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Comment by dpoloncsak | Hacker News Reader

I think its kind of a conspiracy/"Open Secret" that Palantir was funded by the government to side skirt any "Government cannot...." rules. It's not the government breaking privacy regulations, its a private company doing it....just under contract of the government.

Thats the rhetoric on good ole r/WallSteetBets, atleast. Theil and Karp definitely play into this angle as well, but that doesn't really prove anything other than they're hungry for investors

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Yeah, I don’t have any evidence for this but it certainly would make sense. It seems likely that the US government was catching wise to the data brokering loophole around the same time as the PayPal mafia was cashing out and Thiel would have been in the right circles to run into any well-connected gov’t types sniffing around for the most morally flexible big names in the valley. But it seems equally likely that Thiel just wanted to continue accumulating wealth and power to pursue his other authoritarian projects and the government had the biggest bag of cash around so he worked backwards from that.

If next I hear he’s planning to build a fabulous underwater city in international waters, I won’t be surprised. He enjoys his biblical themes, perhaps he can name it Rapture.

At least the underwater city would be useful.

Karp put out a whole book about how "Silicon Valley needs to be more willing to work with the government" too, post launch of Palantir.

Idk...any and every of these companies fielding government contracts with a name from LOTR seem off to me. Palantir, Anduril, Erebor....

I mean people have complained about the 4th amendment loophole for a long time now

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