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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

#251
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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I'm not sure you can describe somebody who supports ICE in its current incarnation, who profits from surveillance of vulnerable populations, who believes in revenge (cf Gawker), who abuses wealth (NZ citizenship shenanigans) as "a very thoughtful Christian", unless you do a lot of definitional work on "Christian".

Talking about the antichrist doesn't make you Christian.

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

#252

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.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is if the Chinese support for Russia can be broken, by economical incentive or threat. But anyway, over short or long the EU needs to build its own military to a strength it can at least work as a strong deterrence for aggressors.

> if the Chinese support for Russia can be broken, by economical incentive... China is not interested in breaking with Russia. Russia helps China put pressure on Japan [0], helps China put pressure on South Korea [1], allows China to expand it's influence in Central Asia [2], acts as a backchannel for China-India diplomatic normalization [3], gives China the ability to access ONG without dealing with Hormuz or Malacc…

You have a very static view there. In my estimation the US is on the way down, at least economically/financially. Their internal stability is already somewhat broken. It will be hard to continue to project power without real allies and the internal issues they have and will have.

So, if the EU is so much inferior, why did they not buckle in the Greenland issue, but Trump was called back by his puppeteers? Why can they say "no" to supporting the US and Israel against Iran? And if they wanted the EU leaders could go further and match tariffs one by one and nothing serious would happen. The picture you are painting does not account for the facts. The relationship is not between equals but lord and vassal is also not a good fit.

I am not sure about the trade figures in your link [13]. It does not open for me. I seem to recall a significantly higher export volume going to Europe. But anyway, China is going to have their own internal issues with an aging populace, an end to strong economical growth and ever-growing social inequality. They are also too rational (compared to the US) to disrupt good business by mutual bullying (at least overtly and systematically).

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

#254
post #208
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by spectrum the psychopathy spectrum is meant, then yes, he's on the spectrum.

People frequently misunderstand me for someone who is lacking emotions. I can't speak for Karp but I just experience and express them differently. He may be on the psychopathy spectrum. I don't know. But it wouldn't surprise me if people are misunderstanding him. Given you're making assumptions that he is on the psychopathy spectrum here, I will assume statistically that's unlikely and it's much more likely that peop…

> I will assume statistically that's unlikely

Statistically, CEOs of large companies are quite well represented on the psychopathy spectrum.

Just a few of his quotes:

> Critics calling Palantir a surveillance company are “parasitic.”

> We don’t do holidays.

> he's proud "the death and pain that is brought to our enemies is mostly, not exclusively, brought by Palantir."

> About the legalisation of war crimes: "Part of the reason why I like this questioning is the more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you’re going to need my product,"

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

#255
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.palantir.com/palantir-is-still-not-a-data-compan... > Contrary to some media reports, we are not a surveillance company. We do not sell personal data of any kind. We don’t provide data-mining as a service.

As we say in the uk, “chinny-reckon”

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

#256
post #201
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great name if your target customer base is people who want to be evil by surveilling everything. Behold my next company, "Eye of Sauron LLC"

Nah - that customer base would much rather a mean-nothing name like "Salesforce". The real evil people don't revel so much in their evilness they're much more in the "ends justify the means" camp where they can try and hide their evilness from their conscience. Nobody wants to wear a pin saying "I am, in fact, a terrible person that the world would be better without."

Hmm, that's also true. Maybe it's about different generations of evil, or old and new evil, where new evil wants to adopt all the flashy symbols of evil while old evil understands it's best to keep a low profile

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

#257

Can someone explain why Palantir are seen as such a threat? My understanding is their product is a PowerBI++ and they don't host any user data themselves. Are people scared of backdoors?

My reading of [1] is that Palantir does data fusion. Their software, when installed on an organization's peripheral systems by their FDEs, centralizes all the org's data (within the org - not at palantir), and allows the org's management to do analyses on the pool.

I'm guessing that people are scared that the state will install one big palantir instance on all its systems. So that anything any part of the state learns about you, in any context or interaction, can be effortlessly used against you in every other context (perhaps via parallel construction in a lawsuit).

Basically, the fear would be that palantir makes mass surveillance data actionable, fuses surveillance programs, and incorporates most IT into mass surveillance programs.

The government would become less like a series of seperate agencies, more like a big consciousness that knows things (knows centrally, everything it was told anywhere).

Note this is just my interpretation of the fear.

Its fuzzy. Others may know more about palantir than me and thus have a more precise and grounded concern.

[1] https://archive.ph/6ljwy#selection-2539.194-2539.400

See also: https://redlib.privadency.com/r/Futurology/comments/4o02p3/o...

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

#258
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies need databases lol. I don't know how you think a b2b company could run sales without a CRM like Salesforce. To give your question a generous interpretation, Salesforce is more valuable than Apptio or your home grown CRM because it already has all the features any sales org needs, and all the fragmented sales and marketing tooling are already integrated with it. And Sales is a very expensive and also high RO…

It's true, literally no b2b sales companies existed before Salesforce. We must all continue to pay for Salesforce and support its workflows for now until the endless future, lest b2b sales vanish again.

Lol, nice straw man there.

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

#259
post #40

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.

Seems unlikely. I've seen teams at GDS + teams based on the GDS way of working in other UK gov departments solve some really knarly problems.

But how many people can you attract, and how quickly can they get the stuff done? There are a lot of sacrifices you have to make working for the gov that not everyone will make.

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

#260

We're not a serious country anymore. We build very little. We control very little. Three years ago the war in Ukraine broke out causing the energy price crisis and the short term solution was the government paying a portion of everyone's bills. Three years later we're in the same situation again thanks to the US and Israel's warmongering. Are we prepared? No. What's the solution? Freezing the price caps and paying a…

You say that as if a "serious" country would have a better solution. Which countries are "serious" in your view?

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