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

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

#401

Post by jjtheblunt »

Zigurd wrote: post #152
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.

Boeing is a US defense contractor. Yet there are plenty of Boeing employees who can have a high expectation of ethics in their jobs. You may think you are being even handed and neutral in some way. If you are actually, find me that part of Palantir that's doing good.

https://www.palantir.com/interoperability/

looks to be a computing tool used for purposes currently popular and not warcraft

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

#402

Post by UltraSane »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #286
UltraSane wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It was always a terroristic, offensive force." Even during WW2?

Yes. Netanyahu has pretended to justify destroying civilians in Gaza by saying the US did it first in Dresden.

I don't care what Netanyahu says. Why do you?

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

#403

Post by keybored »

spwa4 wrote: post #301
reactordev wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the administration’s love of Axis of Allies, or is it allies of axis? They don’t know, they got distracted by the mustaches and the desire to conquer the world.

You do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since. And the US ... retreated. We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat.…

They didn’t even retreat from places like Italy because... the communists might be successful. So the CIA backed fascists to sabotage them.

And the US ... retreated. harumph And interferred, and supported right-wing militias, and invaded countries by themselves, and supported coups, and so on.

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

#404

Post by Lio »

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…

> We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate,

As a third party watching I just assumed it was a “dead cat”[1] to get people to stop talking about the Epstein files.

Obviously the Iranian government are not good guys either but the timing of this war… it just looks very odd.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy

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

#405

Post by psadauskas »

spwa4 wrote: post #376
cogman10 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done. Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, etc. US conquest was quiet similar to British conquest. They didn't make their conquered people citizens (that'd make things tricky for exploitation) so instead they make…

Let's compare with the Soviets and conclude the obvious: the US did retreat.

The US has over 128 military bases in 55 foreign countries.

Russia has 12, mostly in former Soviet countries. China has 3.

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

#407

Post by pedalpete »

55% Palantir revenue comes from government contracts and 50% from the US govenment.

With this "are we the bad guys" perspective, I wonder how much of the "evil" they are apparently doing is a result of the current view a majority of people globally have with the current administration?

Though we may find it difficult to separate the two, because it seems leadership and the founders of Palantir are supportive of, and in some ways responsible for, Trump getting elected, but with different leadership using the tools in different ways, would we still consider Palantir the bad guys?

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

#409

Post by JumpCrisscross »

psadauskas wrote: post #405
spwa4 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's compare with the Soviets and conclude the obvious: the US did retreat.

The US has over 128 military bases in 55 foreign countries. Russia has 12, mostly in former Soviet countries. China has 3.

> Russia has 12, mostly in former Soviet countries. China has 3

To be fair, you're comparing land powers–that tend to annex their holdings–with a maritime power, who tend to trade with and maintain favourable ports at their conquests/allies. So yeah, China doesn't have any foreign bases in Tibet. But that's because it annexed it in the 1950s.

Put together, America obviously has a larger military than China or Russia. But before Russia became a rump, the Soviet Union could marshall military resources comparable to–and for one decade, in excess of–those of the United States for much of the post-War era.

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