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

From what I've seen the focus on a few big companies can have a backwards effect on some people's sense of morals. I've heard a few people justify their work for unethical companies as "At least it's not as bad as what Facebook does".

It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a program to sell customer data by saying that everyone does it, from Facebook to Google. When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it. They had read so much about big companies collecting customer data to sell that they thought everyone did it and therefore it was okay.

The palantir of the novel weren't surveillance tools. They were a party line, the Gondorians used them to talk to their various outposts throughout middle earth, the three we see in the movies (there may be more in the books, it's been a long time) were at Isenguard, Minis Tirith and the Palantir of Minis Ithil (now Minis Morgul) that Sauron took to Baradur.

When Sauron took Minas Ithil and captured the Palanir that was kept there the Kings of Gondor forbade the use of them. It is shown that Sauron can use them to corrupt and read the thoughts of the other users. We also see him use them for their intended purpose when he conspires with Saruman.

All to say Peter Thiel doesn't understand Lord of the Rings.

The very first chapter was actually excellent in setting my relationship to the book going forward, because stuff like this twanged against my brain and made me think, "Oh, she just really wanted to be powerful and influential and chased whatever she thought would give her that"

> [after surviving a shark attack] why did this happen to me? If I survived against the odds, surely there had to be a reason? [...] After becoming an attorney, I ended up in the foreign service because it seemed like a way to change the world, and I wanted an adventure. I ended up at the UN because I genuinely believed it was the seat of global power. The place you go when you want to change the world.

> It seemed obvious that politics was going to happen on Facebook, and when it did, when it migrated to this enormous new gathering place, Facebook and the people who ran it would be at the center of everything. They’d be setting the rules for this global conversation. I was in awe of its ineffable potential.

> The vastness of the information Facebook would be collecting was unprecedented. Data about everything. Data that was previously entirely private. Data on the citizens of every country. A historic amount of data and so incredibly valuable. Information is power.

> After years of looking for things that would change the world, I thought I’d found the biggest one going. Like an evangelist, I saw Facebook’s power confirmed in every part of everyday life. Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.

> This is a revolution.

> What do you do when you see a revolution is coming? I decide I will stop at nothing to be part of it. At the center of the action. Once you see it, you can’t sit on the sidelines. I’m desperate to be part of it. I can’t remember ever wanting anything more.

When I worked at a company that was using Palantir's software about 15 years ago the average age of a Palantir employee was in the early 20s in my experience.

It was almost certainly everyone's first job.

It's not too hard to think of ways you can get a bunch of young folks do your bidding without them questioning the motives or what kind of moral challenges the job has.

I had that reaction when they mailed me an offer to join a recruitment event sometime around 2013.

Not quite as creepy as recently when Anduril sent an email saying I was "on their radar".