As a technology, it is just database joins. It is just that they are able to pull in data from everything from S3 to SAP to ArcGIS, and provide analytics, visualization etc. on top to provide global visibility into any system.
The visibility can be "show me all illegal immigrant clusters" or "show me bottlenecks and cost sinks in CAHSR construction".
When we offload the moral impetus for society from politics to technology, we also squander control. Tech is tech and can be used for both good and bad. It is not that a strategy that aims to cap downsides by preventing the proliferation of technology is inherently bad, but it is doomed to fail. The evidence for dysfunction is not the existence of Palantir but in the failure of the watchdog layer of society (also called the government).
nxobject · 1h ago
That also deflects moral responsibility away from Palantir: they have and had every choice to question the purpose of their contracts. The essence of Palantir is specifically pursuing government surveillance contracts as a lucrative, never ending source of profit.
No doubt Deloitte or any other contractor shop would be able to do the same thing - but they don’t choose to.
andoando · 6m ago
What you think is ethical is different from what I think is ethical.
The power shouldn't be solidified in a few hands period.
mrlongroots · 1h ago
> No doubt Deloitte or any other contractor shop would be able to do the same thing - but they don’t choose to.
I'm sorry but I absolutely disagree that the reason say Deloitte is leaving a few hundred billion dollars on the table is the presence of a moral compass.
pydry · 1h ago
It might be. Deloitte dont specifically select for employees who dont have one.
mrlongroots · 48m ago
If a selection mechanism is orthogonal to a property, it seems weird to argue that the selected subset is distributed differently along that axis than the broader population.
irishloop · 2h ago
Yes. But also, all technologies will eventually be used as weapons. And so its important for us to understand how they can be weaponized and to consider the social cost of that weaponization.
mrlongroots · 1h ago
Kitchen knives murder people. Toyota Hiluxes have powered more jihad than modern battle tanks. Our tastes, beliefs, and opinions as a society are shaped by recommendation algorithms run by facebook/instagram/twitter, to our profound detriment (personal opinion).
> And so its important for us to understand how they can be weaponized and to consider the social cost of that weaponization.
To be clear, I absolutely agree. Plenty of tech is double-edged. And Palantir very much so.
Let me restate my point. Palantir (or that class of tech products) is powerful at enabling visibility over a complex system. But visibility is not decisions, it is an input to decisions. If you had real-time telemetry from every single stomach, you could maybe automatically dispatch drones with food wherever someone is starving. Or you could use the data as a high-frequency indicator for a successful invasion. Morality is downstream of decisions not data.
Avshalom · 1h ago
Palantir is not double edged, technology is pretty much by definition an application and Palantir is applying in exactly one direction.
"oh it's just database joins" is about like me ripping your arms off and describing it as "chemical reactions"
mandevil · 1h ago
No, you've only heard about one application of it. Airbus and Palantir built something so powerful they productized it and now sell it to airlines to help manage their fleet
They have a thriving commercial business outside of their government work. (Disclaimer: long PLTR)
mrlongroots · 53m ago
> "oh it's just database joins" is about like me ripping your arms off and describing it as "chemical reactions"
This argument is both inconsistent and counterproductive.
Inconsistent as in, the harm to me from having my arms being ripped off comes from you deciding to effect the intent to harm me. No photograph or x-ray of my arms can produce the intent of wanting to harm me.
Counterproductive as in, the "good vs bad" framing is pointless because it does not help with solutions. If your solution is to ban joins, you will have a hard time gaining traction for your cause. Strategic advocacy requires understanding axes along which you may be able to produce a coherent argument and gain leverage. "Ban joins" does not help.
bigyabai · 1h ago
Palantir is still a tumor. We don't need people profiting off database joins, Oracle did that and became the most hated company on the planet. If the surveillance industry ends up resembling the other "rice bowl" military contractors, American taxpayers will suffer most. It will inevitably become a cost treadmill with infinite billable hours, Congress has seen this happen hundreds of times.
In truth, the rest of your arguement is fully correct. Palantir is often portrayed as the "hacking American businesses" group, but that's NSO. Palantir is merely buying out the data from morally-flexible telecoms and capricious cookie-laden websites. There is an uncomfortable truth about networked technology that America has swept under the rug for decades, and now we have entire businesses as a symptom of that failure. It's a sickening precedent for a free society.
I'd like to believe in a political solution to this. I've yet to see one, and the consequences of the Snowden leaks suggest we may never correct course here in America.
coldtea · 2h ago
>Tech is tech and can be used for both good and bad
It's not that simple, since tech also enables bad that was previously not possible.
ojbyrne · 2h ago
Just quibbling, but obviously tech also enables good that was previously not possible.
coldtea · 34m ago
Sure. And if that bad it enables is worse than the good it enables, then tech is not really that neutral.
themafia · 1h ago
> As a technology, it is just database joins
Which don't work out all that well in practice.
> on top to provide global visibility into any system.
Global visibility into the data. There's no guarantee your data and your performance match. We have so much data the quality of much of it is fairly low.
> Tech is tech and can be used for both good and bad.
You can also just lie about what you're doing and use it as a cover for violations of civil rights and federal law.
I mean, if it's just "database joins," then why is the government buying this from a vendor? Shouldn't they just be able to _do that_?
mgh2 · 2h ago
They are just a data company capitalizing on the AI hype - when the AI bubble pops, they will too.
When ChatGPT launched, Palantir's stock started climbing by selling its "AI platform".
I don’t think Palantir is going anywhere and preceded the AI hype train. I suspect they’re kind of an out-and-proud MAIN CORE successor. Disturbing, but the Cyber Punk genre has warned us about this for some time.
mingus88 · 2h ago
The palantir bubble will not pop as long as Thiel and his folk are embedded in USG. The stock took off when Trump/Vance came in and Vance is thiels pick
Their primary technology predates any AI hype by a decade at least, and their strength has always been in deploying great engineers.
I'm sorry, is Palantir a self-sustaining AI with zero human employees?
Or is it a corporation of people that is (I know, try to stifle the laughter) supposed to have at least some morality? I get it. Corporations haven't functioned as any institutional morality since their inception as a legal framework, despite the Supreme Court handing them immortal citizenship with effective privilege over any real citizen.
So far we have:
- masked paramilitary agents chasing down the lowest rungs of "at first they came for ..."
- deployed formal military to democratic cities for intimidation
- cowering, terrified tech CEOs embarrassingly kissing ass
- Threatened, capitulated universities, law firms, and fourth estate tv companies
- Massive amounts of purging of civilian institutions from any oversight
- Purging of military leadership based solely on blind loyalty to the president
- Massive fraud leading to multibillion dollar increase in Trumps wealth
- A supreme court that may as well have been disbanded that has handed unlimited privilege to Trump's executive branch
And waiting in the wings is Palantir-enabled TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS of the entire populace.
So back to Palantir, the absolved "just a tech firm" that has been providing turnkey authoritarian control to the US government for decades now. Of course it won't function as any bulwark against the coming storm.
Oh, I think I understand Palantir very well. Anyone that works there should know that you exist to set up totalitarianism. That is your function now. "Homeland defense" and all those weak USA PATRIOT act justifications and funding are now far in the rear view mirror.
Up ahead: Mount Totalitarianism.
Cloak yourself in doublespeak, Palantir.
I have likely marked myself for death.
Spooky23 · 3h ago
A: By acting in contempt of the law.
bobbane · 3h ago
Only partially. As long as the third-party doctrine is valid in the US, they can claim that they're just integrating data from private companies with existing government records.
And those third party companies can, if they choose, tell Palantir to pound sand if they don't have warrants.
The real problem is those third parties know a LOT about us, and it's essentially impossible to opt out of their data gathering. License plate scanners and credit bureaus, anyone?
coldtea · 2h ago
>And those third party companies can, if they choose, tell Palantir to pound sand if they don't have warrants.
And then those third party companies, if they're interesting enough to Palantic or those using Palantir, might get cancelled state contracts, or surprise tax audits, and other pressures... totally unrelated "of course"
user94wjwuid · 1h ago
Is palantir just a unifying api to google search history emails and Facebook messages and activities?
I’m guessing it’s a query, background job, data request to these traitorous citizen civil liberty betraying American companies, comes back unifies the data set then allows you to run a needle haystack search on it?
scottyah · 28m ago
Or like tableau- just connects a bunch of disparate databases that normally are very hard to connect and makes it easier to get relevant data. If every county has a different format for storing data on streetlight purchases, but there has been a code update on what makes them safe palantir tries to make it so one person can search for how many and where streetlights need to be replaced without calling up every county and writing custom scripts to parse 100s of DBMS's.
I know this example is less exciting than spying on everyone but despite how they try to hype it up it's a lot more realistic use case.
downrightmike · 1h ago
The suck up everything. Probably also got all the gov't restricted data from DOGE. The gov't does store vast amounts of encrypted comms to decrypt later in secret datacenters. And then there's prism. They are afraid of normal people, its McCarthy hunting Reds while high on coke raised to the next power
greenie_beans · 1h ago
evil company ran by an evil man
0points · 3h ago
One of the most elusive big companies today, imo.
The CEO was present on the most recent Bilderberg meeting.
AIorNot · 3h ago
I mean look at the name of the company for pete's sake: Palantir? Sauron indeed..so much of the valley is enabling the surveillance state at all levels of society.
Silicon valley was supposed to do no evil, no wonder this generation hates tech bros
anthem2025 · 2h ago
lol, Silicon Valley has always been evil.
hn_acc1 · 4m ago
For certain values of "always". I feel many of the original tech startups were genuinely interested in research, pushing limits, etc. Intel/AMD weren't "evil" as far as I can tell - nor the EDA infrastructure.
The social media era (Fbook) is when it started feeling like "majority of new companies are evil". Of course, if Palantir is Sauron, Oracle is Morgoth..
LastTrain · 2h ago
/Almost/ always
coldtea · 2h ago
I'll give you Xerox.
The rest ...
themafia · 1h ago
Silicon valley is a place.
Government contracting is an activity.
The two should be very far apart and yet somehow they're joined at the hip.
Government contracting is the only reason silicon valley exists. It'd just be another valley.
reilly3000 · 1h ago
I for one support our frontline data warriors. They are doing God’s work. Please don’t send a kill drone after me. I was drunk when I said the other stuff, not thinking correctly. It will never happen again.
yesbut · 4h ago
What a garbage company pushing this precrime crap. No thanks.
sporkxrocket · 2h ago
Worth watching the interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp where he's confronted about their role in the genocide of Palestinians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mhNLTy5pbQ
thegainz · 2h ago
Ew, even his response is so gross. Blames Palestinians for their own genocide and casually dehumanizes the protestor.
ChrisArchitect · 3h ago
Techdirt was a repost of a The Conversation article from August.
Very cool how we’re letting a private company become the modern day SS. Especially hilarious when the dude in charge literally grew up in an ex-Nazi stronghold in Namibia.
Should be an absolute red mark to have this company or any affiliated with it in your CV. Absolutely anti-societal.
Xmd5a · 2h ago
>Should be an absolute red mark to have this company or any affiliated with it in your CV. Absolutely anti-societal.
The seeds of the surveillance apparatus are already present in what you prescribe.
As a technology, it is just database joins. It is just that they are able to pull in data from everything from S3 to SAP to ArcGIS, and provide analytics, visualization etc. on top to provide global visibility into any system.
The visibility can be "show me all illegal immigrant clusters" or "show me bottlenecks and cost sinks in CAHSR construction".
When we offload the moral impetus for society from politics to technology, we also squander control. Tech is tech and can be used for both good and bad. It is not that a strategy that aims to cap downsides by preventing the proliferation of technology is inherently bad, but it is doomed to fail. The evidence for dysfunction is not the existence of Palantir but in the failure of the watchdog layer of society (also called the government).
No doubt Deloitte or any other contractor shop would be able to do the same thing - but they don’t choose to.
The power shouldn't be solidified in a few hands period.
I'm sorry but I absolutely disagree that the reason say Deloitte is leaving a few hundred billion dollars on the table is the presence of a moral compass.
> And so its important for us to understand how they can be weaponized and to consider the social cost of that weaponization.
To be clear, I absolutely agree. Plenty of tech is double-edged. And Palantir very much so.
Let me restate my point. Palantir (or that class of tech products) is powerful at enabling visibility over a complex system. But visibility is not decisions, it is an input to decisions. If you had real-time telemetry from every single stomach, you could maybe automatically dispatch drones with food wherever someone is starving. Or you could use the data as a high-frequency indicator for a successful invasion. Morality is downstream of decisions not data.
"oh it's just database joins" is about like me ripping your arms off and describing it as "chemical reactions"
https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/services/enhance/skywise-data...
They have a thriving commercial business outside of their government work. (Disclaimer: long PLTR)
This argument is both inconsistent and counterproductive.
Inconsistent as in, the harm to me from having my arms being ripped off comes from you deciding to effect the intent to harm me. No photograph or x-ray of my arms can produce the intent of wanting to harm me.
Counterproductive as in, the "good vs bad" framing is pointless because it does not help with solutions. If your solution is to ban joins, you will have a hard time gaining traction for your cause. Strategic advocacy requires understanding axes along which you may be able to produce a coherent argument and gain leverage. "Ban joins" does not help.
In truth, the rest of your arguement is fully correct. Palantir is often portrayed as the "hacking American businesses" group, but that's NSO. Palantir is merely buying out the data from morally-flexible telecoms and capricious cookie-laden websites. There is an uncomfortable truth about networked technology that America has swept under the rug for decades, and now we have entire businesses as a symptom of that failure. It's a sickening precedent for a free society.
I'd like to believe in a political solution to this. I've yet to see one, and the consequences of the Snowden leaks suggest we may never correct course here in America.
It's not that simple, since tech also enables bad that was previously not possible.
Which don't work out all that well in practice.
> on top to provide global visibility into any system.
Global visibility into the data. There's no guarantee your data and your performance match. We have so much data the quality of much of it is fairly low.
> Tech is tech and can be used for both good and bad.
You can also just lie about what you're doing and use it as a cover for violations of civil rights and federal law.
I mean, if it's just "database joins," then why is the government buying this from a vendor? Shouldn't they just be able to _do that_?
When ChatGPT launched, Palantir's stock started climbing by selling its "AI platform".
The cycle follows a marketing funnel: AIDA - awareness, interest, decision, action. https://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/offe...
FUD: Awareness and interest (AI) - at the initial stages, doomer marketing by big tech to government about its dangers and regulations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
FOMO: Decision and action (DA) - After selling, it is all about investing in infrastructure and adopting the technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
Sentiment shift: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870777
Their primary technology predates any AI hype by a decade at least, and their strength has always been in deploying great engineers.
Or is it a corporation of people that is (I know, try to stifle the laughter) supposed to have at least some morality? I get it. Corporations haven't functioned as any institutional morality since their inception as a legal framework, despite the Supreme Court handing them immortal citizenship with effective privilege over any real citizen.
So far we have:
- masked paramilitary agents chasing down the lowest rungs of "at first they came for ..."
- deployed formal military to democratic cities for intimidation
- cowering, terrified tech CEOs embarrassingly kissing ass
- Threatened, capitulated universities, law firms, and fourth estate tv companies
- Massive amounts of purging of civilian institutions from any oversight
- Purging of military leadership based solely on blind loyalty to the president
- Massive fraud leading to multibillion dollar increase in Trumps wealth
- A supreme court that may as well have been disbanded that has handed unlimited privilege to Trump's executive branch
And waiting in the wings is Palantir-enabled TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS of the entire populace.
So back to Palantir, the absolved "just a tech firm" that has been providing turnkey authoritarian control to the US government for decades now. Of course it won't function as any bulwark against the coming storm.
Oh, I think I understand Palantir very well. Anyone that works there should know that you exist to set up totalitarianism. That is your function now. "Homeland defense" and all those weak USA PATRIOT act justifications and funding are now far in the rear view mirror.
Up ahead: Mount Totalitarianism.
Cloak yourself in doublespeak, Palantir.
I have likely marked myself for death.
And those third party companies can, if they choose, tell Palantir to pound sand if they don't have warrants.
The real problem is those third parties know a LOT about us, and it's essentially impossible to opt out of their data gathering. License plate scanners and credit bureaus, anyone?
And then those third party companies, if they're interesting enough to Palantic or those using Palantir, might get cancelled state contracts, or surprise tax audits, and other pressures... totally unrelated "of course"
I know this example is less exciting than spying on everyone but despite how they try to hype it up it's a lot more realistic use case.
The CEO was present on the most recent Bilderberg meeting.
Silicon valley was supposed to do no evil, no wonder this generation hates tech bros
The social media era (Fbook) is when it started feeling like "majority of new companies are evil". Of course, if Palantir is Sauron, Oracle is Morgoth..
The rest ...
Government contracting is an activity.
The two should be very far apart and yet somehow they're joined at the hip.
In large part, government contracting is what created Silicon Valley. https://steveblank.substack.com/p/if-i-told-you-id-have-to-k...
Some more discussion on a related story then:
What does Palantir actually do?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44894910
Thanks, redirected from https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/11/how-palantir-is-mapping-...
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Should be an absolute red mark to have this company or any affiliated with it in your CV. Absolutely anti-societal.
The seeds of the surveillance apparatus are already present in what you prescribe.
No comments yet