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

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #182

thewebguyd wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we adopt their language because things are already bad we are saying that their power is now the only reality that matters, we are giving up any form of resistance. We killed people under the name of Department of Defense too. Giving them the name is giving them the legitimacy to continue to justify the violence, and signals to the rest of the population that no one is coming to help and the new order is absolute.…

As a non-American, I think that Americans treating concrete problems as less important than linguistic games does an awful lot more to legitimise the violence.

Post by stasomatic » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #273

stasomatic wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discret…

It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions. This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civ…

Post by zulux » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #251

specproc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons are very clear: Bibi owns Trump, Israel will unlikely have a US president as supportive again, they want as many facts on the ground as they can get whilst they have him.

[flagged]

Post by jghn » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #63

leonidasrup wrote: post #8

Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company. I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.

> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company. The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" t…

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

tapland wrote: post #335

solid_fuel wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senate Democrats have made at least 5 attempts to stop this. Every Democrat voted in favor except Fetterman. Every republican opposed the attempt except Ron Paul. The Republicans are entirely responsible for the war in Iran - they started it and have opposed every attempt to reign the administration in. Don't play this "both sides" game when one side is clearly causing the issue here. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/p…

I mean. The side voting while knowing they can't stop it that way, the definition of optics, thought this was worth it to not cater to their anti-war voters, no? Both side bad yeah, you seem to think the solution is still to cling to the lesser of two evils. Hell, dem presidential candidates were praising Trumps Iran policy up until the bombs started falling. There is no evidence they _actually_ care about a war with…