It's an important distinction that he makes when he says Silicon Valley is selling out America™, as opposed to the American people, which Palantir has sold out.
Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
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Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#32ITT: he’s not wrong just the wrong person to say it
No, he's definitely wrong.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#33While 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 skept…
This is an important subject. But I suspect that there are nuances that are getting missed here.
Firstly, uncritical love of one's country is not patriotism. Its blind hero worship.
Secondly, the USA has always been based on a blend anti-authority ideology, theology and trade imperialism(expansionism to the west coast The very reason your president is currently dicking about with a budget shutdown is born from anti-authoritarianism constitution. You have a boat load of guns is a logical consequence of anti-authoritarianism.
However through all of this, you still have a dysfunctional legislature and executive.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#34While 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 skept…
I feel nationalism and patriotism are dangerous concepts that need to be challenged. We should be looking to form an inclusive global community that can progress together instead of boxing ourselves into arbitrarily drawn man made lines which we are thrown into by luck of birth. Not that I don't believe in nation status. But I never understood why should I like a person who falls on one side of that line more than a…
personally I believe that patriotism is based on loving one's cultural values, not the arbitrary land mass. Whenever I see Americans being patriotic it's usually around a pro-individual, anti-authority culture (though that gets pretty muddled because from my perspective, it seems like both sides of the political aisle are 50-50 on individualism vs authority). Republican patriots love their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech and to bear arms, as well as the US' culture of entrepreneurialism. Democrat patriots love their cultural melting pot and the values of free self-expression and acceptance.
"Nationalism" as a term is murkier, because it not only encompasses patriotism but also isolationism, xenophobia, monoculture enforcement and so on. Over here in the UK it even includes Celtic nations' citizens' individual desires for independence from England.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#35> "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 ch…
SV has always worked with the DoD, and the internet was a DARPA project. More tangibly, Lockheed Martin was founded in Palo Alto, and Raytheon is still in the area. But I'm guessing your question is asking whether or not these products have resulted in "national security". Does having more fighter jets or satellites make us safer? Traditionally, yes. However in the 21st century, I think we need to focus more on robus…
I remember reading a rather interesting "history of SV as a tech hub" type documentary series of articles that went all the way back to the 40's war effort.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#36Demonstrate 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,…
Interesting comment. My question is, how much of what you saw was Palantir and how much of it was just a set of techniques and a way of thinking? Could somebody have done virtually the same thing with other technologies (e.g. Powerpoint, yED and qGIS?)
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#37Theses 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 f…
Thiel doesn't have a moral high ground. Just look at how much he talks about the importance of making a monopoly for creating money. I respect him for not saying that he's making the world (or especially U.S.) a better place by going for government contracts.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There's no bait and switch anywhere. Employment is primarily at-will, and anyone can walk out anytime. Also, companies have certain identities in certain time-windows. Apple was a computer company in the late 90s, by late 2000s it had already gone through 2 identities: a music player company, to primarily a phone company. Employers cannot guarantee what work and markets they will and won't chase. Being a cloud infras…
If you listened to the TGIFs made by Eric Schmidt 12 years ago, it was totally different. It looked like there's enough opportunities to make a lot of money without going to the war industry (I can't call defence what the U.S. is doing). What do you think ,,Don't be evil'' means?
We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings, sometimes working on weekends because we really though that Google is different.
Of course when 2008 happened, a lot of things changed, the optimism changed to being cautious and more frugal, which everybody understood.
Since then Google changed it's motto, but the code and the network effect stayed with it.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
Interesting comment. My question is, how much of what you saw was Palantir and how much of it was just a set of techniques and a way of thinking? Could somebody have done virtually the same thing with other technologies (e.g. Powerpoint, yED and qGIS?)
It was someone who runs a competitor to Palantir, and that was kinda my first point. Textual analysis alone isn't sufficient, you ned a human with an ivestigative, analytical mindset. You do need access to the data and a good way to search and visualize the relationships in the data as well, of course.
PowerPoint actually did come into play - its how he presented his analysis to clients who hired him directly tather than buy access to the tool itself.
Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America
#40While 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 skept…
> There is an anti-authority ideology that permeates everything and a persistent skepticism.
Why are you calling this anti-american? If there is one American value, I would say it is rugged individualism. That's what drives the libertarians. And that's what drove the expansion into the west.