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YC gave Palantir a massive platform at startup school to present the company and vision and recruit talent. Far more than the seed investment would have been wo

YC gave Palantir a massive platform at startup school to present the company and vision and recruit talent. Far more than the seed investment would have been worth. With respect to the ares industries, YC buys into the neocon view strongly enough that it wants to help create the next wave of military tech. The only reason anyone perceives these "threats" and perceives the US to be "woefully unprepared" because of the marketing budget the defense industry has after profiting handsomely from the Iraq wars, etc. The US is not in danger and does not need new and state of the art weapons systems. We are not losing in Ukraine because we don't have adequate weapons but because we are playing a very stupid and risky strategy. See the comments of Jeffrey Sachs on all of this.

edot 2y ago
Jeffrey Sachs is unfortunately a misinformation machine. His words sound convincing but lack truth. Unrelated to Ukraine, he is also very friendly with Chinese oppression and refused to acknowledge Uyghur torture. Try reading this letter and see if you still believe him. Note the number of signatures at the bottom. https://web.archive.org/web/20230806172854/https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/20/open-letter-to-jeffrey-sachs-on-the-russia-ukraine-war/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230806172854/https://news.berk...
- resters 2y ago
  I read the letter and it sounded like the "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive aggression. The claim is that Russia is by nature aggressive (based on a very long-term historical trend that does not include its current regime) and so aggressive action against Russia is warranted, regardless of the current government or any existing treaties. The aggressive aspect of NATO is also minimized, which I think is naive. I was in Ukraine in 2016 and saw the US fighter jets flying formations on Russia's doorstep. Calling that "defensive" is absurd. We now know that since the 1990s there has been a US goal to aggressively expand NATO mainly to suppress Russia. The problem with this strategy is that it does not care at all about Ukrainian lives. As someone with family in Ukraine, I do not want my country (the US) wreaking havoc in the region. Thousands of Ukrainians are dying every single day right now, all because the US doesn't want to respect Russia's security zone. Mearshimer calls this the US nostalgia over the "uni-polar moment" when the US was briefly the only superpower. Too much of the modern notions of American exceptionalism rely upon biases from that brief moment in history, to everyone's peril.
  - pj_mukh 2y ago
    Unfortunately this narrative is imperceptibly different from Russian propaganda (eg, leaving out that Russia regularly buzzes American airspace in Alaska). So if you want to make this case, you’ll have to find a narrative that works for Ukrainians (who overwhelmingly support the war[1]) and the Taiwanese. Convince them that an American pullback will be fine for them, and I’ll support America pulling back. Until then, a multi-polar world among authoritarian aristocracies is a pipe-dream. Everyone hates American hegemony until you ask them what other hegemony they would like. So missiles we must make, and make them cheaper we can. [1] https://www.voanews.com/amp/new-poll-reveals-how-ukrainians-feel-about-war-future/7303180.html https://www.voanews.com/amp/new-poll-reveals-how-ukrainians-...
    - resters 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - mopsi 2y ago
        > It's hard not to be sympathetic to Russia's perspective that the US arming Ukraine and promoting NATO expansion violates the spirit of the Budapest memorandum and also the informal assurances that were apparently given to Russia by the US. 1. Nobody was providing military aid to Ukraine before Russia invaded, and even then it was initially of non-lethal nature. 2. NATO expansion was an initiative of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, against heavy skepticism by existing NATO members (including the US) -- and not something that the US "promoted". The initiative was in large part a reaction to the Russian war in Chechnya, and overall Russian hostility towards its European neighbors. Whatever glimmer of hope there was in early 1990s for different kind of relations, seeing Russian atrocities in Chechnya squashed them overnight. 3. If by "apparent" assurances you mean the conspiracy theory that someone promised Russians that NATO would not accept new members in Europe, then this has been refuted by USSR's top leaders - Gorbachev himself, his foreign minister, defense minister, and others. It's total nonsense. > Of course now in 2024 Ukrainians support the war, but if one were to ask them in 1994 if they would want what they now have in 2024 or would it be OK to continue to be neutral, they would undeniably prefer neutrality and peace. "Neutral option" is how they arrived in the present day. Ukraine was too slow to follow other CEE countries in joining EU and NATO, and wasn't covered by mutual defense guarantees by the time Russians invaded. Ukraine remaining out of strong alliances made the invasion less risky for Russians. That was a mistake. Sweden and Finland -- the last two neutral countries near Russia -- immediately learned from that mistake and joined NATO.

edot 2y ago

Jeffrey Sachs is unfortunately a misinformation machine. His words sound convincing but lack truth. Unrelated to Ukraine, he is also very friendly with Chinese oppression and refused to acknowledge Uyghur torture. Try reading this letter and see if you still believe him. Note the number of signatures at the bottom. https://web.archive.org/web/20230806172854/https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/20/open-letter-to-jeffrey-sachs-on-the-russia-ukraine-war/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230806172854/https://news.berk...

resters 2y ago
I read the letter and it sounded like the "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive aggression. The claim is that Russia is by nature aggressive (based on a very long-term historical trend that does not include its current regime) and so aggressive action against Russia is warranted, regardless of the current government or any existing treaties. The aggressive aspect of NATO is also minimized, which I think is naive. I was in Ukraine in 2016 and saw the US fighter jets flying formations on Russia's doorstep. Calling that "defensive" is absurd. We now know that since the 1990s there has been a US goal to aggressively expand NATO mainly to suppress Russia. The problem with this strategy is that it does not care at all about Ukrainian lives. As someone with family in Ukraine, I do not want my country (the US) wreaking havoc in the region. Thousands of Ukrainians are dying every single day right now, all because the US doesn't want to respect Russia's security zone. Mearshimer calls this the US nostalgia over the "uni-polar moment" when the US was briefly the only superpower. Too much of the modern notions of American exceptionalism rely upon biases from that brief moment in history, to everyone's peril.
- pj_mukh 2y ago
  Unfortunately this narrative is imperceptibly different from Russian propaganda (eg, leaving out that Russia regularly buzzes American airspace in Alaska). So if you want to make this case, you’ll have to find a narrative that works for Ukrainians (who overwhelmingly support the war[1]) and the Taiwanese. Convince them that an American pullback will be fine for them, and I’ll support America pulling back. Until then, a multi-polar world among authoritarian aristocracies is a pipe-dream. Everyone hates American hegemony until you ask them what other hegemony they would like. So missiles we must make, and make them cheaper we can. [1] https://www.voanews.com/amp/new-poll-reveals-how-ukrainians-feel-about-war-future/7303180.html https://www.voanews.com/amp/new-poll-reveals-how-ukrainians-...
  - resters 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mopsi 2y ago
      > It's hard not to be sympathetic to Russia's perspective that the US arming Ukraine and promoting NATO expansion violates the spirit of the Budapest memorandum and also the informal assurances that were apparently given to Russia by the US. 1. Nobody was providing military aid to Ukraine before Russia invaded, and even then it was initially of non-lethal nature. 2. NATO expansion was an initiative of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, against heavy skepticism by existing NATO members (including the US) -- and not something that the US "promoted". The initiative was in large part a reaction to the Russian war in Chechnya, and overall Russian hostility towards its European neighbors. Whatever glimmer of hope there was in early 1990s for different kind of relations, seeing Russian atrocities in Chechnya squashed them overnight. 3. If by "apparent" assurances you mean the conspiracy theory that someone promised Russians that NATO would not accept new members in Europe, then this has been refuted by USSR's top leaders - Gorbachev himself, his foreign minister, defense minister, and others. It's total nonsense. > Of course now in 2024 Ukrainians support the war, but if one were to ask them in 1994 if they would want what they now have in 2024 or would it be OK to continue to be neutral, they would undeniably prefer neutrality and peace. "Neutral option" is how they arrived in the present day. Ukraine was too slow to follow other CEE countries in joining EU and NATO, and wasn't covered by mutual defense guarantees by the time Russians invaded. Ukraine remaining out of strong alliances made the invasion less risky for Russians. That was a mistake. Sweden and Finland -- the last two neutral countries near Russia -- immediately learned from that mistake and joined NATO.