The CIA-backed startup that's taking over Palo Alto | Hacker News Reader

The CIA-backed startup that's taking over Palo Alto

cnbc.com

85 pointsadventured110 comments

Surprised no-one's mentioned wikileaks and the document leak [1] that exposed Palantir tendering to attack Assange's org on behalf of some bank.

  Combating this threat requires advanced subject matter
  expertise in cybersecurity, insider threats, counter
  cyber-fraud, targeting analysis, social media
  exploitation

  Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico
  Technologies represent deep domain knowledge in each
  of these areas

...

  Feed the fuel between the feuding groups. 

  Disinformation. Create messages around actions to
  sabotage or discredit the opposing organization.
  Submit fake documents and then call out the error.

  Create concern over the security of the
  infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the
  process is believed to not be secure they are done.

  Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data
  on document submitters. This would kill the project.
  Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting
  a team together to get access is more straightforward.

  Media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature
  of wikileaks activities. Sustained pressure. Does
  nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt
  amongst moderates.

  Search for leaks. Use social media to profile and
  identify risky behavior of employees.

This seems to show Palantir expertise extending beyond data filtering, and was a big enough deal at the time for Palantir to publicly apologise and iirc lose a member of staff.

1: https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf

Only the individuals working for Palantir can know how authoritarian, autocratic, or facist their actions are.

Based on what we know about the company, I have deep concerns regarding why they are paid so much by the US government, and the possibility that they are an ultimate harm to Liberty in the world.

I hope the technocrats in the machine can follow the example of Edward Snowden, if necessary, and have the courage to speak up if they are asked to perform unconstitutional acts as part of their employment activities.

Palantir is doing some of the coolest most innovative big data parsing that there is... unfortunately it's directly for the CIA and NSA and the technologies that they have made public are creeeeeeepy, so who knows what crazy stuff they're not telling the public about. I've looked into working for them but reports from the front line are that they have zero work-life balance and run employees into the ground with overwork.

If you find it "creeeeeeepy" what they do, why would you look into working there?

Perhaps they looked into working there before finding out the true nature of the work.

That was exactly it. It was a big flashy up and coming place to work in DC back in 2012-2013ish, so I poked around the careers page and was interested until I read all of the accounts on Glassdoor of how horrid working there was. Later I researched their technologies as part of a project I was working on for my employer, and came to learn of their involvement in the US Government's efforts to spy on everyone.

A while ago, I remember looking at the Palantir Glassdoor comments and being appalled. But now they've been whitewashed with a total flood of "5 stars". Curious whether there was an internal campaign to do so...

Update: and from GD itself, "actively asking employees to write positive Glassdoor reviews because reality has become too scathing for us to handle."

Good people working for bad companies have some small ability to change culture.

"Is this legal?", "Do I need a warrant to do this intercept?", "Is this compatible with our rules?", "What would our regulators say if they knew we did this?", "How will the oversight and scrutiny committee respond to this action?"

It's not much, but it's about as good as me from the outside writing a letter to my MP which is about all I can do.

EDIT: to expand on this a bit. Imagine you're a mathematician and that you have a neuro-diversity. In the past you may have struggled to get a job because employers sometimes discriminate against neuro-atypicality. GCHQ definitely does not do so - they mention in press releases they recognise the advantages of neuro-diversity. So one option would be something like the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research. As an employer Google gives you 20% time. Heilbronn gives you 50% time, 50% of the time you're doing work directed by GCHQ/CESG, the rest of the time you do what you like. That is potentially interesting maths with interesting people. The money at GCHQ isn't great compared to the SV bubble, but for the UK it's okay, and there other benefits.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/research/heilbronn/

http://web.maths.bris.ac.uk/research/heilbronn_institute/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11111584/...

A professor in college suggested to me that if good people don't work for defense companies, then only bad people will be working in defense companies.

With everything revealed in the Snowden leaks, it doesn't seem like the good people are having much of an impact.

I left the NSA a few months ago after working for them four years for that very reason. I realized nothing I did was going to affect what they were doing, and while I personally couldn't effect any change, I could at least leave and not contribute to it. So I did.

I just wanted to say that reading your comment was encouraging and made me happy.

Thanks for posting this.

Did you consider IAD or one of the defense contractors focused on highly-secure technology? Hell, even groups doing R&D funded by NSF or DARPA on secure systems work. There's a ton of stuff going on out there that either (a) benefits security of government/military or (b) could benefit everyone at some point.

I can understand if (a) didn't interest you but being ex-NSA might help with positions doing (b). Not sure how INFOSEC people would react given the climate, though. Wise ones should see a skill and character reference from getting and quiting the job respectively.

Thank you not only for posting this, but also for refusing to contribute.

I commend you for your decision.

At that point, why should there even be private defense companies? Why do we accept that weapons manufacturing is outside of democratic control and civilian restraint?

Interesting question. I have no idea one way or the other, I've never studied economics beyond 101. An exploration of that question might include why the US relied on private industry for WWII military needs, rather than building its own factories or taking over existing ones.

The US effectively commandeered private industry in WWII. They were compensated, but that was nothing like the current military weapons procurements system.

But they were still private. Under orders, just like individual citizens were under orders, with the draft and rationing. It was arguably an existential threat.

But the commandeered private industry was what the current MIC grew from. It wouldn't have happened without WWII.

It's not outside of civilian control and democratic restraint in the US. It's just an extremely convoluted route from that to the end product.

In fact, we'd probably get a better deal if there were less so. The amount of money wasted on politically-supported but infeasible/impractical systems is mind boggling.

This contains a hidden logical error. For example, no good people are working to simulate the original ENIAC at the vacuum tube level on the Apple watch.

But no bad people are working on it either.

That didn't work out so well for Edward Snowden.

> That didn't work out so well for Edward Snowden.

And that's the whole point of making a sacrifice. Not everything has to work out in your favor. If a man cannot sacrifice even his life and well being for a greater good, what type of person is he?

Why do we insist that good people must be punished for doing good? You should be supporting good works, not sacrifices

In a perfect world, that would be the way it works.

"Good people working for bad companies have some small ability to change culture."

Let me stop you right there. I see where you're going but I'm going to interject that the nature and incentives an organization matter a lot. Palantir, starting with founders & investors, is set up to provide as much data analysis capability as possible to as many as possible. It's especially going to do this for government given it's aiming at public sector contracts and has In-Q-Tel as an investor. I can't be sure but wouldn't be surprised if the latter prevents them from saying no to benefiting intelligence community.

All together, every aspect of how this business is set up will push corporate and government surveillance. Nobody or even a small group of them will change that. It's intrinsic to their business. So, anyone joining will be 99% contributing to that and maybe 1% making a difference... if they're lucky.

So, nature of an organization and whether it allows a given change should be considered first. Then, lines of reasoning like yours follow from there. Palantir looks worst than most in this respect.

good people joining bad companies can do nothing about it unless they are going to join as its ceo.

good people(those who have high morals) will never work for these kinda company on a matter of principle. some good people with slightly less moral either become complacent in this as the money is good n they will turn a blind eye as each day pass. some others will try to blow whistle n get crushed. the evil people end up running the place.

those who have the power to quickly change the attitude of system is the goddamn president

"good people joining bad companies can do nothing about it unless they are going to join as its ceo."

It's worse than that. Even CEO's answer to someone: the owners or the board. So, if those want evil course of action, even most CEOs' hands are going to be tied. The people with the greatest impact are probably the VC's given they can fund what they want to see happen. They can create a lot of good by funding things that are both marketable and positive for society.

Anyone below owner has no guarantee of doing anything out of the parameters of the company. It's the nature of capitalism and often business in general.

You are very right. VCs and defence sector with too much money. But ceo is not in a bad position. If ceo can find new market for the products, one which brings more profits and better prospects, VC and board will be onboard with it.

There's potential there. Just not when the market is inherently leaning toward sneaky usages like Big Data mining.

The VCs also answer to someone. They answer to their investors and limited partners. Those guys usually want monetary return on investment, except in special cases for unique funds. The only people who have nobody to answer to are the billionaires. Some of them do good like Bill Gates. Some don't.

Good point. I overlooked it when writing the comment. So, much more inertia and incentives to fight than people realize.

I totally agree. When a company is pursuing dysfunctional negative goals there's very little chance to drive change. When you're outside the company you can ask politicians if this company is being regulated effectively; if you're inside the company you can ask if you're operating in compliance with what little regulation the company has. Either way there's not much anyone can do, and so boycotting such companies is a valid thing to do.

Exactly my question - can't believe you are being downvoted. Says something about the mindset of tech.

These guys are the bad guys. The idea that people can "change the culture" is at best naive.

Probably because of the first part ("...doing some of the coolest most innovative big data parsing that there is"). "Creeeeeepy" companies tend to offer good pay to do cool work with smart people. Something that hits 3/4 targets can be tempting (pay, work, people, values).

I interviewed there when I was almost out of college and during the lunch interview, I asked, "So, what's the work life balance look like around here? I have hobbies I'd like to keep". The guy answered, "Well, I usually work about 70 hours a week. I only have ten good hours of work a day in me". It's possible I messed up the technical interview, but I'm sure the look on my face right then played into the rejection.

If people work 70hr/week in a data parsing company - I suspect they parse the data manually... :)

Hand-crafted, artisanal data.

But is it free range, fair trade, organic data?

I'd like to meet this data farmer in person. Can you arrange this?

data farmer is probably adding "data farmer" to dictionary

He had to sell the server farm after "Big Data" put him out of business...

server farm to table

It is not locally produced...

Not manually, but at least in the early days I got the feeling (from sitting through one of their presentations in college) there was a lot of hand optimization for specific clients.

But it's enterprise, so not unexpected. Enterprise contracts love to see "people working". Who cares if smarter software could eliminate most of that -- they want to see the people they bought.

good idea to treat people working for such establishments the same way as you would treat somebody doing business with the SS during WWII. Namely put them on a list and don't give them a job. Because this is exactly what they deserve.

Extreme? Then maybe consider that these guys develop systems that lets you identify targets (such as fun-sized terrorists) that can be killed by drones by a cowardly operator in the US. Fuck them. And yes I don't care about your downvotes.

I don't like the reality of USA using drones for bombing/killing in territories that is not a US territory, unless USA has an actively declared war against the said country.

War on terrorists and war on drugs are achieving a whole new level with each day passing. The reality is, these actions using drones are only creating more terrorists. Its a rabbit hole and the earlier USA realize and corrects it, the better for them. No amount of surveillance is going to help it.

>The reality is, these actions using drones are only creating more terrorists.

The odd thing about any organization that seeks to destroy some ill is that it will eventually become aware that in doing so it will destroy itself. I haven't enough faith to believe such organizations are above falling to such a perverse incentive.

At this point I am even scared of posting something against CIA, Palantir and NSA on public forums. Yeah, and Snowden like possibilities are 0 now, they probably track every single employee and the person might just disappear or come under a bus if he does something his bosses dont like.

I might be old fashioned but Mulder in X-files does not seem like a fantasy anymore.

Irrespective of their work it's really not cool that they are taking over the downtown real estate instead of moving to a campus.. changes the character of the area that has traditionally felt like an incubator. They've broken with local tradition.

Is just startups being disrupted... They'll find a way (my small company is considering moving somewhere else to cope with this).

Yeah, I find this particularly odd given Palantir's founders... You'd think they would care more about maintaining the current pathos of Palo Alto. Then again, I found out recently that Thiel is a financial supporter of Ted Cruz, so there are always surprises in store.

pa·thos - noun, a quality that evokes pity or sadness.

Very true, I meant it in the sense of ethos/logos/pathos -- an appeal to emotion. You're right though, there are more accurate words.

Palantir sells tools to tyrants. Why would they care about preserving their local community?

I mean really, this sounds like "Get off my lawn!"

After all what we learned about how the CIA operates: How can you as an engineer/any other staff, work or want to work there?

This is a genuine question - I really would like to learn more about why someone is OK working at a company with such an investor.

Money and prestige on a resume, plus the ability to work with really innovative technologies and projects. Plus, at least in DC, morality doesn't come into play for a lot of people when choosing who to work for because there are so many government contractors here that if morality came into it you'd automatically cull 60% [edit- 54.7%, see my comment downthread] of employers off your list.

60%? wow. people really don't put a high price on themselves.

Let me have a turn at randomly pulling a statistic deep out of a recess in my rectal cavity.

99% of statistics are made up and 60% of the time they are accurate everytime.

You're right, that was a made-up statistic that I guessed on the spot.

Government-financed jobs (private and public sector jobs financed directly by the government) make up 27.3% of employers in DC, 29.8% of employers in Virginia, and 15.9% of employers in Maryland[1]. Federal job share (how many jobs are working directly for the government) in DC is 27.4%, in Virginia it's 4.6%, and in Maryland it's 5.5%[2].

So if you live in DC 54.7% of employers are either the federal government itself or working for an employer that is financed directly by the government. I apologize for the rounding error in my made-up statistic earlier.

[1]http://mercatus.org/publication/government-financed-employme... [2]http://www.governing.com/gov-data/federal-employees-workforc...

And you are claiming that of the 54.7% government financed jobs, ALL have questionable morality. So Health and Human Services, Department of Ed., etc have the same morality check as working for the DoD?

That is surely what you attempted to portray with the original comment. That if you want to check the morality at the door you can't work in ANY government financed occupation in the DC region.

Having worked for a government consulting firm in DC, there was a line of business that received funding for social research projects to help inform and ultimately guide government initiatives to improve the welfare and education of certain demographics. This company would be included in your statistic, and there is no moral check needed for that work. While this is anecdotal, it's pretty obvious that a blanket statistic like yours cannot hold up.

Would you want to hire somebody who has worked at a company like that? I know a lot of people won't care but still.

https://www.iqt.org/portfolio/ (CIA's investment arm)

Also whats wrong with the CIA?

It's torture program, isn't that enough?

A lot of people are probably okay with the US having an organization that murders and tortures people, sabotages other sovereign nations' interests, and helps US corporations compete globally through espionage; but not one that does so much of it as the CIA. An organization like that needs to be neither seen nor heard, and it ought to be used infrequently enough that our country can ostensibly say that we only do those kinds when we have to.

To turn your question on its head, what's not wrong with them? It's not controversial at all that there are many people who don't wish to work in the defense side of aerospace, or on other weapons tech, why would it be controversial that someone wouldn't want to work in intelligence. Some people take professional codes of ethics (or their own personal ethics) more seriously than others.

Yeah but this is like 3rd degree the CIA also has invested in Facebook. The DOD is the largest provider of grants in the academia. And at the end various arms (quite often defense related) of the US public sectors are quite often one of the biggest investors and drivers behind new technologies. The valley could not exist without the USG and specifically without DOD money.

While I completely understand people that say would not like to work on the next generation of guided missiles, one would be hard pressed to find job in the tech sector that is not partially funded by the more militant parts of the US government, and if they completed STEM studies in the US more likely than not that some of their grants and scholarships were funded by the DOD directly.

I was always amused by the imprimatur of the Office of Naval Research on the Lambda the Ultimate papers.

>A lot of people are probably okay with the US having an organization that murders and tortures people

Though it's presented as a trade off, torture isn't just bad from an ethical perspective, it's bad from a technical perspective.

If you know what they do in your name outside this country, I'm not so sure you'll be asking that question.

It's really not pretty.

It's essentially an uncontrolled extension of the US government which practices torture [1], murder [2], and sells drugs .

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniq... [2] http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/18244-we-kil... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

I might normally oppose these agencies but In-Q-Tel is the shit. It was a brilliant move by the CIA to balance the needs of developing specialist tech they needed and gaining advantages of COTS products. So, they noticed that many of their needs are similar to commercial needs that companies shell out of. So, they create a venture capital company that funds potentially great work in all those areas with dual-use configurations. Rather than backwards tech at a loss, they have all kinds of cutting-edge and useful stuff that gains money.

More agencies should consider this model or variations of it. More governments, too. Aligns the incentives right so the market, at least chosen players, will do what you need done. Plus, they built a lot of cool tech this way.

Toppling democratically elected governments is generally considered a dick move.

I have more than enough friends, even good friends, working for them. The answer is they are not political at all, the problems company working on appeal to them, and the pay is unmatched.

> and the pay is unmatched.

Agreed, the cost of living is high in DC and these contractors are the only game in town who are going pay a person big bucks to create poorly written HTML.

On a less sarcastic note, an average developer working for a gov contractor can receive a high salary which affords a very nice lifestyle in the DC area while still allowing them to save for retirement. This is something that is much more difficult to achieve or even impossible in the private sector. It's not surprising why defense contractors can attract fresh employees.

The caveat is you have to survive the bureaucracy, which is probably unmatched elsewhere.

Just a month ago I visited DC and a contractor asked for help on some of his code...the JSP was quite cringeworthy, and I was amazed the contractor could not figure out what was a simple CSS issue. Even though I had lived in DC for about 4 years and started my development career there, it had finally clicked how old technology was in the government, along with the methods of development (I had never done any development for the government, although I've been on the receiving end of some very bad bugs on software created by contractors).

> the JSP was quite cringeworthy

not as cringeworthy as the fact that people are still using JSP. TIL

JSP is simple, functional, and has already survived longer than most trendy JS and Ruby frameworks ever will.

They may not be political but do the issues the parent is referring to concern them at all?

Many people are apolitical. They simply have no idea what is going on around them.

Many other people believe that what they do is good for the country.

And a small handful want to affect change from within.

>> they are not political at all

They are just following orders. Nothing wrong with that. Since 1939...

Yeah, it's just like working for the Nazis.

>Yeah, it's just like working for the Nazis.

You do realize that at one point "working for the Nazis" wasn't really a bad thing. Over time, it became one.

You can draw other comparisons, besides body count. If you don't see parallels regarding people saying, "I don't care about the affect my work has on people around the globe, as long as I get paid" I don't know what to say.

It was definitely a "bad thing" in 1939. You do realize that concentration camps had been up and running since 1933, right? So yeah, working for the CIA is just like working for a party that was exterminating millions in camps.

If you don't understand how that type of hyperbole poisons discussions, I don't know what to say.

> You do realize that concentration camps had been up and running since 1933, right?

You realize the camps were not exterminating people until after the Wannsee Conference in January of 1942, right? That isn't to say the Nazis weren't murdering people before then, but mass murders didn't start until the war started and were generally committed by the Einsatzkommando units in the field. As for the racial policies of the Nazi Party, there was a disturbing amount of support for them outside of Germany prior to the war.

Still, Nazi metaphors are almost always an unnecessary hyperbole.

>The answer is they are not political at all

Choosing to work for a company that develops software utilized in domestic spying is a political act itself.

Not necessarily. It could be merely a pragmatic act that has political consequences. The same individual could then sabotage the company's operations, sell them out to a competitor, hold a parallel job in a more effective institution fighting surveillance, and so on. The politics of it can be separate from taking the job simply for money, challenge, whatever.

Many people don't care about politics. They just want what's best for them personally and often in short-term. Although, working for defense contractors is usually a good long-term bet for such people too.

Maybe he's the CIA type, believes in what they do and considers working for them a badge of honor. There are many, many, many people just like that.

You might as well be asking why people join the mob or why some women love mobsters.

This may surprise you but many people view the CIA/NSA/FBI as flawed government agencies that still do very important and necessary work.

It may shock you, but, most people are fairly limited in terms of job options; this is especially true if they got their degree in a less relevant field (speaking as an electrical engineer by education). Maybe you're fine with being homeless and unemployed for some concept of ~values~ but Im not. I'm quite confident most people when given the choice of 'work for a morally questionable company vs be unemployed' will choose the former. Especially if the company in question is doing interesting work.

Ask the people who work at Google and Facebook.

The problems seem really interesting. I'd work for them in a heartbeat.

Some people just don't care about what the ends are used for. But more importantly, just because some of their stuff may be used for Big Evil™, most of it may also be used for good.

Government as customer and near monopoly means you dont have to worry so much about job security.

Hold on a second

> 10 to 15 percent of the commercial inventory

That doesn't exactly qualify as "taking over". A little uncool and red-statey perhaps, but hardly a crisis.

That is office space scattered around downtown Palo Alto that once hosted a large variety of small startups. Now those little startups are moving to Redwood City or San Mateo, replaced by opaque gray locked doors without signage.

It has gotten so bad that Palo Alto enacted an ordinance to ban the conversion of downtown retail space into office space. It is nicknamed the "Palantir Ordinance."

http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/477...

You're conflating two separate issues. Most people would agree downtown Palo Alto needs to keep retail space to retain its character. And they should fix that with proper zoning.

But that's between Palo Alto and the landlords.

Its not a startup if it is this big

Yup, I'm pretty sure we are all aware. Started 9 years ago, 1800 employees and $1.5B in revenue and occupies about 10% - 15% of available real estate in the area. What universe of skewed reality is this?

The noisy video playing banner thing which sticks to the top of your screen in that article is really off-putting/distracting

I can't believe that the companies still haven't figured out that autoplaying things is just plain wrong.

The collection rate for these sort of ads is much higher than something like a banner ad, for instance. So they might know it negatively effects the experience, but they must consider the payoff worth it.

Bloody clickbait headlines!

I have one of those "Save the Shire" t-shirts, but I don't live in Palo Alto. :P

There's quite a mixed message there: the original palantir was under Sauron's control, and the shire was to be saved from the wielder of the panopticon..

The palantíri were created by Elves and only much later captured by Sauron and used for evil.

Possibly quite an appropriate name then... :-|

I can appreciate how self-aware their name is.

Definitely appropriate and completely disingenuous is the 'Save the shire' shirts. Should be more like 'Advancing Mordor'.

I really wanted one of those when I lived in Palo Alto so I could get the Palantir discount at Philz...

almost certain the Palantir is funding the Clinton SuperPAC..

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