting in that it fills out the details of the background to the treaty itself, but as the data is about activities up to 2003 it just doesn't impact verification of current activities. Most of appears to have been known in the intelligence community, this was just publication of it. Here is a podcast with some experts discussing the release and having a general good time with all the nerdy details: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1205128/netanyahu-and-the-atomic-archive/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1205128/netanyahu-an...