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Comment by 0xWTF | Hacker News Reader

Palantir also supports folks like CDC's DCIPHER

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cdc-and-palantir-pa...

When it's a government system, your issue is not really with the vendor, your issue is with the policymakers.

This is just an inversion of culpability. We know that theres virtually no relationship in our Republic with popularity of an initiative and it's passing into law.

But don't people elect their representatives? oh of course!

If your issue is with policymakers, then it is with the people.

This is also very stupid because - essentially when the government is evil you become skeptical of your neighbors, not 538 people who really control your life.

Sorry, but Palantir doesn’t get off that easy. They know full well how their technology is used. Just because a market exists that doesn’t mean you need to fill it. The tech industry could have taken a moral stand like the chemical industry did with execution drugs.

If you watch any entrepreneur-focused channels, the entire premise of Palantir was "what if we just didn't care about what people think is ethically dubious? What if we went into business in all the places that people have traditionally shied away from for moral reasons?" It's part of Thiel's "Monopoly is good/You want to build the 0 to 1, not jump into a crowded market" mantra.

I started a company in that market 10 years ago. We compete with palantir. It’s a competitive market with lots of actors.

On of their strengths is the ability of thiel to raise lots of money, and win huge gov contracts by convincing everyone that what he built is magic. it is not.

palantir is regular enterprise software. morally, they are vilains for sure, but their superpower is being excellent at marketing themselves.

What I meant is that they espoused that attitude in the Silicon Valley world, which traditionally has not really invested in Defense. I imagine that's also why they're able to raise lots of money and build hype trains, they have one foot still in SV and SV VC.

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