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MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

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Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#71

Post by zdragnar »

readitalready wrote: post #46
angiolillo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of companies don't "need to exist". A company exists because someone decided to start it (usually to make some money) and lasts until someone decides to end it (usually when it stops making money). If you're asking why Palantir (and Salesforce, Jira, etc) continue to make money despite not having any novel or complex technologies, my experience has been that these are not prerequisites for solving the vast maj…

This discounts the value of user experience, which people will pay a premium for. A good design is valuable, and this applies to business processes as well. How would you design the user experience of constructing a submarine? Good design IS technological superiority.

> This discounts the value of user experience, which people will pay a premium for.

The people making purchasing decisions at this level aren't the ones using it and don't care one whit about UX.

That isn't to say that it isn't valuable, but it's basically a non-factor. The technology itself is a non-factor. Everything is about connections, buzz words and pretty slide decks.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#73

Post by Joker_vD »

einpoklum wrote: post #35

Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very distinct things. But - exposure to whatever Palantir does is very likely bad for the second regardless of whether or not it's bad for the first.

> Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very distinct things.

"Everything in the name of man, everything for the good of man!" — The 3rd Program of the CPSU, 1961. As the joke went, "and if you get to visit the Party Congress in Moscow, you will even get to see that very man!"

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#74

Post by crimsoneer »

“Palantir does not need to own the data or even have stewardship. They can extract, transform and exploit the metadata to build their own rich picture.”

Sorry, but this is full on into conspiracy theory here. Are we seriously arguing that Palantir are doing very much illegal analysis on air-gapped national security systems, and somehow exporting those and aggregating them?

The exact same concerns could be articulated for Google/AWS/Azure, but nobody does because they would quite rightly be called out as conspiracy theorists.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#75

Post by generic92034 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #37
padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

Like how Tableau is a great UI for grammar of graphics, Palantir is a great UI for ontological expert systems. Technically you could do everything without it but organizations and especially government typically don’t cultivate that level of expertise in their staff. In my view expert systems typically failed because the organizations would degrade bureaucratically faster than any expert system could accommodate. Wit…

> Similar to how other large military purchases are less about the military hardware and more of a client state subscription to ‘align interests’ such that the US is more likely to act in the donor countries interest.

I have a feeling this is no longer a viable model. If "subscribers" get threatened every other day, they will be looking for alternatives.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#76

Post by vrganj »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #69

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?

Two Reasons:

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?

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#77

Post by crimsoneer »

stuaxo wrote: post #40
oncallthrow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir’s product is light years ahead of anything any government IT project has ever, and in my opinion can ever, deliver. They’re not even in the same league.

Seems unlikely. I've seen teams at GDS + teams based on the GDS way of working in other UK gov departments solve some really knarly problems.

They most definitely won't spend time on military bases though, whereas Palantir devs will essentially live there.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#78

Post by bilbo0s »

dlev_pika wrote: post #65
iheartbiggpus wrote: post #58

Why do the worst companies have the best names.

Fascism puts a heavy emphasis on aesthetics

Italian fascists did have fashion forward uniforms.

So did the German Nazis back then now I think about it.

Maybe there is something with cult-like thinking, fascist or not, where the aesthetics seduces more people into wanting to be a part of it all?

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#79

Post by LightBug1 »

oncallthrow wrote: post #27
padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

Palantir’s product is light years ahead of anything any government IT project has ever, and in my opinion can ever, deliver. They’re not even in the same league.

Horseshit, mate ... basically just pumped up database software aided and abetted by "consultants" parachuted into the client org ... like the industry has been doing since the 80's ...

Edit: I found the following on Glassdoor and, while I don't know the poster personally, it pretty much sums it up:

"If you are in Business Development (BD) - i.e. Delta or Echo - this job will be your life. They deliberately underhire - they claim it's to maintain the culture, but really it's to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of you. You are thrown into chaotic situations with no way out but to "chew glass and excrete product". Don't let the flat heirarchy and encouragement of confrontation / open debate deceive you. Karp has majority founder shares and calls the shots. The company is a dictatorship, not a democracy. Resourcing is a black box. If you are a U.S person without a clearance, you will be bait-and-switched into defense even if you thought you could avoid it. With clearance, you'll end up on something much worse. Trust your gut - the company's leadership are not wise, nuanced philosophers - they are spineless, shifty edgelords with no ethical red lines. As a FDE, you will spend half your time working around stupid limitations in the platform you could not foresee when making grand promises to the customer. Foundry is not a cutting edge product, just like Microsoft Suite is not a cutting edge product. Its just too broad for any other company to easily copy it. Palantir just brought middle-of-the-road Silicon valley tech to old-school government, slapped some AI integration onto it and shrouded it in a veil of mystery to make it seem cool and mysterious and appeal to retail investors."

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