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Palantir: The Most Evil Company
- FrankWilhoit 1y ago[flagged]
- bparsons 1y ago[flagged]
- tt_dev 1y agoI might say the knife sales man who stands outside bars known for violence yelling “my knife stabs better!” could be evil.
- rendx 1y agoA knife developed and sold by a company that collects usage and personal data of everyone that touches it and does central analysis for political purposes: Yes, that's an evil knife company.
- aeonik 1y agoI personally wouldn't, but to play devil's advocate and going with the Lord of the Rings theme. Yeah weapons and objects themselves are often referred to explicitly as imbued with lightness and darkness in universe.
- brendoelfrendo 1y agoA company is not an inanimate object; it is a collection of people working towards a shared goal. A knife cannot be evil, but a company (or, if you wish to be pedantic, the people who make up the company) can be.
- derektank 1y agoWhat would a knife manufacturer have to do to be considered evil?
- text0404 1y agomake an AI-powered knife that wants to stab as many people as possible, then market and sell it to despotic regimes.
- Fezzik 1y agoMake knives that can only be used to kill people and solicit/provide the knives to bad actors who you know will use the knives for the purpose they were developed for?
- assword 1y agoThe manufacturer giving the knives out to government agencies explicitly so that they can stab civilians more efficiently
- brendoelfrendo 1y agoI mean, I kind of reject where this line of questioning is going; I consider most of Palantir's product line to be inherently unethical, so I reject the notion that they can be considered a simple tool manufacturer, like a knife manufacturer could be.
- pxeger1 1y agoFTR I don't necessarily believe that designing better arms is inherently unethical. But if one did, this is why your counterargument wouldn't make sense: Knife sales are close to zero-sum, but Palantir is innovating with its lethal technology for the sole purpose of being a more effective weapon. If you were stabbed to death by a knife that is somehow designed specifically to be deadlier or harder to defend against, would you call its designer evil?
- koolba 1y ago> If you were stabbed to death by a knife that is somehow designed specifically to be deadlier or harder to defend against, would you call its designer evil? No, I’d call them innovative if that’s what the market was looking for. Would you have said the same thing about a medieval blacksmith cresting a new type of sword?
- humpty-d 1y agoPeter Scully was morally just because there was a market for his content
- const_cast 1y ago> No, I’d call them innovative if that’s what the market was looking for. Well you wouldn't call them anything because you'd be dead. But it's nice that even in death, you're still considering shareholder value above all else. > Would you have said the same thing about a medieval blacksmith cresting a new type of sword? I mean yeah, probably, if it's uniquely bad and uniquely dangerous. Yes building evil things is evil. To me, that isn't controversial. If I build the torment nexus I'm probably an evil person. Obviously, there's levels here, and I think appealing to... sigh... knives is pretty disingenuous. Everything is a matter of scale. What's the difference between a nuclear bomb and a knife? I mean, besides plutonium. Scale. One can harvest the lives of millions in the blink of an eye, and one is a knife. That's why I don't cut my bread with a nuclear warhead.
- tetris11 1y ago...would you pay for the upkeep of the knife because of its notoreity, and the hopes that it doesn't stab you?
- saltwatercowboy 1y agoIf said knife were used to murder a child then, yes, I would consider the knife to be an evil object.
- humpty-d 1y agoIf that knife was a legal person, then yes
- PartiallyTyped 1y agoI think this analogy is dishonest. What is a company if not the people who work there and drive some vision forward? What would Tesla be without Elon? It sure looks like the company is a tool for Peter and his ilk, to enable and extend state surveillance, to limit people’s capacity to stand up to corrupt and evil governments. I’d suggest you read up on Thiel’s and Yarvin’s beliefs. Palantir sure seems more of a projection of those beliefs rather than a mere tool that by itself has no purpose.
- FrankWilhoit 1y agoYou sound as if you think he would go on with it even if he had no customers.
- PartiallyTyped 1y agoIt’s worth reading 0 to 1, it outlines Thiel’s views on startups, which can be illuminating on his broader views. He emphasizes that sales and distribution are just as important as the product itself, and he is particularly blunt about the need to convince people to become customers, even if your product is truly superior. > “If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business — no matter how good the product.” Thiel argues that great products don’t sell themselves, contrary to the romanticized idea many founders have. Even if your product is objectively better, people won’t automatically understand or adopt it. You must persuade them, market effectively, and create distribution channels — either through salespeople, viral growth loops, partnerships, or targeted marketing — to bridge the gap between product and user adoption.
- FrankWilhoit 1y ago...all of which (vile and horrifying in its own right, but not at all original) applies to mass-market products. The market for Palantir is extremely small and the demand -- even, or especially, at the level of a wish-list -- extremely inelastic. I still say, without that demand, no Palantir -- unless Thiel had funded its entire development out of his own pocket. (Perhaps he did; all the sicker.) Yes, demand can be created; but where it is spontaneous, it is also the only possible target of blame.
- itsnowandnever 1y agothis would be more like an autonomous knife stabbing machine than a knife. palantir automates the use of weapons. they don't make weapons themselves
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoIt needs to be a "cloud connected" autonomous knife stabbing machine if you want that sweet VC money.
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoThat is so ten years ago. Back then, we needed mobile-first knife-stabbing machine control software. Today's VC money only goes to knife stabbing machines with onboard ML for autonomous, on-the-fly targeting decisions.
- siliconc0w 1y agoit's not their fault but we still have a social need to regulate the tool. We shouldn't enable mass surveillance on Americans. There is a 100% chance that it will be abused.
- devjab 1y agoI think it would be fitting to call knives which sole purpose is to stab people evil. A trench knife for instance would have no purpose in the modern world outside of being evil.
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoKnives are useful for things that help everybody. Everything Palantir makes hurts somebody.
- saghm 1y agoSelling knives might not be evil, but that doesn't imply that there's no level of weaponry that would be immoral to sell. Would selling fully automatic rifles be evil? What about chemical weapons, or nuclear bombs? The question is where to draw the line, which is subjective, but I'd argue that most people would draw the line _somewhere_, and I don't think it's as clear-cut as you're trying to imply where stuff like auotmated surveillance software falls.
- malthaus 1y agoisn't palantir just a bottom-tier consulting company (ie a body shop) with a brand, track record & contacts that get them on those "evil" projects? if not them, someone else would staff the grunts to fill up the demand in manpower it's not like they have a magic box that "does evil" that they sell to others, even though in the beginning that's what they seemed to market (only for good causes on the right side of history, obviously)
- siliconc0w 1y agoThey claim they've built more of a 'platform' now and so are less of a consulting shop. It's not a new narrative and I haven't really see a lot of examples of how this platform is especially powerful compared to other say low-code tools to build interfaces on top of datasets but given it's so secretive and there is so much money sloshing around, it seems like people are believing it.
- devjab 1y agoThey sell survailance tools and platforms with heavy AI/ML integration. Tools that frankly have no real rivals for most western countries, since we still consider it better to hand all our data over to USA than other nations with similar products. I think you could view them as a company with the capabilities of the Captain American Hydra styled algorithm to determine whether you are a good citizen or not. Whether you consider that to be evil or not, is probably up to your personal morals. One of the reasons they are in the "spotlight" in countries like mine (Denmark) is because of their ownership and managment being questionable. The reason we still buy their platforms is because we have no alternative, and frankly, the USA has all our data anyway.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoIf anyone is skeptical, I'd encourage them to read the tweets of Lonsdale, or Karp, and see what kind of twisted mindset the creators of this huge surveillance machine have
- Maksadbek 1y agoIf you don’t invest to some company because of ethical reasons, then investing isn’t for you. Anything can be used for good and bad reasons.
- saltwatercowboy 1y agoI'm somehow more inclined to condemn Raytheon over Dick's Sporting Goods.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoWhat do you have against the PRT 2000? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dViKRvCKDY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dViKRvCKDY8
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoThe author's primary lament seems to be he purposely didn't invest in a rapidly growing company because of: 1. Some personal dislike of the principals or their product or petty political disagreement 2. Company grows 500% (as predicted) 3. Everyone else makes money except the author who deliberately didn't invest ( see #1 above) 4. It's not fair! 5. Write angry sour grapes substack blaming the current administration for all your problems.
- text0404 1y ago"petty political disagreement" literally donated massive amounts of money to donald trump and supporting a genocide. the post discusses Thiel and Trumps misconduct and the ethical reasons the author is choosing not to invest, but sweet strawman.
- const_cast 1y ago> petty political disagreement Politics isn't a sports game. These aren't teams, and you aren't rooting on a championship game. People die. Lots and lots of people. This isn't some abstract things that just exists in your mind to get mad about, it's real life.
- 1y ago
- tiffanyh 1y agoPalatir is a Defense Contractor. Historically people considered such companies to be in the business of building & selling defense equipment (like bombs). But nowadays, this also includes cyber & AI. https://www.palantir.com/offerings/defense/ https://www.palantir.com/offerings/defense/
- snickerdoodle12 1y ago[flagged]
- input_sh 1y agoTruly blows my mind how anyone could spend more than 60 seconds googling Alex Karp and think "what a sane guy". Blows my mind even more to know he has legitimate fans.
- jimmydddd 1y agoAgreed. We should disarm and hope for the best.
- agent_turtle 1y agoIt's naive to frame this as a binary choice between disarmament and creating a single unaccountable entity for all of the world's data.
- tompccs 1y agoIf you want to live in a uni-polar world, you should support companies like Palantir which bolster American hegemony over global security. If you would prefer to live in a multi-polar world, with multiple superpowers vying for supremacy, then you should support Chinese espionage operations and invest in Indian oil refineries. If you think wanting to live in a unipolar world is "evil", then there's no helping you.
- ajkjk 1y agoThat dichotomy is absurd, there are many more possible stances than that.
- danpalmer 1y agoThis is the sort of black and white, American supremacy thinking that produces the state of the world we are in. What a false dichotomy.
- text0404 1y agothis is a wild mindset. either the US rules the world with an iron fist or there's complete anarchy? how much do you have to hate humanity to believe this?
- jimmydoe 1y agothis is to oversimplify world to binary options, and presenting false choices. we should be able to imagine something better than China/US/Russia govt, and put work to implement it.
- Guthur 1y agoIt is evil because you presume too much. Your unipolar world is devoid of any meaning. Your democracy is an opiate for the masses with no meaningful choice. Your neo liberalism has destroyed any sense of togetherness and has robbed us of our sovereign resources. And your only answer to descent is to kill millions and bomb countries and people into the stone age. Sorry if your moralising is now falling on death ears.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 1y agoThe world is very techy these days. Someone is going to do the business where tech, AI and defence interact, and it happens to be Palantir. So... is the complaint that a company fills this niche, or is it that of all possible companies doing this business, Palantir is particularly immoral? I'm not sure it is possible for effectively a (cyber-)weapon producer to say, ah youre using our weapons immorally, we wont sell them to you. This is the domain of government regulation and export control. So I personally wouldnt expect the contractor in this space to stand up to some high moral standard. I think the best we can hope for is compliance with laws, and there's your problem. US doesnt care how badly people get abused by the weaponry it exports, so long as IP and military secrets aren't leaked. Palantir is safe from US regulation. Are other countries better? Some for sure. Germany blocked Eurofighter exports on ethical grounds. I'm not judging if they were right or wrong, but merely that they forewent cash for ethical points. But most will sell anything to anyone, so long as the price is right. Im not saying Palantir is a nice cuddly company, only, hate the game not the player.
- gond 1y agoThat is a completely false premise. The game would not exist if there were a consensus among players to not play. Technically, this is not linear as you argue, instead, this is a feedback loop. The game influences the actors, the actors influence the game. To prevent an unwanted outcome, you must interrupt the loop at an arbitrary point of your choice.
- rich_sasha 1y agoYou're saying SV (& co) should convene some kind of gentleman's agreement that they should all leave a massive, profitable, legal, intellectually interesting niche with a stable customer base, because its immoral - perhaps. Can you think of a single other industry where this worked? It seems implausible to me that it would.
- gond 1y agoOkay, here we go: No, I am not saying anything you said. This was not about a gentleman's agreement at all - that was a rhetorical figure to demonstrate that it is not the game which is at fault, it’s both. The behaviour of the game and the behaviour of the actors in that game, and almost in any other game is not an input -> output scenario, but instead, the output of the loop will be the input of the exact same loop. That is the definition of a feedback loop. It’s all recursion. By shifting the responsibility to the ominous “game”, which is just another term for a system, you exclude the elements of a system from being part of the system itself. There is a whole branch of science occupied with this. System Dynamics, Cybernetics, Chaos Theory, Systems Theory and whatnot. The argument that actors in a system are decoupled from the system or the environment as in a closed system approach is factually wrong. Apart from laboratories, there is practically no closed system on this planet. The phrase “hate the game not the player” is cybernetic nonsense with the sole purpose of giving up responsibility. It does not matter that it gets repeated more often than not. It won’t be correct, no matter how many times the figure is used.
- Ozzie_osman 1y agoI posted this a few days ago on a separate Palantir-related thread, but it probably is more relevant here. The world could use fewer Alex Karps. -- This quote from the CEO of Palantir (Alex Karp) haunts me. --- > “I actually am a progressive,” he said. “I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers — I’m trying to be nice here — out of our adversaries. 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.”
- jimmydoe 1y agoGeorge Orwell famously argued that the decline of the English language contributes to muddled thinking and political dishonesty. He probably can't imagine how far this can actually go
- pclowes 1y agoIs he wrong? This has historically been very true. The nuclear deterrent has significantly decreased the probability of civilian or armed forces dying as a result of conflict globally.
- agent_turtle 1y agoThe nuclear deterrent works because of MAD. If only one nation had the capacity for nuclear weapons, there's a strong case to be made that we'd be living in a totalitarian world state or at the very least vassals to the dominant state.
- altcognito 1y agoThe US had a monopoly on nuclear weapons for nearly four years.
- agent_turtle 1y agoCool, now imagine if Nazi Germany had that monopoly.
- PicassoCTs 1y agoIs it really evil - or is it just the messenger. If you take humanity, datamine it all through the seeing stones (cellphones) and then give honest advice, the advice is gonna be harsh. This species constantly gets high on idealization of others and self-idealization, constantly crashing and burning from the unrealistic plans it makes with this unrealistic self-image. And it is unable to learn from all these retardations. We are not really governable and thus fail as soon as push come to shove. And we then try to bury this lessons - without learning anything from them. What good is it to have a Fauci, if his plans do not have the actual behavior of the humanity baked in when the great plague hits? What good is it to invade another country, to build a democratic state - when you do not have a realistic behavior model to build a democratic state with other cultural backgrounds. What good is it to wish for socialist economics, when it all boils down to centralized authoritarianism with witch hunts and collapsing economy. Palantir is just the messenger for a uncomfortable message. We are not ready at all, not ready for climate change, for singularities, for high-tech where one can destroy half the planet. We are not ready for going off-planet, which is one and the same. What is needed, is not unrealistic SciFi Visions, but basic measures to raise survive-ability of the species in crisis to come. Decentralize knowledge, create a panopticon by the people for the people, so order can be upheld even when the state collapses. The scenario-tress roots must be hardened, so we dont fall down never to recover.
- assword 1y agoLmfao. This is pretty comical. Whine about how humanity gets lost in lofty ideals and then finish with you’re own nonsense ideas > What is needed, is not unrealistic SciFi Visions, but basic measures to raise survive-ability of the species in crisis to come. Decentralize knowledge, create a panopticon by the people for the people, so order can be upheld even when the state collapses. The scenario-tress roots must be hardened, so we dont fall down never to recover. When the state collapses. The power vacuum will be filled. By those with the most resources at the of collapse.
- PicassoCTs 1y agoReally? Like it was filled in syria, in jugoslavia, lebanon? Libya, Sudan, Yemen? In Afghanistan it was never filled in the first place and is still not to this day! In pakistan, sri lanka the state is broke - and those giving credit, taking over only move into areas where they have interests, leaving other tribal regions to fend for themselves or sink into civil war (belotschistan). Russias borders are falling apart, with whole regions realigning - and putin soon to spark civil wars and proxxy actions there.
- pclowes 1y agoThere are plenty of reasons to critique Palantir but this article comes across as so ham-fisted, conspiratorial, and wanting facts that it actually makes me more sympathetic. Critiques of Govt contractors really need to be grounded in first principles. Namely: - should the government be able to wage war? - should the government collect data? How much? - how effective do we want these companies providing these services to be? - how integrated do we want these different govt and non-govt tools and datasets. Finally should these tools start or stop working when leaders you don’t like are democratically elected? Palantir also did great work with hospitals and vaccines delivery during the pandemic and continues to do great work with hospitals. Most of the critiques of Palantir come down to them being good at a job or mission the critic doesn't agree with.
- agent_turtle 1y agoPart of the question here is how much power one company should have and who is responsible for it. A government is ultimately beholden to its citizens; a company is only beholden to shareholders.
- pclowes 1y agoI agree, and personally think we need to be very careful about surrendering data privacy in order to stop the bad guys or creating a surveillance state to police immigration.
- ferociouskite56 1y agoOtsuka Pharmaceutical Co. who profit off intoxicating abilify are very evil. New York's Northwell for-profit hospital monopoly said they would inject me for asking for a Quran, "Muslims are a delusion," they will decide who is Muslim, etc. 1 million New Yorkers are psych patients at risk of losing all freedoms and getting face spasm, painful headaches and diabetes. Even worse companies in bigger Florida, Texas, California.
- bombcar 1y agoIf we include history I’m not even sure they could break into the top ten.
- derektank 1y agoWas supporting Operation Warp Speed and the delivery of Covid vaccines evil? General Perna, the logistics lead for OWS regularly called out Palantir as being instrumental in helping the extract and loal local and state data into a single national dashboard, making the rapid rollout possible without losing vaccines to a poorly planned cold chain "Perna: The system we set up was based on the foundation and the collaboration of local and federal government and industry. We did this, really, with almost perfection. Never been done before. We opened up over 70,000 locations across the country that could receive and administer vaccine. We had to create data-use agreements with the states in order to put an ERP in place to track the vaccine. Then we had to validate the 70,000 locations through the CDC, so that they could receive it and administer it. Because our goal was, we wanted people to have access in places they were comfortable being: a local doctor’s office, a hospital, CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart. Gilsinan: They say plans don’t survive first contact with the enemy. I’m curious what adjustments became warranted in those first few weeks and why. Perna: That plan worked. We brought in Palantir. Palantir created a system that allowed us to see ourselves from manufacturing all the way down to the distribution sites." https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/12/gus-perna-vaccines-education-deaths-public-00032098 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/12/gus-perna-...
- stocksinsmocks 1y agoYes. It was. Railroading pharmaceutical products (lipid nanoparticles and RNA therapeutics) which had failed to pass safety tests for years when they were within cancer drug research is not a good thing.
- kiwikan 1y ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 1y agoI argue that Google and Apple are the most evil companies by making phones so very vulnerable in many ways to extensive tracking and hacking. Without the technical loopholes to provide data to Palantir, it would be more in the dark. Fwiw, Iran did the right thing recently in getting rid of smartphones.
- srhtftw 1y agoFor what it's worth the Tree component¹ of Palantir's blueprint.js React library was useful to me. ¹ https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#core/components/tree https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#core/components/tree