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Palantir defends its role in the kill chain
- stavros 7mo agoIt must be nice to live in a world where your country is always morally right just because it's your country. It's much simpler that way.
- givemeethekeys 7mo agoNationalism has its benefits.
- astrashe2 7mo agoIt doesn't change the reality of what's happening, so I don't think this is worth much, but most people here don't think that.
- stavros 7mo agoI know, I was talking about Karp.
- schrectacular 7mo agoSadly I would argue that most do, about most of the things, most of the time. See the Propaganda Model. Things like Iran are sadly the exception, as far as my experience goes.
- JumpinJack_Cash 7mo ago> > It doesn't change the reality of what's happening, so I don't think this is worth much, but most people here don't think that. Where are the ginormous protests that happened during the Iraq invasion? Me thinks it was not about right or wrong but fear of a new Vietnam type draft. Now that war has changed there are not similar type of protests because it's the missiles and drones doing the killing
- cameldrv 7mo agoThere were a lot of protests over the Iraq war when Congress was voting on it, but Congress hasn’t had a role this time. Who would the protesters be trying to influence?
- MattPalmer1086 7mo agoThe lead up to the Iraq was took a long time, with (to me and a while load of other people) clearly misleading and wrong evidence about WMDs as the justification. There was no attempt to sway public opinion as to the right or wrong on this one. They just piled in with no warning.
- scarecrowbob 7mo agoAs a person who organized and participated in the ultimately useless protests against the Iraq war, I think that you're correct- we had a couple of months to watch the BushII folks lie their way into getting wide support for the war. As far as I can tell, these current assholes don't really care what the folks in the US think about their actions, so they don't spend time making cases- they just go do whatever dumb shit they want to do. Hell, I suspect that even they don't have a firm idea of what they are doing.
- MattPalmer1086 7mo agoI don't think the protests were useless even if they didn't stop the war. It allowed the anti war opinion to solidify, particularly when there were no WMDs found (surprise). Tony Blair is now widely reviled in the UK, and you can hardly find anyone who will admit to have supported the war.
- rayiner 7mo agoThat’s not the operative principle in a democracy where people with many different moral ideologies must cooperate under the banner of a single government.
- lyu07282 7mo agomost people probably agree with that, but only until you mention a specific example then people loose their minds.
- zoklet-enjoyer 7mo ago[flagged]
- dgxyz 7mo agoKarp is the number one enemy of civilised society.
- IAmBroom 7mo agoI would unhumorously vote "humans", myself, but even without that, Trump is high on the list. Demagoguery without let or hindrance, addressing a demographic without shame (and now we're back to humans).
- dgxyz 7mo agoOh yes there’s a good old list going here and it’s a subset of all humans for sure.
- some_random 7mo ago[flagged]
- iammjm 7mo agoSo what? I don't really care if you are proud of your work if I think you work is objectively evil. I imagine the designers of the Auschwitz's gas chambers were also proud of their "good" work. Yeah I ain't empathizing with them either and you can call that a "blind spot"
- bibimsz 7mo ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 7mo agoNor are you right for denying the accusation.
- bibimsz 7mo ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 7mo agoIf you can conclusively prove that liberals are evil, be my guest. Give me your rhetorical coup-de-grace that annihilates half of America's voting bloc. Even the Nazis retained the ability to judge their opponents when WWII ended. Pity that their opponents were hangmen that wanted them to answer for murder.
- gkoberger 7mo ago"You're attacking the person who's protecting you – idiot. [..] You may hate this, but there's one person protecting your rights to be a conspiracy theorist that actually has a seat at the table, and that person is me. [..] You may not want to hear that truth, but it's fucking true." The way Alex Karp views himself is scary; he gives himself (and his company) carte blanche when it comes to morality. He's basically become the Jack Nicholson character from A Few Good Men. Yes, America needs technology to succeed. But it can't be unchecked.
- avazhi 7mo ago[flagged]
- ta9000 7mo agoI choose neither.
- gkoberger 7mo agoSure, me too. But that was the point of his character – the false equivalence that he was the good guy, and those are the two options. He justified ignoring the rules, which lead to the death of someone in his command, due to his own moral arrogance. There's a third option. Someone who understands the weight of the role and holds themselves (or is held) accountable.
- bcrosby95 7mo agoYou're misreading the hesitation about going into places like Iran. It's not because we think the regime is/was good, but rather because of the completely predictable next 10-50 years of shit we're going to experience as a result. Regime change is hard and oftentimes has the opposite effect of what you want. For example, see the current Iran regime.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- kibibu 7mo ago
- smegma2 7mo agoNot trying to be contrarian here, but I don’t get the problem. What’s wrong with Palantir producing weapons or military intelligence? How is it different from making guns? Is the problem what those things are used for, or is it the way Palantir does it?
- zoklet-enjoyer 7mo agoLook at what's happening in Lebanon, Palestine, Iran. Everyone involved in helping with those mass murders is evil. Edit: I see I'm being downvoted. What is your argument in favor of this? How big of a degenerate, amoral, psychopath do you have to be to justify this? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/14/lebanon-israeli-rockets-kill-healthcare-workers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/14/lebanon-israel... "Israel has carried out at least 37 attacks against healthcare workers and facilities in Lebanon, including against the state civil defence and Lebanese Red Cross, since the current hostilities began, Lebanese authorities said. The war in Lebanon started on 2 March after Hezbollah launched a volley of rockets at Israel, triggering a swift Israeli bombing campaign across the country. Fighting has since escalated, with Hezbollah continuing its rocket fire and Israeli troops invading south Lebanon. At least 826 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes, according to the ministry of health, and about 1 million have been displaced."
- bigyabai 7mo agoPalantir aggregates immorally collected advertisement data and de-anonymizes it before selling it to the government. It's abuse of a dual-use data source that has no opt-out for any free citizen; maybe that concerns you, maybe it doesn't. Their biggest issue is their leadership, though. If Alex Karp had two ounces of morality to rub together then it might be an easier pill to swallow, but instead he harps about how proud they are to kill people with AdSense data. It feels like the immorality is the point.
- Sparkle-san 7mo agoI think fewer people would care about Palantir (and several other notable companies) if their CEOs/founders weren't using the company as a platform for their own ambitions and ideologies.
- fukukitaru 7mo ago[flagged]
- geff82 7mo agoThere are always companies profiting from war. When ypu sre one of those, take the money, work silently. But being loud about being proud to be part of a war… this is just disgusting.
- spacechild1 7mo agoSad to see this flagged. Articles like these are exactly why I come to HN. Technology does not exist in a moral vacuum! You cannot reasonably keep "politics" away from this site when large tech companies are actively involved in killing people and destroying democracy.
- iammjm 7mo agowhy did this get flagged?
- spacechild1 7mo agoUsually it's either 1. Certain users do not like "political" topics on the front page. But as I said, the very idea of "apolitical" tech news is naive, especially in times like these. 2. Some users want to suppress it because it goes against their own political interests. Either way, it's a gross misuse of the flag button. I am wondering: are there any consequences for wrongly flagging submissions?
- red-iron-pine 7mo agolotta tech bros in palantir, and they read HN too, mate.
- scarecrowbob 7mo agoUnfortuantely, while I do come here for these kinds of discussions, it's moistly because I've excised the sociopathic and nationalistic folks from much of my medua and it's much easier to find those values among wanna-be venture capitalists. I "value" their opinions insofar as they have an outsized influence on our world: I feel like if I want to stay tapped into the progress folks are making on building the Torment Nexus, this website is where I will find folks breathlessly cheering it on.
- cjbenedikt 7mo agoPoor sod. Just imagine the inferiority complexes he must have to be afraid of liberal, democratic women. He’s also a prime example of how a supposedly solid education (Haverford, Stanford, Habermas) or DEI parents don’t necessarily guarantee a well-rounded upbringing. He said that before he went to Germany, he had underestimated just how German his upbringing had been. I dare not ask what exactly that means.