Can someone explain why Palantir are seen as such a threat? My understanding is their product is a PowerBI++ and they don't host any user data themselves. Are people scared of backdoors?
1) It holds deeply sensitive data and does so in the US. In times of increased mistrust of the US, many (including myself) see that as a risky choice.
2) Speaking of mistrust in America and American corporations, have you heard their execs talk? It's absolute cuckoo-town:
> If they are not scared, they don’t wake up scared, they don’t go to bed scared, they don’t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.
Well, you've convinced me. I'm scared of America, I'm scared of American companies and I'm scared of your company in particular.
Good job, I guess?
Of course I agree that quote is insane and you can dislike them for political reasons, but I want to understand the technological fears and see if any are unfounded.
What are they actually doing for the MoD? Are they reading MoD data out and processing it elsewhere?
https://www.palantir.com/palantir-is-still-not-a-data-compan...
But the parent comment points out that software companies often don't see all the data that their software is used to analyze. Microsoft does not see your tax return just because the IRS uses Excel.
I'm guessing that people are scared that the state will install one big palantir instance on all its systems. So that anything any part of the state learns about you, in any context or interaction, can be effortlessly used against you in every other context (perhaps via parallel construction in a lawsuit).
Basically, the fear would be that palantir makes mass surveillance data actionable, fuses surveillance programs, and incorporates most IT into mass surveillance programs.
The government would become less like a series of seperate agencies, more like a big consciousness that knows things (knows centrally, everything it was told anywhere).
Note this is just my interpretation of the fear.
Its fuzzy. Others may know more about palantir than me and thus have a more precise and grounded concern.
[1] https://archive.ph/6ljwy#selection-2539.194-2539.400
See also: https://redlib.privadency.com/r/Futurology/comments/4o02p3/o...
They also have “forward deployed engineers” to help organizations actually use the platform. It looked complicated enough to probably be completely useless without these specialists, even in a “self hosted” setup.
The managed hosting also seems like a major selling point so many deployments that probably should be self hosted probably aren’t because muh managed services added value.
And the backdoors of course. There is no way it isn’t full of plausibly deniable “metrics endpoints” that helpfully spew out all the internal data if the right key comes knocking. There’s no way it’s auditable at the level of detail you would need compared to the value of the data and the sophistication of the potential attacker (NSA).
It’s just the latest implementation of a winning formula.
That is the reality that the world is having to adapt to. Even when Trump is gone, it will take a long time to rebuild that trust.
Genuinely a bit shocked at the naivety on HN on this topic but maybe thats a misunderstanding on my part. Happy to be shown otherwise. Alex Karp, if you're reading this, please don't send your fent laced urine spraying drones after me!
In the post WW2 era most western countries grew lazy about sovereignty due to America's open-handed approach - this has been a wake up call and has severely lowered America's soft-power globally.
Has China ever threatened to invade Canada?
Canada isn't a first rate power - if the US or China decided to unilaterally target us it'd be deeply damaging. The hope is that working in concert with other middle powers we can form a cushion to soften a blow - not fully turn it.
It's not sufficient but the first thing you can filter by is anyone who comments on the name first (literally one of the most effective marketing strategies in government contracting history basically).