Palantir’s accelerated security clearance plan for students | Hacker News Reader

Palantir’s accelerated security clearance plan for students

steveblank.com

47 pointssblank51 comments

Getting a security clearance comes with liability and potential downside that doesn't exist in the private sector. Some examples:

* Restrictions and reporting requirements around international travel and contact with foreign nationals

* Restrictions on discussing work with friends and family

* Prohibition on cannabis use

* Prohibition on reading publicly leaked secret documents (from the Snowden days: https://web.archive.org/web/20211120154017/https://sgp.fas.o...)

Interns-to-be should consider carefully whether this lasting infringement on personal liberty is worth any upside of employment at a defense contractor for 3 months.

I believe the only lasting restriction is speaking about the work due to an NDA, which is not that different than NDA restrictions on speaking about private sector trade secrets and intellectual property. The other restrictions only last if seeking to maintain the clearance or employed in a position that requires a clearance. Clearances expire except for the NDA.

These NDAs are backed with extremely onerous jail sentences, which is IMO a meaningful distinction vs. other types of NDAs.

Beyond that, all your paperwork to get that clearance is in the government’s hands now. In my case that included a full SF-86 and fingerprints, which the government would otherwise not have from me. So it’s IMO accurate to describe the consequences as “lifelong”.

Truth be told, having left that line of work long ago, it bothers me these pieces of info about me are out there somewhere in Uncle Sam’s possession.

Note that there are different clearances with different restrictions and obligations. Lower level clearances are not much different than standard background checks to obtain an HSPF-12 credential (US Gov ID badge) while higher level clearances may require periodic polygraph tests and other additional restrictions.

https://www.commerce.gov/osy/programs/credentialing/hspd-12-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance

> Interns-to-be should consider carefully

The fictional on-off-boarding of TV series "Burn Notice" (2007-2013), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_Notice & https://burn-notice.djmed.net

If pot was regulated similarly to tobacco the amount of talent that can adhere to the rest of that would be exponential imo.

We're waiting for a change in the posture against cannabis at the Federal level [1], but it has been possible to get a security clearance even if you have used marijuana. Looking at the public guidelines [2] there's a distinction between "ever" and "in the last 90 days".

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/471...

[2] https://news.clearancejobs.com/2024/03/14/marijuana-use-and-...

Yes the Feds are really hamstrung by weed being a schedule 1 substance. It’s asinine

Especially, if as the article claims, they want to clear college students.

When I went through this, the guidance was that pot usage was ok as long as it was in the past and not chronic usage. Just say you haven’t been near it in years, but yes you did it. They’re going to interview everyone you’ve ever known that they can find, so just don’t lie about it.

How many college students can claim this? Weed is everywhere now.

Fact is, it’s schedule 1. If you are willing to break this law, what other very serious crimes are you willing to commit?

And if Palantir refused to hire software devs who have smoked weed, that would disqualify 80% of the talent pool in Silicon Valley.

The overwhelming public support for marijuana is the main marker to consider when psychoanalyzing why someone is willing to break one law but maybe/maybe-not others.

The dominant perception among tech talent is the law hasn’t kept up with the times.

Drawing conclusions about one’s choice to use or try marijuana is perceived as unacceptable cultural behavior that is not currently within the modern scope of what we could refer to as "Overton’s window".

I’m a little odd. I reply to my own messages occasionally and that could suggest I’m unhinged.

However, like many others here, I’m authentic in disclosing this awareness of perception and not deterred from doing it simply because it is not normal.

In a world where outliers are red flags, everyone is dripping in sweat to be perceived as not only normal but qualified. That’s enough to send electro-dermal activity through the roof imo.

A truly authentic person should be able to sit in that chair and comfortably tell the hard truth.

That should be the real test.

I think this submission title should be modified to:

> Palantir’s accelerated security clearance plan for students

This addresses several issues with the headline as presented:

- It’s capitalized appropriately for HN.

- It clearly states that this is about students only, reducing the scope of the effort from the unstated framing: “all workers”.

- It reflects the single-company focus of Palantir in the article, improving HN submission search results for that company.

- It reuses the exact wording of the most key heading in the article with only two words added: “for students”.

The original title’s capitalization was correct. In fact, AP, Chicago and Wikipedia styles all suggest exactly the capitalization the author used.

AP capitalization style is not HN capitalization style. For example, HN mods will turn NASA into Nasa, which is anathema to AP style (and to me). You could email them if you have questions about it, as I’m not a mod, just a user.

I suspect that would be a waste of time for me to email them, but thanks for sharing.

Ok, let's give that a try. Thanks!

Yeah, this is a much more accurate title than Security Clearances at the Speed of Startups.

I think you need to email dang <hn@ycombinator.com> to see if he'll agree to update.

Daniel Ellsberg giving advice to Henry Kissinger about security clearances, in 1968, from his book "Secrets", https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsbe...

> You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.

Full quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364006

HN ranking history for this thread: https://hnrankings.info/41238823

Having done startups in the national security space (and had to deal with clearances) -- it's a bad system from both directions -- overly onerous compliance for good people AND ineffective at addressing modern security risks. It made sense in the 1950s as a way to protect large development and operational programs with long tenure employment against penetration by an external adversary (USSR), and to a limited extent, ideological or financially motivated defectors. It doesn't work as well today where someone can become "radicalized" online, foreign/international contacts are routine, etc.

Just being a citizenship bar, even if it did nothing else, really complicates hiring in tech -- what you often end up doing is having as much work as possible done uncleared/commercially and then thrown over the wall to cleared people who can implement it with the client. Works well in infosec with mostly systems integrated with commercial stuff; doesn't work with jet engines or missiles as well

Clearances being handed out like relative candy to 18-28 year olds in the military (so, for someone like Manning, approximately zero information responsive to requests (as minor records excluded, and the 7-10 year lookback isn't relevant when you have far fewer adult years), extreme reluctance to suspend or revoke a clearance when granted), and ineffective reporting of incidents.

The hassle of holding a clearance to some extent depends on the issuing agency/level (DOD Secret is relatively non-hassle; law enforcement ones are more lifestyle focused on paper at lower levels; substantial travel restrictions for levels/programs come in above Secret too).

There is also the difference between official restrictions and reality -- given OPM hack and general government incompetence, it's safe to assume your info becomes public or at least known to adversaries, so even after a clearance expires, it would probably be unwise to travel to some countries for a much longer period. Also exposes your family/other contacts to hassle from both USG investigators and potential foreign adversaries.

I think that a better strategy is to make the work that requires a clearance as "small" as possible. Consider two contractors:

Contractor A does everything in a closed area. All software is written, built, and tested on classified information systems. In this situation, it is impractical to move anything out, regardless if the software is actually classified. It's easy to move things back and forth between the developer's machines and the (necessarily) classified test/production system, but now you have the problem from TFA: you can only hire cleared employees or you eat the cost of them doing nothing useful for ~1 year.

Contractor B has arranged things so that the work that has to be done in a closed area is only on the specific information that _must_ be classified as described in the security classification guide for that program. Depending on the program this could be a small software library or even a configuration file. Interns and first-year employees can work on the majority of the system with dummy/stub libraries and fake data, then hand their work over to cleared employees for further testing in the closed area (if that is even necessary for the work at hand). It is not very hard to move software from an unclassified to a classified area. It is harder to move test results from a classified to an unclassified area. A description of what happened when an unclassified piece of software runs in a classified environment _can_ be sanitized and still leave all information necessary to continue work outside. Aside from the situation described in TFA, this also reduces the "it is miserable working in the SCIF" retention problem.

It requires work to arrange things in this way, but not much more work if the software is written using best practices. Maybe this strategy only applies to software development. There are other professions out there I've heard. :)

Not sure why this article (or Palantir) is trying to paint this as a new thing. I started at a legacy defense contractor immediately after graduating from undergrad. I was hired and had my security clearance process initiated during the fall of my senior year. Unfortunately this was during the great backup of ~2016 so I still wasn't cleared by the time I started, but they still had unclassified work I could do.

This was also the case for several of my college classmates and I graduated in the late 2000's.

I would be curious why Steve Blank (who's pretty sharp otherwise) and Palantir are presenting this as something novel.

You should never submit an SF-86 before your first day of work. That is used to trick you into an interim clearance review that can lead to the job being revoked before you report for work. Once you're an official employee you can't be fired for denial of clearance, though an effort at constructive dismissal will likely ensue if they can't find an uncleared role for you.

That wouldn't have mattered for me. The contractor I worked for (and most that I'm aware of) required me to complete a questionnaire that they used to assess my likelihood of getting a clearance before extending me an offer.

Not trying to doubt you, but I find the idea that a company can't terminate an employee for failing to get a clearance for a job that requires a clearance to be tough to believe. You have a source?

Is there a law that prevents a company from firing you if you can't get a clearance?

I've seen job postings with something like "the ability to acquire and hold a [Top] Secret security clearance is required for this position". Is this illegal or necessary to be able to fire someone because they couldn't get or lost their clearance?

I think companies can fire you for pretty much any reason (or no reason) in America, other than discrimination.

I work in this industry and I thought the practice described here was common. I'm aware of multiple companies, including my own, that put in for security clearances for interns so they can have a clearance on the first day of their full time employment.

Yeah. Pretty sure everyone does it. I've seen it every place I've worked.

A job that requires a security clearance is not a job that I want to be doing, ever.

Why’s that? I’m really not familiar with the ins and outs of clearance.

Do you have ethical reasons? Or practical?

There's a lot of practical reasons why someone wouldn't want one. There are foreign travel and contact reporting requirements and use of weed is forbidden. Some people may be uncomfortable with the level of scrutiny that investigators go through to find dirt on you (talking to neighbors, friends, and family even if you didn't put them down as references). Once your clearance lapses, you have no requirements other than the lifelong NDA you sign regarding the work you did which could hamper future job interviews somewhat if you can't talk about what you actually worked on. If you write a book, you usually need to get permission prior to publishing by submitting drafts to the government, especially if it's relevant to your work.

As for ethics, clearances go hand in hand in working with intelligence agencies, the department of defense, federal law enforcement or a few other departments either as a contractor or government employee. So if you are fundamentally opposed to what these groups do, maybe a job requiring a clearance isn't the best fit for you. There is another clearance called public trust that is very mild that may be required at places like the Treasury or NASA. Basically if you don't want a clearance, avoid working for the government.

I bowed out of the process. I just couldn't quite figure out how to reconcile what was asked of me.

Don't be around people in possession of illegal drugs. Ok, well grandpa died and I know for sure his oxy is in his medicine cabinet. Grandma hasn't thrown that away. You're not really allowed to do that, ya know?

I understand why the rules are the way they are. I understand that they would not care about that situation. The FBI agent asked rather pointed questions about, am I the kind of person who follows the rules when no one is watching. I feel pretty comfortable saying I do. I feel pretty comfortable believing they do not.

There are plenty of smart hardworking people with clearances. I believe in them and I believe they're generally trustworthy, but are held to an impossible standard so they can be fired at any time. I get it, but I can't accept that, so I don't.

Also the the OPM breach was cool.

Do they really care if your Grandma has Grandpa's old medicine? I find this hard to believe.

They don't.

The rule is clear and explicit. There are rules that are written down, that you agree to abide by.

There is a second set of rules, that is not written down, that is the actual standard you're held to.

I don't know how to do that. so I didn't.

For myself it's somewhat ethical, and somewhat practical: there's no way I'd get cleared anyway, due to my history of hard drug addiction in my teens and early 20s. Despite being sober for... gosh, over a decade now, it's a moot point in that process.

They don't really care about the drug use, as much as they care whether you're honest about it. If you tell them one thing but they hear something else when they interview your family and friends, that's a major issue.

What they want to see, above all else, is someone who can't be easily blackmailed. (Which is one reason why homosexuality was a dealbreaker as late as the 1970s.)

> They don't really care about the drug use

Unfortunately, that's not what I was directly told when I inquired, at least for the jobs here in Aus. Perhaps they were just being conservative about it

You might be surprised. I have some friends who did a lot of drugs at one point or another in their life and ended up later holding a clearance. Addiction might be different, but I wouldn't let your past deter you from looking if there was an opportunity you really liked. The clearance process looks more at if you have a problem that can be exploited.

(Now, that said, holding a clearance can be a pain for other reasons already detailed in this thread. A lifetime ban on talking about some things can be an annoying cognitive burden to carry, also.)

Don't assume that your history would be an immediate dealbreaker. With enough time, they are happy to ignore a lot of that stuff. Just be honest.

Of course, if you don't believe in any of the causes you might need a clearance for, it doesn't matter, but don't be too quick to make that assumption either. A lot of stuff gets classified by the government, and not all of it is morally noisome.

This comment gives a pretty good account of why myself and others are not interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20556201#20557382

Being subjected to pseudoscientific security theater isn't really that appealing.

Did you miss the several times on the news where whistleblowers had their lives destroyed after speaking up about literal knowingly bombing of children?

It definitely takes a long time and makes it hard to employ people.

I've had SC clearance twice in the UK, which isn't too bad, just a couple of months or so. Even so, I saw people sit around waiting for their clearance, unable to do anything, and then leave before they had managed to do anything.

One job I applied for needed a DV clearance, and that takes a really long time. They advised me to get another job in the meantime, but it was just too much hassle, so I passed on it.

> Over the last five years more of my students have understood that Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine and strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China mean that the world is no longer a stable and safe place. This has convinced many of them to work on national security problems in defense startups.

oh so that is why there's always that crap on the news?

Man I miss when they lured smart kids with the false promises of moon rockets

I don't know a single graduate that joined a defense contractor to help Ukraine lol. Maybe their bank accounts perhaps, but that isn't a false promise.

I was being facetious for humor, on the fact that now several senate hearings are public in which NASA budget was justified as such recruiting.

Security clearances should take a long time because the risk of information being leaked is so high. Not sure I'm aligned here with Palantir or Steve Blank that the process needs to be sped up. Sounds like a recipe for disaster given all of the leaks we've seen over the past decade or more.

The article does not mention speeding up the process, only starting it sooner.

This is how the hiring process already works at government agencies. You get a CJO (Conditional Job Offer) are able to start the clearance process and get the FJO (Final Job Offer) once you receive the clearance.

Rule of Thumb: Unless either (1) your family has been "in that line of work" for several decades, or (2) a Clearance is needed for long-term success in your chosen field, the grief & weirdness of getting & maintaining a Security Clearance is Just Not Worth It.

If you don't do drugs, don't commit felonies, and don't have a ton of foreign friends (particularly from a few key, problematic countries), it's really not _that_ bad. You have some more annual paperwork that you're paid to do, you might have some restrictions on certain international travel, but for many people, nothing of meaning really changes before/after getting one.

It's not for everyone, but for plenty it's not a huge burden. Even if their family hasn't been "in that line of work" for several decades.

And it unlocks the ability to work on certain things that simply don't exist elsewhere (no, not just weapons).

The upside being having a security clearance is means almost always having a job available.

Very much this. The USA has a jobs program and it is the defense industry. You just have to not do drugs to participate.

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