Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thenerve.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 326 posts

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

#101

Post by alephnerd »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #100
alephnerd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> read of the ineffectiveness of influence the gulf states thought they had The primary players in the Gulf - Saudi and the UAE - have been aligned with the ongoing Iran strikes. KSA's Mohammad Bin Salman has been lobbying Trump to strike Iran [0], just like his predecessor King Abdullah was doing [1]. Similarly, the UAE has an ongoing land dispute with Iran [2]. [0] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/…

So is it your stated position that the reason the US has decided to go to war with Iran is because of Saudi Arabia and the UAE?

Nope. And that is quite a leap in logic.

The larger Gulf States are aligned with the US in striking Iran. And we have an incentive also to prevent another nuclear breakout from happening.

Edit: can't reply

> I do note that a similar reason was given for North Korea which did end up rather peacefully acquiring nuclear weapons

Because we were in Iraq and Afghanistan when North Korea's nuclear breakout happened in the early 2000s.

> the primary reason?

There is no primary reason (there never is), but there are clearly a multiple interests that aligned with striking Iran

1. Iran's eventual nuclear breakout (already mentioned)

2. The operationalization of the Iran-Central Asia-China railway in 2025 [0], which allows China to bypass Malacca

3. Iran's relative weakness following the collapse of the Assad regime, the death of much od Hezbollah's leadership, and the Houthis comparative weakness

4. Continued anger amongst policymakers in the Gulf, Israel, and the US that Iran-backed Hamas launched the 10/7 attack barely 3 weeks after the US+EU launched the IMEC project and were about to loop Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords [1]

[0] - https://caspianpost.com/iran/china-kyrgyz-iran-rail-link-cut...

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/09/g20-eu-and-us-...

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

#102

Post by ashtonshears »

kypro wrote: post #56
mosura wrote: post #29

The fact Alex Karp has any security clearance at all boggles the mind.

[flagged]

Mate, read his quotes or watch on youtube. There is no reason for you to use that as a scapegoat, when there is clearly obvious reasons some may not like him.

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

#103

Post by wizzwizz4 »

edgyquant wrote: post #26
jagged-chisel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Palantir specifically need to exist? To funnel those juicy government budgets into shareholders' pockets. Why does anyone bother to use them? Because they have convincing marketing (which may or may not include buttering government palms with, um, "incentives" ...) Occam's razor: It's a big pile of "list of things being handled by an outside entity so I neither have to think about it, nor hire for them."

If Palantir wasn’t highly effective at aggregating data no one would care about the. They are considered a threat to privacy and freedom because they are a good product

That's part of it, but not the whole story. If Palantir were a book, explaining how to implement data aggregation systems effectively, people wouldn't be so wary of it. (Critics would still criticise that data aggregation was performed in the first place, of course, but there wouldn't be the additional "and it's Palantir".)

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

#104

Post by crimsoneer »

watwut wrote: post #93
crimsoneer wrote: post #74

“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…

> 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? Is there any reason to think they would not do something illegal? Or that they would be above exporting secret data?

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a very profitable company that has spent 20-ish years working with intelligence agencies from a bunch of different countries, I find it hard to believe they'd just casually commit some incredibly serious crime without evidence beyond "well, they theoretically could".

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

#105

Post by cjbgkagh »

alephnerd wrote: post #101
cjbgkagh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it your stated position that the reason the US has decided to go to war with Iran is because of Saudi Arabia and the UAE?

Nope. And that is quite a leap in logic. The larger Gulf States are aligned with the US in striking Iran. And we have an incentive also to prevent another nuclear breakout from happening. Edit: can't reply > I do note that a similar reason was given for North Korea which did end up rather peacefully acquiring nuclear weapons Because we were in Iraq and Afghanistan when North Korea's nuclear breakout happened in the e…

I felt giving a primary reason would add clarity, which is why I asked. So is “prevent another nuclear breakout from happening” the primary reason?

I do note that a similar reason was given for North Korea which did end up rather peacefully acquiring nuclear weapons.

Edit: so to confirm that is your stated primary reason? Any other reasons you can think of?

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

#106

Post by [deleted] »

LightBug1 wrote: post #79
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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by iinnPP »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #86
vrganj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you sure they hold sensitive data themselves though? My understanding was they integrate their tools with customers own data and don't have access to it themselves (at least in theory). 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.

Part of the core offering is data washing.

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

#108

Post by Brajeshwar »

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.

Sometime back, someone described in a way that was interesting to read. So, I bookmarked it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44896367

Reproducing it verbatim;

“Palantir is a tech platform that consumes data from their clients in return for providing high level data-driven insights. They assign FDEs (or consultants) to really learn the details of a customers data. Foundry allows them to get single pane view of the data in an org and they actually have both the tech and engineering skills to do the dirty data cleaning jobs.

For an extravagant fee, you give them your data, they clean it for you, and then those same FDEs can tell you interesting things that you should have known, had you actually done proper data architecture in the first place.”

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

#110

Post by mikkupikku »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #105
alephnerd wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. And that is quite a leap in logic. The larger Gulf States are aligned with the US in striking Iran. And we have an incentive also to prevent another nuclear breakout from happening. Edit: can't reply > I do note that a similar reason was given for North Korea which did end up rather peacefully acquiring nuclear weapons Because we were in Iraq and Afghanistan when North Korea's nuclear breakout happened in the e…

I felt giving a primary reason would add clarity, which is why I asked. So is “prevent another nuclear breakout from happening” the primary reason? I do note that a similar reason was given for North Korea which did end up rather peacefully acquiring nuclear weapons. Edit: so to confirm that is your stated primary reason? Any other reasons you can think of?

Primary reason is because Israel and American zionists (mostly evangelical christians) lobby for it. The KSA and friends also lobbying for it is just icing on the cake for American politicians.
Post reply on HN