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I get the concern bout Palantir but this is not new: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, AWS, have all been extending their reach into government for over a decade.

I get the concern bout Palantir but this is not new: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, AWS, have all been extending their reach into government for over a decade. Palantir is the boogey man right now, and it's under a lot of scrutiny because of its work and its political ties, but let's try turning some of the ire to all of the other tech companies empowering the government against people. The others shouldn't get a pass just because of their perceived political leanings.

ants_everywhere 1y ago
Palantir is unique in that one of its founders has publicly stated he doesn't believe in democracy, the bedrock of the American system.
- tylerchilds 1y ago
  definition of treason? definition of treason.
  - RajT88 1y ago
    Thank you for demonstrating you have not looked up the definition of Treason in the US legal system. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-2/ALDE_00013525/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-...
    - tylerchilds 1y ago
      so if i understand exactly correctly it would not be treason for drone armies of automated bots deployed in the field because they aren’t human? if there were the same number of people standing on street corners collecting the same data as ring doorbells and waymos in san francisco, to sell for political and military applications, where does the treason begin? how many humans need to conspire to erode democracy for it to count to your standards?
      - RajT88 1y ago
        No. Because we are not at war, and have not been since WWII. Treason requires a war.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        hang on, the US has not been at war since WWII?
        RajT88 1y ago
        Yep. Messed me up too when I learned that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Un... Matches the last treason charges too. WWII was the last time anyone was charged (and convicted) of treason.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        ah yeah, that helps a lot— this conversation has really driven home the meaning of “the post-war era” likely, we’ll never be at war again based on how we now do conflicts, waging language semantics and syntax no war, no treason, no problem we are evolved, there is no war in Ba Sing Se
        RajT88 1y ago
        Let's hope. Our "wars" post WWII, as bad as they were, were nowhere near the nightmares of the first two world wars.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        100% agreed.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        hey yo, sorry to bother you, but just circling back after the news today the constitution being edited was “a coding error” if it wasn’t though, no assemblage of men, still no treason.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Its really easy to read this and be scared without being given any context, not everyone in the room knows who you are referring to and if your reading of their remarks are accurate. You got a name and a raw source?
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    Peter Thiel. He says "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The beginning of the essay > I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.” > But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today. The full essay https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/ https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
    - tiahura 1y ago
      “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
      - schmidtleonard 1y ago
        Haha I like that quote, but to her unintentional credit Ayn Rand did force me to think about why she was wrong, whereas if my main exposure to capitalist propaganda were the plausibly apolitical econ classes offered in school I might never have even realized that they were propaganda.
    - 1y ago
- rPlayer6554 1y ago
  Source?
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    I posted it in another comment
- yosito 1y ago
  To be fair, I'm not sure there are very many people who believe in US democracy right now.
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    I don't believe this is true. The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe. It's frequently expressed online, but a lot of that is not from human Americans. If you know of a high quality poll showing a majority of people support turning the US into a non-Democratic form of government I'd be very interested to see it and I would be legitimately surprised. The polls I see have at least 70-80% endorsement of the importance of democracy across the political spectrum.
    - sofixa 1y ago
      > The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe The theoretical idea, maybe. In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal, accepted practices that a lot of Americans (especially on one side of the two party system) accept and actively cheer on, because it's their side that is "winning".
      - adamc 1y ago
        Yes, that party has gone over to the dark side. That doesn't mean the majority of their voters necessarily agree with that.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        Sorry, this is Orwellian doublespeak. I don't know exactly what "democratic institutions" you're referring to, but you seem to be referring to administrative agencies and adjuncts that are the exact opposite of "democratic institutions." They're anti-democratic checks that are permanently in the control of one party, regardless of who wins elections. You mention "checks and balances" but which ones are you referring to? All three branches of government are controlled by the same party. Perhaps you can clarify if I'm mistaken, but you seem to be referring to anti-democratic putative "checks" within the executive branch. Those are nowhere in the constitution. What's the big news right now? Republicans defunding NPR, which spent the last five years calling republicans and white people "racist." Sorry, that's democracy in action! > In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal, California's "independent redistricting commission" drew a map where republicans have 17% of the seats despite getting 40% of the vote. That's worse than Maryland's quite deliberately gerrymandered map, where republicans got 16% of seats despite getting 35% of the vote. "Independent" redistricting commissions get taken over by democrats in practice, like every other putatively non-partisan political body.
- rayiner 1y ago
  Hostility to democracy is literally the bedrock of the 20th century american federal government. We live in the nation Woodrow Wilson created: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-administration-2/ https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad...
  - guelo 1y ago
    The Great MAGA Cultural Revolution has shifted the overton window enough among right wing elite that anti democracy propaganda is now strong and spreading. But it's still our foundation, "we the people" and all that. If the right keeps pushing dictators I see a civil war in our future.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      The MAGA cultural revolution fundamentally is an opposition to Wilsonianism and liberal universalism. That's why MAGA's authoritarian impulses are directed to the organs of Wilsonianism--such as executive agencies permanently captured by one party--rather than the public at large.
      - guelo 1y ago
        The deeply unpopular destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives is not democracy. It is a billionaire coup, they're blowing up all the safeguards that generations of Americans put in place to protect us from them.
        rayiner 1y ago
        > destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives Republicans made the case to their voters that these institutions were permanently controlled by Democrats, and expressly promised to dismantle them. And Republicans won the Presidency and both houses of Congress. There's no principle of "democracy" that says changes to longstanding institutions must proceed slowly. In fact, the only thing that's preventing Trump from living up to even more of his campaign promises is the anti-democratic check of the filibuster. > billionaire coup Every objective analysis shows that the majority of billionaires supported Kamala Harris. She raised $1.65 billion against Trump's $1.05 billion: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-harris-and-musk-how-money-did-and-didnt-affect-the-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-har.... She went into the home stretch with a huge cash advantage over Trump: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising-harris-trump-cash https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising.... This was the second time Trump won despite being outspent and swimming against the opposition of Wall Street.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  Also its named after a technology that most often causes its user to die or lose a war by exposing them to disinformation. That's an odd bit of messaging for a surveillance company.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  So basically he's saying the quiet part out loud? When you look at the totality of the things that people who profess to "believe in democracy believe", advocate for and spend real resources advancing it's pretty clear that they a) don't believe in democracy b) believe in democracy in the the most technical "gotcha" sense because they don't believe in structuring it in a way that results in any serious amount of the implied freedom or autonomy for the individual. I hate the guy and what he stands for. But at least he's self aware and honest so that puts him ahead of way more people than it should.
- jesterson 1y ago
  Would it make you feel better if they publicly pledged allegiance to democracy and flag and all those sorts of things and privately just ignored all that (like majority of big corporation management)? Just because Palantir founder was being more open about how things are doesnt not make him or rather the company more evil. Just for disclaimer, I do think Palantir is evil, but not any more or less than Google or Microsoft or any big tech corporation to that matter.
agent_turtle 1y ago
"Yeah the house may be on fire but we can't even begin to put it out until we make sure every other house in the city is not also on fire."
photochemsyn 1y ago
Whataboutism is designed to deflect attention from a particularly egregious example of malfeasance, corruption, incompetence etc. by claiming "everyone's doing it, why pick on my guys?" Palantir really is much like the private mercenary firm Blackwater - they seem happy to sell their services to anyone with little consideration of the consequences, rather like IBM in the 1930s who saw the rising authoritarian regime in Germany as a good customer, with no concern for what their technology might be used for. This is remarkably similar to Palantir's eagerness to sell their tech to Israel, where it seems to have been used to aid in decimating the Palestinian population. This exposes Palantir to the same kinds of charges IBM faced, as long as we are making that comparison.
- inemesitaffia 1y ago
  Palantir is the sort of tech that originates in Isreal. And they should have it given the multiple attempts to subjugate them.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

Palantir is unique in that one of its founders has publicly stated he doesn't believe in democracy, the bedrock of the American system.

tylerchilds 1y ago
definition of treason? definition of treason.
- RajT88 1y ago
  Thank you for demonstrating you have not looked up the definition of Treason in the US legal system. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-2/ALDE_00013525/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-...
  - tylerchilds 1y ago
    so if i understand exactly correctly it would not be treason for drone armies of automated bots deployed in the field because they aren’t human? if there were the same number of people standing on street corners collecting the same data as ring doorbells and waymos in san francisco, to sell for political and military applications, where does the treason begin? how many humans need to conspire to erode democracy for it to count to your standards?
    - RajT88 1y ago
      No. Because we are not at war, and have not been since WWII. Treason requires a war.
      - tylerchilds 1y ago
        hang on, the US has not been at war since WWII?
        RajT88 1y ago
        Yep. Messed me up too when I learned that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Un... Matches the last treason charges too. WWII was the last time anyone was charged (and convicted) of treason.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        ah yeah, that helps a lot— this conversation has really driven home the meaning of “the post-war era” likely, we’ll never be at war again based on how we now do conflicts, waging language semantics and syntax no war, no treason, no problem we are evolved, there is no war in Ba Sing Se
        RajT88 1y ago
        Let's hope. Our "wars" post WWII, as bad as they were, were nowhere near the nightmares of the first two world wars.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        100% agreed.
        tylerchilds 1y ago
        hey yo, sorry to bother you, but just circling back after the news today the constitution being edited was “a coding error” if it wasn’t though, no assemblage of men, still no treason.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
Its really easy to read this and be scared without being given any context, not everyone in the room knows who you are referring to and if your reading of their remarks are accurate. You got a name and a raw source?
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  Peter Thiel. He says "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The beginning of the essay > I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.” > But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today. The full essay https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/ https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
  - tiahura 1y ago
    “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
    - schmidtleonard 1y ago
      Haha I like that quote, but to her unintentional credit Ayn Rand did force me to think about why she was wrong, whereas if my main exposure to capitalist propaganda were the plausibly apolitical econ classes offered in school I might never have even realized that they were propaganda.
  - 1y ago
rPlayer6554 1y ago
Source?
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  I posted it in another comment
yosito 1y ago
To be fair, I'm not sure there are very many people who believe in US democracy right now.
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  I don't believe this is true. The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe. It's frequently expressed online, but a lot of that is not from human Americans. If you know of a high quality poll showing a majority of people support turning the US into a non-Democratic form of government I'd be very interested to see it and I would be legitimately surprised. The polls I see have at least 70-80% endorsement of the importance of democracy across the political spectrum.
  - sofixa 1y ago
    > The idea that the US should be non-democratic is very fringe The theoretical idea, maybe. In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal, accepted practices that a lot of Americans (especially on one side of the two party system) accept and actively cheer on, because it's their side that is "winning".
    - adamc 1y ago
      Yes, that party has gone over to the dark side. That doesn't mean the majority of their voters necessarily agree with that.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      Sorry, this is Orwellian doublespeak. I don't know exactly what "democratic institutions" you're referring to, but you seem to be referring to administrative agencies and adjuncts that are the exact opposite of "democratic institutions." They're anti-democratic checks that are permanently in the control of one party, regardless of who wins elections. You mention "checks and balances" but which ones are you referring to? All three branches of government are controlled by the same party. Perhaps you can clarify if I'm mistaken, but you seem to be referring to anti-democratic putative "checks" within the executive branch. Those are nowhere in the constitution. What's the big news right now? Republicans defunding NPR, which spent the last five years calling republicans and white people "racist." Sorry, that's democracy in action! > In practice, one party dismantling democratic institutions and checks and balances, or stacking the courts, or accepting bribes in public, or drawing districts in a way to benefit them are normal, California's "independent redistricting commission" drew a map where republicans have 17% of the seats despite getting 40% of the vote. That's worse than Maryland's quite deliberately gerrymandered map, where republicans got 16% of seats despite getting 35% of the vote. "Independent" redistricting commissions get taken over by democrats in practice, like every other putatively non-partisan political body.
rayiner 1y ago
Hostility to democracy is literally the bedrock of the 20th century american federal government. We live in the nation Woodrow Wilson created: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-administration-2/ https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad...
- guelo 1y ago
  The Great MAGA Cultural Revolution has shifted the overton window enough among right wing elite that anti democracy propaganda is now strong and spreading. But it's still our foundation, "we the people" and all that. If the right keeps pushing dictators I see a civil war in our future.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    The MAGA cultural revolution fundamentally is an opposition to Wilsonianism and liberal universalism. That's why MAGA's authoritarian impulses are directed to the organs of Wilsonianism--such as executive agencies permanently captured by one party--rather than the public at large.
    - guelo 1y ago
      The deeply unpopular destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives is not democracy. It is a billionaire coup, they're blowing up all the safeguards that generations of Americans put in place to protect us from them.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        > destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives Republicans made the case to their voters that these institutions were permanently controlled by Democrats, and expressly promised to dismantle them. And Republicans won the Presidency and both houses of Congress. There's no principle of "democracy" that says changes to longstanding institutions must proceed slowly. In fact, the only thing that's preventing Trump from living up to even more of his campaign promises is the anti-democratic check of the filibuster. > billionaire coup Every objective analysis shows that the majority of billionaires supported Kamala Harris. She raised $1.65 billion against Trump's $1.05 billion: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-harris-and-musk-how-money-did-and-didnt-affect-the-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-har.... She went into the home stretch with a huge cash advantage over Trump: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising-harris-trump-cash https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising.... This was the second time Trump won despite being outspent and swimming against the opposition of Wall Street.
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Also its named after a technology that most often causes its user to die or lose a war by exposing them to disinformation. That's an odd bit of messaging for a surveillance company.
potato3732842 1y ago
So basically he's saying the quiet part out loud? When you look at the totality of the things that people who profess to "believe in democracy believe", advocate for and spend real resources advancing it's pretty clear that they a) don't believe in democracy b) believe in democracy in the the most technical "gotcha" sense because they don't believe in structuring it in a way that results in any serious amount of the implied freedom or autonomy for the individual. I hate the guy and what he stands for. But at least he's self aware and honest so that puts him ahead of way more people than it should.
jesterson 1y ago
Would it make you feel better if they publicly pledged allegiance to democracy and flag and all those sorts of things and privately just ignored all that (like majority of big corporation management)? Just because Palantir founder was being more open about how things are doesnt not make him or rather the company more evil. Just for disclaimer, I do think Palantir is evil, but not any more or less than Google or Microsoft or any big tech corporation to that matter.

agent_turtle 1y ago

"Yeah the house may be on fire but we can't even begin to put it out until we make sure every other house in the city is not also on fire."

photochemsyn 1y ago

Whataboutism is designed to deflect attention from a particularly egregious example of malfeasance, corruption, incompetence etc. by claiming "everyone's doing it, why pick on my guys?" Palantir really is much like the private mercenary firm Blackwater - they seem happy to sell their services to anyone with little consideration of the consequences, rather like IBM in the 1930s who saw the rising authoritarian regime in Germany as a good customer, with no concern for what their technology might be used for. This is remarkably similar to Palantir's eagerness to sell their tech to Israel, where it seems to have been used to aid in decimating the Palestinian population. This exposes Palantir to the same kinds of charges IBM faced, as long as we are making that comparison.

inemesitaffia 1y ago
Palantir is the sort of tech that originates in Isreal. And they should have it given the multiple attempts to subjugate them.