Spain Orders Blacklist of Palantir from Public and Private Companies
clashreport.com
clashreport.com
Edit: not sure what the downvotes are. Burnham literally said he’ll do it today.
>"Burnham did not grant the US tech company any contracts during his nine years as Greater Manchester mayor, and is minded to take the same approach in Downing Street."
https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-huawei-contract-judici...
I will never understand this helplessness that comes from these European countries. They are choosing to be dependent on foreign powers.
— George Bush, 2002
The original saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I think an intellectually honest take is that it's advantageous and prudent to depend on allies and neighbors; leveraging each party's strengths for efficiencies over strategic autonomy. This trade-off is commonly debated with depending on US military hardware in favor of EU military hardware (e.g. France's long standing position for EU strategic autonomy), or vendor lock-in with AWS vs cloud-independent offerings.
The problem is when an ally becomes inconsistent and/or uncooperative; a high stakes version of prisoner's dilemma. At which point do you replace an ally's offerings with more expensive, and often inferior, alternatives? The general populace rarely has the appetite for the short-term economic pain required to achieve long-term strategic independence.
> Spain is “making a big mistake,” said Bart Groothuis [...] “Spain is now dependent on the country with the largest and most sophisticated offensive espionage program directed against us.”
I highly doubt he's naive enough to believe the "against us" qualifier exempts the operator of the largest and most sophisticated offensive espionage program ever.
the US properly fucked up by very publicly declaring intent to conquer greenland and canada
Obviously, the best move would be to keep the data in Europe instead.
While 80% of Europe is subservient to the US?
Ghana can host their own IT infra. Why not Spain?
China is not publicly threatening to invade the EU.
I think the EU needs to produce this themselves but right now they don’t and they don’t have any large, trustworthy allies.
China is also probably bad, but currently there’s no evidence they’re as bad as US/Israel
Thus, from my POV that sentiment is BS.
China is an adversary in a panda costume.
So you have one country which is in a very loose alliance with a country that's attacking a country around the periphery of the EU, and another country that's joined at the hip with a country that's attacking another country around the periphery of the EU, just slightly further away.
It's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the US
They did when being caught messing with elections in Scotland, Europe, for example. Whom Europeans vote are none of the Israel business. And there is a reasonable suspicion that they were sending sex traps for decades to blackmail European elites, left and right. This is not how a real friend behave.
they have the US congress and a few cats-paws in Europe, and if that runs out, they die
Even the US was concerned recently that Israel was planning not just to sabotage the peace talks with Iran but to assassinate the Iranian representatives:
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/429561
The only reason Israel has its back to the wall is that its 'never again' attitude has extended to any concept of solving problems that doesn't involve military force, and since they've had the backing of the US that means they've been able to get away with anything they wanted so far. It's the asshole little brother whose big brother will beat you up if he ever runs the risk of facing the consequences of his actions.
If Israel had any desire to live in peace with their neighbors then maybe they would, but either they don't want peace except through victory, they don't want peace if it means giving up the ability to continue their ethnic cleansing of Palestine to build more settlements, or they want peace but they don't believe that anyone else wants it (despite everyone else trying to work towards it except them).
If they hadn't been so focused on aggression, genocide, and apartheid for the past 70 years maybe this all could have been solved, but the narrative that they're the only bastion of democracy and freedom in West Asia/North Africa and that's why everyone wants to destroy them doesn't hold up to the barest of scrutiny.
Maybe you meant North Korea?
belt and road, deals with african dictators, selling cars and phones to europe, temu and alibaba, open source llms, all of that is for higher tax revenue. a lot of chinese companies are part state owned so thats another way it directly benefits the government.
even the illegal police stations only exist to make sure overseas chinese communities dont support opposition movements back home. is it a good thing? definitely not, but its also not a threat to the host country as a whole.
the spying they do is either economic espionage thats good for the world (trade secrets should not exist, thats what patents are for) or good old state on state action like everybody else is doing. i bet russia and america each have more spies in europe than china.
Europe is bled dry and will cease to exist rather soon if nothing chnages.
China also stands to benefit long term with a Russia that continues fighting and weakening itself.
let's be clear: MAGA is doing everything they can per Dugan-esque playbooks on how to destroy US-EU relations, but don't pretend for a second that China is some magical bastion of human rights or fair, competitive practices.
would be better to be on spanish servers, but decoupling from american tech remains a public good, especially if using american tech bans american competitors
Yes, it's still bad but they are not as stupid to just have their servers located in China for this.
At least they are doing stuff for the people
What we have is a corrupt president and party he'll bent on remaining as long as possible to not face the polls
- The government lost their trust and should resign. - The coalition parties are sabotaging the government even when none had the majority (even if together they do).
Either way, fuck Palantir
If they cared about security they would not outsource this kind of stuff to foreign companies. Spain is not Somalia, why not let Indra do it?
The data may be safer with the CCP, at least they won't lose it.
A local company losing the data screws everyone. Palantir getting the data screws everyone, because while foreign, that data will eventually be fed into global systems like VISA, Mastercard, etc, and affect your travel in numerous countries that will be outsourcing their systems to Palantir.
Meanwhile gov't losing info on one citizen screws said citizen, but losing all of it screws the gov't itself, and generally rebalances power in favor of citizens. Which one may say isn't bad.
foreigners are a bit more likely to be loyal to the government and not some separatist opposition? or at least the companies corruption will be quite separate from what impacts the local government
this also came up with the 6th gen fighter designs between france and germany. it works when theres a non-european driving, because both trust the non-europe option more than any fellow european. the local lords are too powerful to be trusted, and too competitive against eachother
Yes, to their own government! Both China and USA have laws to force companies to insert backdoors. These laws have been enforced numerous times. If you think this is a smaller risk than doing things nationally, then indeed you're basically arguing that Spain is Somalia, there are separatist forces roaming around, the country can't enforce its own laws and the government needs to sell everything to foreign governments to stay in power. This is not the case (for now).
[1] Concretely these: https://support.huawei.com/enterprise/en/flash-storage/ocean...
and probably unaffected from climate change
What?
[0]: https://renewablesnow.com/news/construction-starts-on-200-mw...
I would also never use the word "solve", as this is just for human usage. The ecosystems themselves are irreversibly destroyed.
But yeah, if you come with kids, factor in private schools. The public system here is broken. As for internet, I pay less than 10€/month for 500Mbit fibre - I couldn't even get that in Germany and if could it would be north of 80€.
Or you are a doctor, a teacher, an architect or a bananas farmer. Some of the richest families in the islands just export/import commodities since three generations.
A warmer ocean means much bigger storms over the islands. This has both positive and negative aspects.
The problem is that the right is poised to win the next election and will probably undo all the policies you like. They're pretty much against everything that has been done in the last 7 years. I still have some hopes that Sanchez might clinch another term because he's a political survivor, but prospects are not great.
How is the AC situation now is Spain? Has the country mass adopted AC in homes and offices?
1. Though this is significantly less prevalent in Spain due to a lot of reconstruction happening after the civil war - that isn't to say buildings there are perfect, they just have different problems than the classic German 30cm thick stone wall.
Some gases, like ammonia are easy to manufacture, other are being banned by environmental concerns, and other depend on international trade nets that can be shocked at any time if somebody trumped that morning. Investing in AC should depend heavily on the kind of refrigerant used in your product.
Climate change is going to affect everywhere, and yes, a lot of Spain will experience desertification over the course of my lifetime. I am moving from Texas to Spain, though, so I am used to heat from a pure personal comfort perspective.
One interesting point is that Spain is well-situated in terms of its energy mix: it's a leader of renewables in Europe. It was also able to negotiate a carve-out from collective energy pricing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_exception), so Iberian energy markets are generally cheaper than broader European markets. This will have downstream economic effects for the country and makes it easier to afford using AC. I will always install AC wherever I live. There are far too many avoidable heat deaths in Europe in particular given their level of economic development. I don't blame them at all given the need is relatively new, but it's really a sad phenomenon.
If you are a true climate doomer (realist?), also, Spain is going to fare as well as one can in Europe should the AMOC collapse. It's not the best place to be globally in a scenario like that, though, to say the least.
For me, with everything going on in terms of world events, life choices are basically just placing bets about the future. There is no truly safe or best choice in a lot of scenarios.
Spain, Portugal, Italy and other southern European countries have very wide spread AC usage.
They also have colder beers than Germany probably for the same reason. Nothing beats the culture acclimation of wincing while sipping lukewarm beer under the July sun in 100+ degrees Berlin.
Sure extreme heat might ruin the seas too eventually (there is already talk of Asian jellyfish species being spotted in record warm sea temperatures) but the amount of due dilligence needed is non-existent compared to the US, Australia, or far east Asia.
What are the specific concerns?
The president P. Sanchez, has been clearly antagonizing Trump in these and other intl issues (even if only visible in spain, as he is not that relevant internationally, etc)
But anyways, this seems like deepstate fighting vs current US admin and current Spain admin, one can infer "Palantir" is basically a gag order away from giving the US govt anything it wants, so as an antagonist. to its current admin, it seems smart to avoid having them as critical providers.
why choose china? Makes no sense, but probably the only other big bro Spain can rely on if the US isn't it anymore
i’m sure they wouldn’t be nearly as concerned about a US company that manufactured screwdrivers or nike or something similar.
I'd say they are mostly moral.
The CCP's intolerant, cruel and authoritarian nature is a direct threat to humanity in ways that Peter Thiel could barely imagine in his darkest dreams.
The lack of perspective on show here is astonishing. They are destroying trust with vital Western allies -- trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets -- and Lurch and his dodgy friends are clearly out of their element.
Care to outline a few of those threats? The ones that Thiel allegedly cannot imagine?
I'm American, I get why Spain's feeling trepidation. I can't trust my own government with data if it could be used against me. I actively seek out Chinese translation, AI and search engines when I want privacy from the US. It's safer with the CCP than the geriatric nutjobs that fell off the Overton window.
In China, the Ministry for State Security has the legal authority to seize and investigate your devices without warrant nor active case, for instance. This can be, legally, motivated by dissident political thought.
The Chinese MSS and the Chinese Communist Party itself aren't even accountable to God.
The real problem is that, even though US is, in practice, a de-facto two-party between democrats and republicans, the PRC is a de-facto one-party system. There's also the overall opportunities for change and revolution that US society provides, that are absent in the PRC.
They, however, need to be approved by the CCP, so this multi party system is only de jure.
For foreign countries, handling your data to either the Chinese surveillance apparatus or the USA one makes no difference. In fact, any company with such deep ties with a foreign intelligence agency as Palantir should be automatically considered a security thread in other nations.
Anyway, the deal with Huawei was about buying hardware, not handling over data.
Anybody here think that Palantir is not a security risk for Spain?
It boggles the mind a bit, but I’ve seen a few comments on here with people defending them to the tune of “what’s the big deal, they just help governments with their data! They're innocent” which is uh, either aggressively naive, or just paid PR behaviour.
why is THAT your take and not "WTF WHY ARE THOSE CAMERAS LEGAL IN GENERAL?"
it doesn't matter where the data go - THE VERY COLLECTION OF IT IS BAD
Never really sure why Anduril doesn't catch the same grief; they are maybe even creepier. Perhaps Palmer Luckey is just a less visible obvious Bond villain crackpot.
> Military leadership, including the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Navy, has lobbied Defense Minister Margarita Robles to renew the contract, citing the platform's operational superiority.
Palantir wins contracts because they are better at what they do. If Europe wants to maintain digital sovereignty while not being left behind they need to have a heart-to-heart conversation about how to fix that.
They won the contract, the military wants to keep it, the politicians are threatening to blanket kill all palantir contracts.
It's called being out-of-touch obscenely wealthy coupled with a massive ego.
So it is what you want.
On Mars 2026, US Homeland Security played a prominent role in providing sensible info that lead to the prosecution. Apparently they obtained that info after spying on a phone from [person of interest] in Venezuela.
Helping Spain to expose corruption is a good thing of course, but when who does it is, what could be the biggest stronghold of MAGA in US government, we can suspect that they don't do this out of sheer generosity. Trump keeps saying that "is not happy" with Spain, and this corruption scandal greases the path to power for the Spanish equivalent to MAGA party on the forthcoming 2027 elections so... hum
Palantir could be, or not be, related with the leak. In any case blocking it just right now, by the socialist party, would be the logical reaction if they are involved.
It's not even some radical view.
And yes, it is offensive and trivializing to the millions that were murdered to suggest that that their murderers were on the same moral footing as a modern government software consultancy. (The views that you read into some of their executives are, in fact, not equivalent to actions such as exterminating millions of people.)
it would not be at all surprising for palantir to be involved inunited health killing millions
most nazis dodnt kill millions themselves, they instead helped measure and optimize the killing of millions - a goal that palantir shares
What the CEO says and writes in their book to promote the company suddenly doesn't matter? Palantir is suddenly just some run of the mill software consultancy? Their founders/CEO meddling in politics I assume also doesn't count?
Seems like somebody has lot of $$$ in PLTR
And no, you're moving the goalposts again. My comment is strictly about Nazis, not "nazi or fascist". If you can't even keep this straight, then my time is wasted on you.
Ok this might be a misunderstanding then. What you are saying is that Palantir are not Nazis because they are just Fascists and calling them Nazis is hollowing out the term and is disrespectful to holocaust survivors? I don't know i guess i could be convinced. Palantir still seems to have quite a bit of that racial sprinkle "Western Supremacy" in their manifestos.
Jews complained about nazi long before holocaust, btw. So did opposition.
And the Nazis were already around for 10 years before the holocaust began. And for all that time they were still the Nazis, but nobody considered them that badly, because they just seemed like a political party with some bad opinions. And we should think about that. Was it possible to stop them in the first 10 years of existence, before they did the holocaust, thereby preventing the holocaust?