Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys • Hacker News Board

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#81

Post by Panda4 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #71

bastawhiz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company. The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" t…

Regardless of what the Trump administration will tell you, that's not it's name. The executive branch is not empowered to unilaterally change the name of a department.

Even by ignoring the name change, that is its function. Even if it was called department of defense, it's actually department of war.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#82

Post by uoaei » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

sfink wrote: post #39

palmotea wrote: post #24

> ...about working for a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb. Wasn't the the problem that Sauron had one so he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?

It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy. Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force…

There are morally neutral technologies, but the unique quality of surveillance data containing PII (and tools to correlate across time and space) means that it's only morally neutral until it is used in any capacity. Which is to say, it is not morally neutral.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#83

Post by Planktonne » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #71

bastawhiz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company. The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" t…

Regardless of what the Trump administration will tell you, that's not it's name. The executive branch is not empowered to unilaterally change the name of a department.

If it's what they call themselves and what they're currently doing, how much does it matter what the official name is?

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#84

Post by ien24sdq » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

This is a really important thing that people on the left in particular seem to consistently overlook: local incentives, emergent corporate behaviors, and the unconscious need to believe you’re “right” have way more explanatory power than “X is actually evil”.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#85

Post by throw0101d » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #63

leonidasrup wrote: post #8

Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company. I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.

> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company. The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" t…

On the changes to US military organization and thinking post-WW2 (and the name change):

> […] The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.”

> These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.

* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...

The author is a retired professor from the US Naval War College:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic)

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#86

Post by uoaei » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #51

chromacity wrote: post #29

I think this is a weird side effect of how we portray evil corporations in fiction and in journalism. We imagine that everyone working there is a moustache-twirling villain. And then we get a job at Meta or Flock or Palantir, look around, and don't see any moustache-twirling villains. There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys. Even if some of the outcom…

Let me tell you. I worked at a IRS equivalent service in another country, and a lot of what I did was not very different from spying in our own citizens. And you know what? there's a pervasive ideology in the place that justifies it all. One day you wake up, and you realize that you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk,…

> you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk, the general ethos is toward this vision of the tax payer

Any force employing threat of violence for control does the same. Police presence, military occupation, hell you even see it in the eyes of loss prevention folks.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#87

Post by rob74 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #63

leonidasrup wrote: post #8

Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company. I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.

> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company. The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" t…

It certainly has nothing to do with defending the country the department is located in.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#88

Post by sfink » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #57

sfink wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy. Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force…

I thoroughly disagree. Surveillance is an invasive tool of control, and as such intrinsically immoral. Just like a slew of other immoral actions, it may be a net positive when applied for a greater good, but if not used for anything, it's evil. This is trivially true to most common moral understandings. If my neighbor installs a camera pointing through my window and into my shower, applying some fancy technique to se…

That depends on the definition of "surveillance". Should a foreman not pay close attention to his workers? Should a hospital not track its patients' locations and vital stats while within the hospital? Are cameras in a jewelry shop morally wrong?

Your neighbor's surveillance of you is bad because they're violating your privacy, and using the tool of surveillance to do it. If you lived in a foggy area and they were monitoring their front walkway with a camera that was good at seeing through fog, and they happened to get a corner of your property in the camera's field of view, then you might have something to complain about but I wouldn't call it morally wrong.

I agree that surveillance is a tool of control. So are fences. It's ok to control some things.

I also agree that surveillance gets into sticky territory very, very quickly. I definitely don't have a clean dividing line between what I'd like the police to be able to see and what they shouldn't. (Especially when the temptation to share that data is so strong and frequently succumbed to.) I would probably say in some useless abstract sense, mass surveillance is also morally neutral. But given that it's proven to be pretty much impossible to implement in a way that doesn't end up serving more evil than good, I wouldn't object to calling it immoral.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#89

Post by dessimus » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #33

Starting to wonder? Everyone know what Palantir was. The name is a dead-give-away. I think it is really time that the superrich are downsized. Certain companies that are working against the people also need to be removed. Key considerations in any democracy need to be consistent. Palantir (and others) create inconsistencies. Granted, none of this will be fixed while the orange king is having his daily rage-fits, but…

Probably thought "Total Surveillance" was too on-the-nose when starting up.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#90

Post by uoaei » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

therobots927 wrote: post #64

ZunarJ5 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That manifesto was antihuman.

I’m sure a copious amount of ketamine was involved in its production.

It read like a longtime adderall addict who switched to clean meth a while ago.