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

211–220 of 326 posts

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

#211

Post by kypro »

watwut wrote: post #164
kypro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's even worse... I'm not sure I can personally get onboard with the idea of a government preventing people from obtaining security clearance for their personal or political opinions to be honest, unless they are directly opposed to the national security interests of the US of course... What relevance does someone not liking his opinions and politics have on whether or not he should obtain security clearance?…

It is 100% ok to hate on someone due to their opinions and goals. And being neurodivergent does not excuse having fascist opinions and goals. Simple as that. And when it comes to security clearance, yes your ideology plays the role, always did. And should play the role. A simple example is that if your general ideology is "I dont care about law and I prefer to be an agent of a foreign country" then you should have no…

> It is 100% ok to hate on someone due to their opinions and goals. And being neurodivergent does not excuse having fascist opinions and goals. Simple as that.

I agree.

> And when it comes to security clearance, yes your ideology plays the role, always did. And should play the role. A simple example is that if your general ideology is "I dont care about law and I prefer to be an agent of a foreign country" then you should have no clearance.

Of course. What's important here though is what ideologies it's reasonable discriminate against. Someone's opinion of someones politics isn't really relevant, unless their political views are a clear risk to national security.

I'd agree that someone being communist sympathising or fascist sympathising could be reason to reason to revoke someone's security clearance. Whether it's reasonable to suggest Karp holds fascist opinions though, I won't comment on beyond suggesting that might not be the most charitable take.

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

#212

Post by krupan »

kypro wrote: post #85
xvector wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be people dislike him because he enables anti-democratic capabilities like mass domestic surveillance, and enthusiastically supports an administration with little regard for the law?

What's the argument though, no security clearance for people who have the wrong politics? Also, Palantir only works with democratic countries for a reason... They might provide "anti-democratic capabilities", but by that definition any defence company or AI company wouldn't be liable for security clearance because they also provide capabilities which could be used in anti-democratic ways.

"What's the argument though, no security clearance for people who have the wrong politics?"

Absolutely! It shouldn't be based on Democrat or Republican politics, but promoting politics that undermine the Constitution absolutely should disqualify you from getting a security clearance

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

#213

Post by krupan »

readitalready wrote: post #82
zdragnar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They literally do, since the people making purchasing decisions are usually the ones that ranked up through a system they used and know the intricacies of, including all the pain points. Randos don't become general managers.

People who actually care about the day to day pain points of jira also do not become general managers

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

#214

Post by Cpoll »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #81
iheartbiggpus wrote: post #58

Why do the worst companies have the best names.

Palantir isn't a good name. It's a disastrously bad one, if you ask me. It's a constant scandal as every five minutes somebody gets the bright idea that "ackshually the Palantir were a tool for evil made by a demon!!" They're never able to live it down. It always comes up. And it makes them seem, in a way, careless.

Ackshually the Palantir were made by the Elves of Valinor, and weren't made as a tool for evil.

In fact, there's a very interesting theme there: The Palantir are only as useful as their users are wise. The power to see is disastrous if you don't know where to look and how to interpret what you see.

If they named it with that in mind, I'd say it's a very thoughtful name, and a prescient caution. But I doubt it.

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

#215

Post by infinitewars »

sschueller wrote: post #198

Palantir is dragging a small independent Swiss investigative newspaper to court because they reported[1] about Palantir getting the door slammed in their face in by several Swiss government agencies including the military over the last years. No one wants this turd of a company. [1] https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-palantir-...

Now with Golden Dome, Palantir is a global security threat not just a national one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

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

#216

Post by themafia »

sschueller wrote: post #198

Palantir is dragging a small independent Swiss investigative newspaper to court because they reported[1] about Palantir getting the door slammed in their face in by several Swiss government agencies including the military over the last years. No one wants this turd of a company. [1] https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-palantir-...

Oracle 2.0.

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

#217

Post by krupan »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #179
jacquesm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just give you one, and you can google for others: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." For a guy with his access to data, yes, that makes everybody's security worse.

This is an incomplete quote from a pro-freedom essay: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio... Edit: Also, that quote does not provide evidence that he is "on the record" saying he would abuse access or make health or security worse.

That "essay" is only 14 paragraphs. It is pro freedom on the surface, but that just adds weight to the overall message that he is anti democracy. That he believes we'll find more freedom by abondoning democracy and moving to some other system doesn't reassure me of his sanity.

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

#218

Post by harvey9 »

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…

The UK NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world. It absolutely could choose to hire and cultivate that level of expertise but then how would senior management retire into Palantir sinecures?

(It actually has quite a few expert staff who are not delighted with the tools they have been given but they don't have the lobbying power of Palantir and the cluster of consulting firms around it)

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

#219

Post by b800h »

Calavar wrote: post #182
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #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 citiz…

I still don't understand why Theil and Karp decided to name their surveillance tech company after a device that is best known for being used by an evil dark lord to decieve and corrupt. It's like the Mitchell and Webb skit "are we the baddies" except they're the ones who designed the uniforms with skulls on them.

[flagged]

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

#220

Post by lyu07282 »

crimsoneer wrote: post #104
watwut wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

> has spent 20-ish years working with intelligence agencies from a bunch of different countries

This is supposed to count towards their integrity? There is no way your posts aren't satire, actually great job you almost convinced me lmao

Post reply on HN