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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

#121
Obviously, just look at what the Palantir stones did to Saruman and Denethor. They're a corrupting force, both in the middle-earth case and in the our-earth case.

Thiel has made no secret of his intent to use technology to dispense with that pesky democracy problem that billionaires have, and Palantir is pretty obviously his attempt to do just that. It's a reductio-ad-absurdum argument against listening to your citizens:

You put it in the hands of a populist demagogue, the power to apply hyper-targeted pain to their enemies amplifies their darker tendencies, and when evil happens you say: "look, the people can't be trusted." Meanwhile, you use it to direct the pointy end of the state's stick towards people you don't like (because the demagogue is too lazy to actually use those hyper-targeting features themself) so you can interfere with democratic attempts to limit your power without bothering to pay for the pepper spray.

Nobody in their right mind would want their government anywhere near it.

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody needs to wrap up open source AI/ML and sell it to governments / defense, and do the integration... (e.g. open source Python face recognition libraries, openCV, YOLO object detection, etc. and more recently LLMs.)

'Do the integration' is where all the fun and money is.

And the work.

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

#123
post #56
post #29

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

[flagged]

He acts like a villain.

He talks about his company's business in inhumane terms - Karp seems to me to enjoy piercing what is a longstanding euphemism of "for national security purposes" used by nation-states and security contractors, by employing what has become his signature (paraphrasing) rhetoric of, ".. and through using our products this can have the outcome of killing of certain specific people". That seems like a deliberate rhetorical choice rather than anything to do with, "the spectrum."

SO, I disagree about "the spectrum".

EDIT: And to be clear about MY opinion ... "villain" => "evil" => "dividing humanity" => "inhumane" => "post-human hellscape" / "humans for anti-human behavior" / "philosophy of capitalizing upon destruction"

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

#124
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#125
post #109

It is a complete no-brainer that Thiel and his minions shouldn't be let anywhere near anything health or security related.

[flagged]

Peter Thiel is at least cosplaying a super-villain.

Palantir is mass surveillance as a product, including "predictive policing". He's been grooming JD Vance as the next president. He has given lectures about the anti-Christ, and seems overly interested in armageddon. And life extension, like getting blood transfusions from the young and joking that he's a "vampire".

"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." So which one does he plan to deprive the western world of?

https://quasa.io/media/peter-thiel-and-the-project-of-a-new-...

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

#126
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

gestures broadly In fact, I would say the burden of proof is largely on those who would say that Palantir and Thiel can be trusted despite all of their actions and rhetoric.

It's very fair to say that basically no one should be trusted with the large piles of data accumulated by various governments. But I would like to know why GP calls out Thiel specifically. Would they be just as mad at GovCloud?

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

#127
post #56
post #29

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

[flagged]

You and many of your repliers are framing this as a “like” thing: it’s not.

The key question is “can you trust this guy?” and he is so clearly not trustable it’s amazing.

Makes them look like the FTX of data processing.

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

#128

It is a complete no-brainer that Thiel and his minions shouldn't be let anywhere near anything health or security related.

https://www.ft.com/content/fc1e7e9a-9d5d-4217-b9b2-38069eb11...

> US tech billionaire and Maga donor Peter Thiel is starting a series of closed-door lectures about the antichrist in Rome on Sunday, putting him on a collision course with Pope Leo XIV, the Catholic Church’s first American pontiff.

This sort of stuff might go down well with fundamentalists in america, but it has no place in the advanced world.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So they are data brokers with data analysis combined. Why don't we ban data brokers in the first place?

Why would you ban data brokers?

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

#130
post #109

It is a complete no-brainer that Thiel and his minions shouldn't be let anywhere near anything health or security related.

[flagged]

- Palantir built ICE's surveillance infrastructure. The technology concentrates power, and with the current government have zero oversight means this is a dangerous game that is being played. [0]

- Thiel has literally said that freedom and democracy are not compatible. [1]

- He has suggested conservatives should stage a military coup. [1]

- Secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, thereby all but destroying it.

- He still believes and pushes the debunked race science.

There's probably many other things I'm missing, but overall he's seems like a not so nice person as far as people go. Overall there is zero reason to trust anything that he has his hands on. Especially not things that matter in a national security context. This applied to all countries, including America.

[0] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-immigrat...

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/owne...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/26/paypal-co-foun...

[3] https://bylinetimes.com/2025/09/18/peter-thiels-race-science...

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