Palantir Is Helping Doge with a Massive IRS Data Project | Hacker News Reader

Palantir Is Helping Doge with a Massive IRS Data Project

wired.com

68 pointsvoxadam23 comments

By illegally firehosing American's most unique and sensitive data into Palantir,

this top Whitehouse ally will be able to exploit Americans in ways no one else can.

The lasting and negative impact from this will span generations.

> most unique and sensitive data into Palantir,

It's not particularly sensitive. There are many organizations that generate the data and it passes through the state, the federal government, payroll processors and vendors.

> this top Whitehouse ally will be able to exploit Americans in ways no one else can.

They could likely already do that if they wanted. This, like everything else, is about transferring wealth from those with the least to those with the most. I'd expect business and foreign nationals to be the worst off.

> The lasting and negative impact from this will span generations.

This has been happening for decades. This is just the inevitable result of the past 30 years of unchecked mergers and acquisitions. This makes it worse but the trend was already clear.

> It's not particularly sensitive.

IRS and SSA data are literal textbook examples of sensitive data.

I believe the remainder of your remarks are contrarian in a manner that suggest you are working backward from conclusions.

Was it really ever true when you heard "you must declare illegal crime income to IRS" don't worry they can't use that data to arrest you.

That must have always just been a sucker thing right?

That rule is not there so that you can declare the crime income without going to jail. It's so that when other charges have lower chances to stick, you can still be charged with not paying taxes on your crime. See the related cases at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_illegal_income_in_...

Government overreach was endangering America thanks to the tireless work to conspire by government employees who barely want to do their own job, but an organization legally aligned on gaining independent financial advantage can provide oversight that won't misuse access?

Thiel is Musk's old friend, the latter will make sure the former can extract as much of a valuable data as possible.

“The event started Tuesday morning and ended Thursday afternoon. A source in the room this week explained that the event was “very unstructured.” On Tuesday, engineers wandered around the room discussing how to accomplish DOGE’s goal.”

It’s possible there were some good, rational developers present, but this reads like a nghtmare retreat.

Hopefully, they at least got some nice T-shirts.

Maybe most of them are good, rational developers and were chosen for that reason.

> Maybe most of them are good, rational developers and were chosen for that reason.

This seems to be purpose-driven guess. To zero-in on what is, that info is trivial to find.

ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=what+we+know+about+doge+tech+...

ref: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/12/the-people-in-elon-musk-do...

> This seems to be purpose-driven guess

Yes the purpose seems to be most likely.

Good initial reporting. We need follow up documenting the individuals involved. Particularly at decision-making levels. But also all the way down. We’ll need those public records when it comes time to prosecute or otherwise secure reprisals.

https://archive.ph/oQ9iv

I'm curious, did Palantir get the deal because of the close connections with Musk and J.D. Vance and Trump or were they genuinely the best company for this role?

In normal times, you'd be able to either read an already released tender, or you could FOIA the procurement details for this project. How likely do you think it is that those exist and you could access them today?

> did Palantir get the deal because of the close connections with

A self-established hallmark of this administration is to draw lines that define allies and enemies, to favor the former and harm the latter.

Rewarding allies with highly privileged and unprecedented access to US Gov assets - that is how this admin delivers what it advertised.

My understanding is they are and have always been uniquely unique. Their infrastructure was designed from the outset for highly classified use-cases (DoD IL6, Top Secret classifications), is unmatched by enterprise analytics software vendors + their tech is (apparently although nobody really seems to know) very very good.

Why doesn't anyone know this, though? I too am a bit mystified by ... whatever it is that Palantir does, but I think you hit the major point, which is that perhaps it is the classified nature of their prime use cases that makes it so difficult to discern how it is they work.

I have a friend who works at Palantir, I have no clue what he does, we've never talked about his work, he's not interested in talking about it, no clue anything about anything in their stack, they really just don't talk. I guess this is the value of Palantir?

This is a joke, right?

My comment is mostly about journalistic tone and standards since others have already brought up other concerns. Does this opening passage seem professional to anyone? I just found it distracting enough before getting to the controversial parts.

> Palantir, the software company cofounded by Peter Thiel, is part of an effort by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to build a new “mega API” for accessing Internal Revenue Service records, IRS sources tell WIRED.

1. Did Palantir get a contract to do so? Normally the wording would be Palantir was awarded the contract.

2. Is it relevant that Thiel co-founded it, rather than also mentioning Karp? Is it to stuff as many boogey men into the lede?

3. Any talk about how Palantir is EVERYWHERE in the National Security circles of the US Gov? I think Palantir started as an analysis tool for money movement. So is it that crazy?

4. Isn’t DOGE the official name? What’s with prefixing it with “so-called”?

> 2. Is it relevant that Thiel co-founded it, rather than also mentioning Karp? Is it to stuff as many boogey men into the lede?

Maybe it's just my bubble, but I "know" Thiel, and I know he's connected to Vance and Musk, and I don't know anything about Karp, so the relevancy decision makes sense to me. Karp is mentioned as being CEO later in the article. I have now googled him enough to know he's left-wing, so I see where you're going, but still feel he's not relevant enough to merit more mention.

> 4. Isn’t DOGE the official name? What’s with prefixing it with “so-called”?

It could just be a dig, but maybe more likely a reference to the legal concept that it's not a cabinet-level department and that its legally-correct(?) names are U.S. DOGE Service and U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...).

most likely the "so called" dig refers to the fact that Elon is attempting to bypass congress to enforce austerity and hand out contracts to his companies, which has nothing to do with government efficiency.

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