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Comment by thesausageking | Hacker News Reader

Palantir built a lot of ICE's software systems. Among other things, when ICE was using children crossing the border to go after and arrest their family member, "the key place where that information was stored and communicated to be able to prosecute them was through the ICM and Palantir’s information sharing."[0]

I would encourage anyone to think twice about taking money from Gary or similar VCs who only care they lost out on $200m and not the many families that have been broken up and children imprisoned because of what their companies do.

[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/20/palantirs-controversi...

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Not everyone has the same views on business and morality. Morality is completely gray for almost everyone. I understand where you are coming from, but retroactively punishing people who are associated with a business who only recently (last 2 years) had bad publicity is why people are scared to actually have public opinions about anything. Even typing this comment will be misinterpreted in 30 years.

Palantir is in an untenable position to defend since it engages in government contracts. You could also roast Lockheed Martin and a huge list of others for similar things. Palantir is a personal example Garry can use to get a point across.

It’s not the bad publicity that’s the issue. It’s their helping the government put 7 year olds who have done nothing wrong into detention centers for months and lock up their parents when they come to claim them. Read the ACLU’s reports on this if you believe it’s just “bad publicity”:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-p...

Does everyone agree with this? Of course not. A large % of the US are encouraging these policies and want ICE to be even more aggressive. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what their ethics are.

What’s important is that founders ask these questions and understand who they’re taking money from.

Even if we assume you're right on all that, you're condemning him for not having known the future 10 years in advance, which is absurd.

Also, I think this point might be missed to some young people, once you work on drone software that kills people or ICE software that detains people, you cannot reverse your contributions.

That work will permanently be part of you and your career.

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