Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
cnbc.com
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This guy has a very different definition of "selling out America"
I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days.
Of course, he was independent and so had to rely on the publicly available twitter searches, where the expectation is that tweets are public. The good - and terrible - things that could be done with access to what people expect to be private is a far more challenging prospect to justify.
And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors.
So if we're talking about using these things for national security, that's one thing in the minds of the critics. (The reasonable critics anyway.) But if we're talking about giving it to every joe blow cop on the street, people are going to be, understandably, uncomfortable. Why? Because I always say, there are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations in this nation. There really is no way a regular person can guarantee that they are in compliance with every one of them at all times. So if we're going to, sort of, "automate" the discovery of which crime any given citizen is committing, people can kind of see where that might lead to a dark, dark place.
Or, long story short, most people, quite reasonably, believe that tech like this deployed against street level pot dealers will eventually be used against themselves. With all of the societal implications that entails.
Like any tool, it's not inherently good or bad. That means that we should give it extra scrutiny, because the more powerful it is, the more prone to abuse it could be.
PowerPoint actually did come into play - its how he presented his analysis to clients who hired him directly tather than buy access to the tool itself.
No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!
The far more interesting and valuable debate to my mind is the extent to which we, the civilian government, should enable the policing and military powers to use the tools, and at what cost to ourselves.
Beyond that, for the debate you want to have (a good one I think) all parties need more information. I can’t judge the efficacy of a system without dats on its past. Maybe the inherent asymmetry in information between TLA’s and the public makes this impossible in all cases, but not to the extent we currently live with.
It's a bit of a catch-22. Discussing the effectiveness of one strategy versus another could easily lead to bad actors changing their communication strategies to avoid what is currently effective. It is, in that regard, not much different than the reason why we don't compare the effectiveness of various secret agents and spies and their techniques in public forums; if we know, so too do others. The very effectiveness relies, in part, in not being part of public knowledge.
Finally, I think one point (perhaps the most important in this regard) that you didn't address is that these tools aren't necessarily allowing anyone to do anything new, assuming they had the data in the first place. They've taken what intel analysts were previously doing by hand for many years and automating gathering the data and generating views into it. Both of those save a significant amount of time, but I have yet to see a system that generates something that a human:
a) didn't need to verify first by inspecting the source data to confirm, and
b) couldn't have come up with given time to do the job by hand
The products themselves are only novel in their packaging. The amount of analyses that can be performed has also increased due to the broader array of data that can be ingested, but again, that in itself is only a matter of scale, not novelty.
Has Silicon Valley ever had a particular history of delivering "national security". I would say more than jobs or national security SV has delivered free or cheaper consumer-facing products, which is the real value the entire country has seen.
But I'm guessing your question is asking whether or not these products have resulted in "national security". Does having more fighter jets or satellites make us safer? Traditionally, yes. However in the 21st century, I think we need to focus more on robust systems of communication while building bridges with the rest of the world.
As for being anti-American, I guess it depends on which America. Is it the one that professes the values of democracy and progress, leads in sciences and exploration, welcomes everyone with open arms ? I love that America. Or is it the America of wealth inequality, foreign wars, and global geopolitics. Not a fan of that America.
How willing is the average russian citizen to do so, given its government stance? The chinese one? The iranian one?
It's nice to have those sentiments when you can afford to have them. How are SV companies going to force that to happen in the aforementioned, and other countries?
Until we're ready to speak as equals, si vis pacem, para bellum. Without actually getting into conflicts, the US should be ready to win them all. Thinking otherwise is naively dangerous. And the late position of some SV firms and their employees is borderline 5th columnist.
"Nationalism" as a term is murkier, because it not only encompasses patriotism but also isolationism, xenophobia, monoculture enforcement and so on. Over here in the UK it even includes Celtic nations' citizens' individual desires for independence from England.
Firstly, uncritical love of one's country is not patriotism. Its blind hero worship.
Secondly, the USA has always been based on a blend anti-authority ideology, theology and trade imperialism(expansionism to the west coast <1860 the continent <1930 the world up to now)
The very reason your president is currently dicking about with a budget shutdown is born from anti-authoritarianism constitution. You have a boat load of guns is a logical consequence of anti-authoritarianism.
However through all of this, you still have a dysfunctional legislature and executive.
Budget of NASA is Tiny percentage of what we spend on WAR every year. Destroy elected governments, setup puppets, veto UN's majority decisions... Use automonus drones, use vaccination camps to recruit spies, kill doctors in war zone... It keeps going. List of atrocities grow every year sadly.
How do you feel when you learn there is a billionaire who has not paid any tax in years or corporations owe billions in taxes.
What about Verizon hijacking fcc?
Why are you calling this anti-american? If there is one American value, I would say it is rugged individualism. That's what drives the libertarians. And that's what drove the expansion into the west.
I can go on and on about the inventions spawned by defense funding. Silicon valley itself owes its existence to Northrop Grumman and their ilk, who were early tech employers seeding Intel, Xerox, HP, Apple, with crucial tech talent.
Today's tech aversion to defense agencies is one of the most paradoxical philosophies to ever exist. Instead of demanding more accountability from defense agencies, they outright refuse to sell/engage with the very people providing national security, and hence allowing a civilized society with a stable government to exist.
And it does seem like, in a large industry with many different kinds of jobs that need to be done, it's clearly not necessary for everyone to work in defense.
On the other hand, the funny thing about large companies is that they do many things, but by reputation they're treated as a single entity. So you get into a somewhat weird situation where people care what some distant part of the company does that has almost nothing to do with their work day-to-day.
I'm reminded of Paul Graham's classic essay, "Keep Your Identity Small" [1]. If you join a large company and identify with it, this is making your identity larger than it probably should be.
For better or worse, many employees of these companies feel responsible for things they have little control over. They feel good when the company does something good and bad when the company does something they don't like. So they decide the problem is that they need to have more control and this results in a rather problematic kind of company politics.
Also, companies have certain identities in certain time-windows. Apple was a computer company in the late 90s, by late 2000s it had already gone through 2 identities: a music player company, to primarily a phone company.
Employers cannot guarantee what work and markets they will and won't chase. Being a cloud infrastructure and AI company, it's predictable for Google to decide to go after one of the largest spenders in the space, defense.
We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings, sometimes working on weekends because we really though that Google is different.
Of course when 2008 happened, a lot of things changed, the optimism changed to being cautious and more frugal, which everybody understood.
Since then Google changed it's motto, but the code and the network effect stayed with it.
You weren't really doing Google a favor, they were paying you well above market for your work. The fact that your nationality is a point for you to highlight is indicative of your warped expectations. You chose to move to America, no one forced it on you. And you chose to work for Google. If America welcomed you, allowed you to freely express yourself and thrive professionally, WHY is liking America, or supporting the defense establishment that protects your civil liberties and safety, and creates a stable socio-political environment for YOU and million others who immigrate and live here, such a toxic thing?
America is the world's most sought after immigration destination for a reason, it's OK to acknowledge the positives, and like it for the same
US ,,defense'' department is killing a lot of people that have done nothing bad. It didn't kill people in my country (I'm lucky that my country joined the EU), but it could have.
I'm generally against killing people, but I understand that it's part of the power play governments are doing. Still, I don't want to help it.
About the pay: yes, you're right, they payed a lot. When I joined Google the first time in my life, I loved it so much, I would have worked for free, just to be able to read the design docs that weren't available back then, and learn from great people.
Switzerland, the country that made it possible for Nazis to store their wealth in numbered accounts, and still holds the largest reserve of illegal wealth of other nation's dictators and despots, that actively chooses to enable money laundering and refuses to take political sides because of danger of losing illegally stored wealth in numbered accounts to other tax havens!
Despite this seemingly evil characterization, if I were Swiss, I'd take GREAT pride in all the positives of Switzerland! Patriotism, in itself, isn't toxic! Also, reducing complex issues to single punch-line friendly lies, like America Defense == Evil, is futile. Watch how Switzerland can be reduced to Switzerland===Safe Haven For Nazi Gold! Which is false.
Tax heaven: as I see taxes as generally not that well used, I'm happy that Switzerland's goal is not just simply to maximize taxes that it take from other people.
It's trivial to go on a diatribe here about Swiss numbered accounts being bathed in the blood of innocents, on whose heads murderers, despots, dictators accrued the said wealth, now being actively protected by the Swiss government under the guise of privacy. But that would be a simplistic, inaccurate, and narrative driven approach. Your demonetization of American foreign policy is similarly simplistic, and demanding that Google not serve American defense, similarly silly.
All that is being requested here is consistency, not simplistic and inaccurate reduction-ism. It's disingenuous to reduce Switzerland to a singular identity of "murder enablers", as it is with America, or it's foreign policy
It's something of a luxury, but nonetheless, many people do work for more than a paycheck. Sometimes they want to be part of something larger than themselves. They believe in the mission.
When they go to work for the government, we call that patriotism. But companies encourage people to be mission-oriented as well. Google, in particular, encouraged this, particularly in the early days. Sure, they pay taxes, but their mission was not and still isn't about supporting America's military.
If you attract a bunch of idealists by talking up your company's mission, is it a surprise they take it seriously?
Maybe we should all be cynics and work solely for a paycheck. I'm not sure most Silicon Valley employers want to get by just hiring cynics, though.
Thiel is notoriously libertarian. He’s advocating for smaller and smaller government. Yet, the company he founded makes money by selling surveillance software to the government. Surveillance software that has some good use cases - in the fight against terrorism - but that inevitably empowers the government against its citizen.
Palantir can be used to track terrorist, but it can be used to find anything. Political agitators, for instance.
In the wrong hands, it’s a tool that is damaging to the American “social contract” these guys are so vehemently defending.
If anyone at Palantir reads this: get your story straight. Be libertarians or pro government. If your pro government, stop financing political parties that cut massive tax breaks.
I think most people believe that our government should be competent, if the FBI can identify a terrorist/school shooter before they murder people that saves lives.
Will these tools be used tyrannically? That’s up to our government, but luckily we get to elect them. If you want government agencies to change their mission or be reformed then get legislators elected who believe in this, don’t try to sabotage our government’s ability to do what it needs to do.
Hence you get libertarians who build the surveillance state. It’s the inevitable consequence of right libertarianism (they disregard economic power); left libertarianism avoids this by consistently refusing to get any real power.