All your data belongs to us: the rise of Palantir

Selling onsite BI/Data support staff is one of those "why didn't I think of that, and how profitable it can be" moments. We used to revile IBM and Oracle onsite staff (as techs in the core company line) because they seemed to do little and were paid lots. But what we missed, is how strongly the seniors listened to what they said, and liked what they did. The whole "pay an engineer $1000 to tighten one bolt" thing is true: these people have skills you can acquire, but they also have knowledge you don't have right now, and tools to aide insights, and also have a useful quality which I like to call "surgically removing their ethics node" because they have no qualms proposing things like cross-key data matching, or applying inference rules over tax info to spending info to project where mismatches point to possible fraud: Things which to a Csuite mean they can deliver on their KPI and not have to worry their predecessors said we would never do that (data matching) or apply unconstrained AI/ML systems (like the Australian Robodebt system: people died)

Palantir is smart. it's what governments want. it's what corporates want. Sure, you can in-house the BI, or use Google, but then you find you're stuck behind your corporate ethics rules, or googles "my way no other way" where Palantir can afford to be venal, and do it your way. The rules don't apply because they don't give a shit.

What I think about Thiel's moral or ethical drive is utterly irrelevant, just as what I think about Ellison and Oracle, or Bezos and Amazon, or Watson and IBM. Mistaking the moral force in the political sphere of these high net worth individuals for core aspects of their business is I think a mistake: it does inform the asocial quality, but if you cut these companies free of their leaders, they wouldn't magically stop helping governments do oppressive things: there's too much money to be made.

Palantir has found an immensely profitable niche. Hire smart people, put them into the structure to listen, and advise on how to do things which internal staff find untenable or unwise.

Doge is what it looks like when you put a clown in charge. Palantir is what it looks like when you put a smart person in charge.

banality of hypocrisy?

"all your data are belong to us" ftfy