Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

Asking honestly, eli5 please: what does Palantir make that is so bad? They make software for the police (and military etc.). I get that maybe the police does horrible things with it (not an American, don't want to argue either way). And sure, you can't say "hey I only make the software that optimises waterboarding, I don't do it myself" - that would very much be complicity.

My understanding of Palantir is it does things like, kinda boring CRUD/CRM type things, but for law enforcement. Like, the police got the warrant and data for mobile phone location, Palantir will plot it for you, provide some pretty basic analytics, but ultimately it integrates lots of different data types into something easy to read.

Is that so bad? I mean, again, I don't live in the US, but this, if I got it right, is exactly the kind of thing I'd hope the police do use. And if this is misused, that's very much a problem with the police, not the software. You shouldn't fix police excess by only providing them with insufficient tools. Just as you don't fix police brutality by taking away their guns and giving them water pistols instead.

But maybe I got it all wrong, happy to be corrected.

This is not entirely right. Palantir is a company that pitches surveillance and AI everywhere in government. From their own product page, they want "AI-Powered automation for every decision." I think this is a poor idea in general but especially in policing and government. Palantir has been caught creating a "pre-crime" algorithm[0], because they seem to have thought Minority Report was an inspiring movie. You can read a former Palantir employee talk about all of the delightfully fun stuff they get involved in like using AI in autonomous warfare[2].

On top of that I have a severe distaste for the founders. Peter Thiel is a psycho who, among other things, is a big fan of Curtis Yarvin and wants to bring monarchy to the US. Creator of smash hits like "I no longer think freedom and democracy are compatible."[1] You may be familiar with his protege, JD Vance. I wouldn't want this person running a police state company. Do not mistake Palantir as Tableau but for government.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...

[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump...

[2] https://zigguratmag.substack.com/p/the-guernica-of-ai-c4b?tr...

Consider these examples [1]. There's absolutely no way to spin this:

> As an example of the evil nature of Palantir’s work, it appears that Palantir has been working with the Israeli military in so-called ‘targeted killings’. Reports have suggested such that these murders, probably in the thousands or tens of thousands, utilised social media information and cellphone tracking. According to a range of sources, over 150 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza and in numerous cases they appear to have been directly targeted. Using social media information to murder journalists using drone strikes is already dystopic, but this is likely to just be the beginning of the evil Palantir will facilitate.

More on Lavender [2].

[1]: https://politicaleconomist.substack.com/p/palantir-the-world...

[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Well, for one, they saw the Slaughterbots[1] video and thought it was a great idea instead of a cautionary tale: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1hexwjc/slaughterbo...

Alex Karp also tends to publish some extremely disturbing polemics about how 'The West' needs to remain dominant at all costs. For example: https://www.palantir.com/q4-2024-letter/en/

> We are still in the earliest stages, the beginning of the first act, of a revolution that will play out over years and decades... The unfortunate thing, either in business or politics, is that many of one’s adversaries and antagonists will never respond to anything but strength—that crude form of power that does not ask for but which requires compliance and deference... As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible “by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”

And that's an official letter to the shareholders. Like, what the fuck is that? You could tell people that these quotes came from a military dictator and they would not bat an eye.

Karp has a palpable savior complex and seems to relish the idea of applying violence against enemies of his desired world order.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterbots

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