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Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-... Here is Hezbollah boasting to Reuters before the pagers attack, about how it moved to using pagers and couriers to counter Israeli intelligence. As you can guess, with the advent of mobile phones in the 2000s, pagers became obsolete in Lebanon
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Doctors don't use pagers anymore, just like tech on calls used to and don't anymore. Mobile phones are far superior for that, and are very available anywhere in the world, and especially to doctors
Regarding whether that's brilliant, that is not my wording, but generally it was quite mild compared to the methods of Hezbollah and was highly successful in ending a war with very little bloodshed. The other alternative was tried in 2006 and in Gaza, and fighting a terror organization entrenched in an urban setting means bombings and killing civilians in the process. This was not the end result as Hezbollah fell apart relatively quickly afterwards, so I think it was good compared to any alternative for Lebanese and Israelis
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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So the indiscriminate mass detonation of explosive devices is not terrorism? Are you aware of how many civilian casualties there were as a result of this attack? Would this be acceptable if Hezbollah did this to Israeli military officers?
The attack was by definition discriminate. I don't think there's an attack in modern history that was more targeted and had less collateral damage. The attack targeted hundreds Hezbollah leaders, who bought and used those pagers. There was minimal collateral damage among civilians amounting to unverified allegations that a child of a Hezbollah member was maimed, and some minor other damage. The explosives in the pagers were measured in grams, and the explosions were relatively small, specifically to minimize collateral damage.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#275So, what exactly did Palantir provide? I'm staying out of commenting whether or not this was legal/justified and asking strictly what service this was that was sold. Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data? EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this pos…
Most likely as a data lakehouse, but the Palantir angle is most likely overstated - Palantir has a tiny presence in Israel, and has had a history of overstating it's intel and defense credentials (eg. A three letter agency that churned Palantir was named for years after before they stopped calling them out). That said, I have heard some positive feedback about Palantir's data integration capabilities - most other ven…
Their association with defense comes from the fact they got their start in industry thanks to in-q-tel which literally has the purpose of funding technology for the CIA and intelligence agencies. So it would not be surprising if they were heavily intertwined in that world.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#276I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war. Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Terrorism doesn't mean "anything that makes someone scared," or else all wars would be acts of terrorism. There isn't a universally agreed upon definition, but generally it refers to targeting non-combatants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the le…
So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on? Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
While I'm only adding to the choir of people telling you "of course," since I'm directly the person you're responding to it still feels worth saying: yes, of course, if America and Venezuela went to war, it's completely legal for Venezuela to attempt to kill the U.S. President.
As an American, I certainly hope they would fail. But do I think it's legal? Yes: it's a targeted strike on the leader of an enemy country they'd theoretically be at war with. Do I think it's wise? Well — no, Venezuela has a much smaller military, and assassinating the U.S. President would trigger a massive war that would devastate Venezuela for decades while modestly inconveniencing American taxpayers. But legal? Yes.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the indiscriminate mass detonation of explosive devices is not terrorism? Are you aware of how many civilian casualties there were as a result of this attack? Would this be acceptable if Hezbollah did this to Israeli military officers?
The attack was by definition discriminate. I don't think there's an attack in modern history that was more targeted and had less collateral damage. The attack targeted hundreds Hezbollah leaders, who bought and used those pagers. There was minimal collateral damage among civilians amounting to unverified allegations that a child of a Hezbollah member was maimed, and some minor other damage. The explosives in the page…
It was indiscriminate in timing, location, and device possession.
Unless you’re saying that the country behind a self-evaluated >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza went through rigorous protocols to minimize harm in this attack?
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#279This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?
If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at. The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.
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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#280I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war. Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
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Monitoring people for... Supporting opinions that don't agree with you?