3 ms·

Peter Thiel's Palantir to provide tech for Israel's 'war-related missions'

36 points by bhouston 3y ago

loteck 3y ago
The number of US municipalities (cities/counties) using Palantir is very high. Be aware, this company and this individual enjoys success in part through your local taxes.
samstave 3y ago
Serious question - please don't politicize this question: How will Palantir + Peter Thiel's other major investment, OPenAI's ChatGPT(whatever) be both used in war theaters? Not just Israel, but any place 5Eyes operate? (surely OpenAI works directly with others in Thiel's portfolio?) Will/Are/Who is developing models specifically for 'war-related mission'? Surely, plenty of defense upstarts are already all over this - but would like some deeper insight into the current / future state? - Re: Starlink - we already saw commitments to Ukraine for access - then that kinda fell off the map - I wonder how its been used for the drones? or other ways it may have been leveraged. However - when will we hear about another super-power, such as China, stealing whatever tech they havent already from SpaceX and deploy their own constellation of StarLink Satts? Or, just as AWS is doing datacenters for IC/MIC - Surely SpaceX could operate a dedicated constellation for [insert paying military]?
- smoldesu 3y ago
  The LLM related stuff is almost certainly not currently deployed. The US military has extensive sampling and testing periods before they distribute new kit to the infantry, and OpenAI simply hasn't had enough time to present a killer app (imo). That's not to say AI isn't used in warfare; computer vision has been an enormous part of recon and targeting pipelines over the past decade. But LLMs themselves are going to take a looooooot of fanangling before it sees active duty. Think Hololens, not M4 carbine.
  - brightball 3y ago
    Honestly, after reading SkunkWorks and finding out that stealth bombers were kept secret from 1978 until they were used to essentially win the Gulf War in 1 night in 1992 I have to assume there's a ton of military tech that we know nothing about.
  - ahazred8ta 3y ago
    We got the word from the mentalist act of Gregor Feinaigle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_von_Feinaigle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_von_Feinaigle
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Neat! I grew up on it and never knew the context, TIL.
- datasink 3y ago
  Palantir has a Youtube demo of their LLM-integrated AIP system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEM5qz__HOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEM5qz__HOU (Palantir AIP | Defense and Military)
- throwaway13337 3y ago
  It's an interesting question. I feel like starlink is underappreciated here. It seems to be a game changer in terms of communication about live targets and intelligence in a way that traditional satellites just aren't. Due to that, it seems obvious that SpaceX would make the most money in military contracts related to it. I don't think the military is blind nor is SpaceX to the potential here - so why haven't we heard more about that kind of partnership? China being a manufacturing superpower in the same way the US was during WWII makes me feel like they are underestimated essentially because industrial production is such a big deal for military capacity. I think other capacity of China is overappreciated. But industrial capacity for every part of the drone/shell production chain seems like how the most recent modern war has been fought. The US seems to only have grown in the informational space - not production capacity. If those gains are not being realized in military, then the US's position would be slowly receding. It could be that the miliary has not been able to make use of the information space or not. We don't know. Military position is about capabilities and (hopefully) not hot trial of those capabilities. Great powers each thinking they have vastly stronger capabilities than the other could make hot trial of the capacity more likely. That's not a good thing. Capabilities need to be more obvious to avoid war. I guess what I am saying is - I'd like to know too. Mostly this topic is a lot of hot takes and chest beating so it's hard to get a more indifferent look.
mmastrac 3y ago
Headline changed from original: "Thiel’s Palantir, Israel Agree Strategic Partnership for Battle Tech"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- samstave 3y ago
  That's even scarier, IMO. Just like NSO/Pegasus is only used for "good" Look - I worked for Lockheed... My brother was personal flight surgeon to the Joint Chiefs. Dad was also in air force. Grandfather was a nuclear engineer for GE... Pretty well know the military But one does need to pay attention to how tech and defense work together - especially when the defense eng of the equation is an opaque foreign military. (When lockheed bought savi (rfid tracking systems for supplies/equipment/weapons/chemicals) - we had a several great engineers, of muslim/middle eastern descent, who quit over protest)
dgrin91 3y ago
Haven't they already been selling military tech to basically all western countries for along time? I'm unclear what the news here is.
- bhouston 3y ago
  I am unsure if Palantir has other clients who have cases in from of the International Court of Justice on accusations of genocide - it has a lot of coverage right now. Here is a summary article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/middleeast/israel-genocide-case-world-court-gaza-mime-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/middleeast/israel-genocide-ca... Does Palantir sell to Myanmar? If Israel actually gets convicted of breaches under the convention, of which there is a chance, would you be comfortable selling technology that is aiding in their "war-related missions"?
  - wonderwonder 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - filoleg 3y ago
      I was about to say, I don’t see why one would feel more uncomfortable about selling them a glorified data analytics platform, as opposed to selling them cloud compute resources or Office365 subscription (while keeping in mind that all of those would be used for “war-related missions”). EDIT: The parent comment has been substantially changed since I posted this reply. Originally, it just said “yes.” Considering what it currently states after the edit (going into a side-tangent about UN’s inaction against Saudi Arabia’s activities in Yemen, as well as their anti-Israel bias), it changes the context of my reply fairly significantly.
      - wonderwonder 3y ago
        Agreed, not to mention the US / Lockheed / Boeing etc. openly provides the weapons and bombs used. Palintir is a drop in the bucket.
      - 3y ago
paxys 3y ago
Palantir is a glorified IT consultant with some good political connections. What someone like Accenture or Infosys will do for your company, Palantir will do for a country's military, only their bill will have a few more zeroes at the end. They are still ultimately setting up databases for supply chain management and HR. The rest of what you see ("AI on the battlefield!") is all marketing.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Well, as long as the evil is properly banal and expensive, I guess we gotta give them a pass. ?
Qem 3y ago
Palantir joins the Aparth-Aider club.
ericfrazier 3y ago
God bless Peter Thiel then

36 points by bhouston 3y ago

The number of US municipalities (cities/counties) using Palantir is very high. Be aware, this company and this individual enjoys success in part through your local taxes.

samstave 3y ago

Serious question - please don't politicize this question: How will Palantir + Peter Thiel's other major investment, OPenAI's ChatGPT(whatever) be both used in war theaters? Not just Israel, but any place 5Eyes operate? (surely OpenAI works directly with others in Thiel's portfolio?) Will/Are/Who is developing models specifically for 'war-related mission'? Surely, plenty of defense upstarts are already all over this - but would like some deeper insight into the current / future state? - Re: Starlink - we already saw commitments to Ukraine for access - then that kinda fell off the map - I wonder how its been used for the drones? or other ways it may have been leveraged. However - when will we hear about another super-power, such as China, stealing whatever tech they havent already from SpaceX and deploy their own constellation of StarLink Satts? Or, just as AWS is doing datacenters for IC/MIC - Surely SpaceX could operate a dedicated constellation for [insert paying military]?

smoldesu 3y ago
The LLM related stuff is almost certainly not currently deployed. The US military has extensive sampling and testing periods before they distribute new kit to the infantry, and OpenAI simply hasn't had enough time to present a killer app (imo). That's not to say AI isn't used in warfare; computer vision has been an enormous part of recon and targeting pipelines over the past decade. But LLMs themselves are going to take a looooooot of fanangling before it sees active duty. Think Hololens, not M4 carbine.
- brightball 3y ago
  Honestly, after reading SkunkWorks and finding out that stealth bombers were kept secret from 1978 until they were used to essentially win the Gulf War in 1 night in 1992 I have to assume there's a ton of military tech that we know nothing about.
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
  We got the word from the mentalist act of Gregor Feinaigle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_von_Feinaigle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_von_Feinaigle
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    Neat! I grew up on it and never knew the context, TIL.
datasink 3y ago
Palantir has a Youtube demo of their LLM-integrated AIP system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEM5qz__HOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEM5qz__HOU (Palantir AIP | Defense and Military)
throwaway13337 3y ago
It's an interesting question. I feel like starlink is underappreciated here. It seems to be a game changer in terms of communication about live targets and intelligence in a way that traditional satellites just aren't. Due to that, it seems obvious that SpaceX would make the most money in military contracts related to it. I don't think the military is blind nor is SpaceX to the potential here - so why haven't we heard more about that kind of partnership? China being a manufacturing superpower in the same way the US was during WWII makes me feel like they are underestimated essentially because industrial production is such a big deal for military capacity. I think other capacity of China is overappreciated. But industrial capacity for every part of the drone/shell production chain seems like how the most recent modern war has been fought. The US seems to only have grown in the informational space - not production capacity. If those gains are not being realized in military, then the US's position would be slowly receding. It could be that the miliary has not been able to make use of the information space or not. We don't know. Military position is about capabilities and (hopefully) not hot trial of those capabilities. Great powers each thinking they have vastly stronger capabilities than the other could make hot trial of the capacity more likely. That's not a good thing. Capabilities need to be more obvious to avoid war. I guess what I am saying is - I'd like to know too. Mostly this topic is a lot of hot takes and chest beating so it's hard to get a more indifferent look.

mmastrac 3y ago

Headline changed from original: "Thiel’s Palantir, Israel Agree Strategic Partnership for Battle Tech"

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
samstave 3y ago
That's even scarier, IMO. Just like NSO/Pegasus is only used for "good" Look - I worked for Lockheed... My brother was personal flight surgeon to the Joint Chiefs. Dad was also in air force. Grandfather was a nuclear engineer for GE... Pretty well know the military But one does need to pay attention to how tech and defense work together - especially when the defense eng of the equation is an opaque foreign military. (When lockheed bought savi (rfid tracking systems for supplies/equipment/weapons/chemicals) - we had a several great engineers, of muslim/middle eastern descent, who quit over protest)

dgrin91 3y ago

Haven't they already been selling military tech to basically all western countries for along time? I'm unclear what the news here is.

bhouston 3y ago
I am unsure if Palantir has other clients who have cases in from of the International Court of Justice on accusations of genocide - it has a lot of coverage right now. Here is a summary article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/middleeast/israel-genocide-case-world-court-gaza-mime-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/middleeast/israel-genocide-ca... Does Palantir sell to Myanmar? If Israel actually gets convicted of breaches under the convention, of which there is a chance, would you be comfortable selling technology that is aiding in their "war-related missions"?
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - filoleg 3y ago
    I was about to say, I don’t see why one would feel more uncomfortable about selling them a glorified data analytics platform, as opposed to selling them cloud compute resources or Office365 subscription (while keeping in mind that all of those would be used for “war-related missions”). EDIT: The parent comment has been substantially changed since I posted this reply. Originally, it just said “yes.” Considering what it currently states after the edit (going into a side-tangent about UN’s inaction against Saudi Arabia’s activities in Yemen, as well as their anti-Israel bias), it changes the context of my reply fairly significantly.
    - wonderwonder 3y ago
      Agreed, not to mention the US / Lockheed / Boeing etc. openly provides the weapons and bombs used. Palintir is a drop in the bucket.
    - 3y ago

paxys 3y ago

Palantir is a glorified IT consultant with some good political connections. What someone like Accenture or Infosys will do for your company, Palantir will do for a country's military, only their bill will have a few more zeroes at the end. They are still ultimately setting up databases for supply chain management and HR. The rest of what you see ("AI on the battlefield!") is all marketing.

mandmandam 3y ago
Well, as long as the evil is properly banal and expensive, I guess we gotta give them a pass. ?

Qem 3y ago

Palantir joins the Aparth-Aider club.

ericfrazier 3y ago

God bless Peter Thiel then