what did the moral vacuum say to arses at silicon valley? "you're a sellout"
Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#12Demonstrate how those programs do keep the country safe. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't mean that it's actually valuable work. ------ "Karp, whose Palo Alto, California-based company provides services to the Defense Department, CIA and FBI, blasted tech companies that refuse work with the federal government to keep the country safe."
It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think.
I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days.
Of course, he was independent and so had to rely on the publicly available twitter searches, where the expectation is that tweets are public. The good - and terrible - things that could be done with access to what people expect to be private is a far more challenging prospect to justify.
And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#13Google's initial investors included the CIA (InQTel). The internet itself was a defense (DARPA) project. The Bell Labs work on the transistor emerged from war-time efforts to produce extremely pure germanium "crystal" mixer diodes, used in radar units. I can go on and on about the inventions spawned by defense funding. Silicon valley itself owes its existence to Northrop Grumman and their ilk, who were early tech emp…
There are certainly many people who work for defense contractors and they are necessary. But, other people don't want to do that. If they join a company that's not a defense contractor, and it becomes a defense contractor, it feels like a bait-and-switch. That's not what they signed up for. And it does seem like, in a large industry with many different kinds of jobs that need to be done, it's clearly not necessary fo…
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Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#14> "The reason why people put up with crazy looking people that are doing their thing in a different way is because we have historically delivered either jobs or national security," Karp told CNBC on Wednesday. "People understood the value of what we're doing."
Has Silicon Valley ever had a particular history of delivering "national security". I would say more than jobs or national security SV has delivered free or cheaper consumer-facing products, which is the real value the entire country has seen.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#15As opposed to Palantir, which sells out the American people.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#16He of all people has very little moral high ground for statements like this.
Or his yardstick just points in a drastically different direction than yours or mine.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#17Theses guys have no shame.
Thiel is notoriously libertarian. He’s advocating for smaller and smaller government. Yet, the company he founded makes money by selling surveillance software to the government. Surveillance software that has some good use cases - in the fight against terrorism - but that inevitably empowers the government against its citizen.
Palantir can be used to track terrorist, but it can be used to find anything. Political agitators, for instance.
In the wrong hands, it’s a tool that is damaging to the American “social contract” these guys are so vehemently defending.
If anyone at Palantir reads this: get your story straight. Be libertarians or pro government. If your pro government, stop financing political parties that cut massive tax breaks.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#18Demonstrate how those programs do keep the country safe. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't mean that it's actually valuable work. ------ "Karp, whose Palo Alto, California-based company provides services to the Defense Department, CIA and FBI, blasted tech companies that refuse work with the federal government to keep the country safe."
It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course,…
And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors.
No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#19While it's not going to a be a popular oppinion, I do have first hand knowledge and experience and agree. As somebody who lived in SF for over five years, the last couple of years especially there is a palatable distain for Americanism and patriotism at bay area companies. I'd even go as far as some people are flat out anti-American. There is an anti-authority ideology that permeates everything and a persistent skepticism.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#20Demonstrate how those programs do keep the country safe. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't mean that it's actually valuable work. ------ "Karp, whose Palo Alto, California-based company provides services to the Defense Department, CIA and FBI, blasted tech companies that refuse work with the federal government to keep the country safe."
It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course,…
Just as a matter of optics, some advice would be to provide more "national security" based anecdata. It's just a fact that people are going to look more and more askance at these technologies when they believe that the best example uses involve apparent street level drug dealers as opposed to, say, international terrorists with dirty bombs. And to be fair to layman, one is a law enforcement issue, the other is a national security issue.
So if we're talking about using these things for national security, that's one thing in the minds of the critics. (The reasonable critics anyway.) But if we're talking about giving it to every joe blow cop on the street, people are going to be, understandably, uncomfortable. Why? Because I always say, there are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations in this nation. There really is no way a regular person can guarantee that they are in compliance with every one of them at all times. So if we're going to, sort of, "automate" the discovery of which crime any given citizen is committing, people can kind of see where that might lead to a dark, dark place.
Or, long story short, most people, quite reasonably, believe that tech like this deployed against street level pot dealers will eventually be used against themselves. With all of the societal implications that entails.