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How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

theintercept.com

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Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#51

Post by holydude »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
0x27081990 wrote: post #29

Most comments here seem to hate Peter Thiel, but when it comes to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page (all whom seem to be in bed with governments since a long time and worked with Hillary Clinton's campaign staff), well there's nothing wrong there because democrats are the good guys, right? What would you do in their place? They don't make the rules. Government does, and you vote for government. So don't try…

Multiple people can be bad for reasons entirely their own, "but shes doing it TOOOOOOO" is the reasoning and defense of a child.

Where did he imply he was defending it ? He was just pointing out that Peter Thiel gets all the hate while Zuck and the others are praised as technology innovators and saviors of humanity.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#52

Post by zzzeek »

muninn_ wrote: post #50
zzzeek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A private corporation can't force me to do anything. unless they are paid to be the local police force. > If a private corporation came to try arrest me for not paying a bill that I contest, I can kill them for breaking into my property. then they would bring much larger guns. > I can't kill a government official over the same - with the government I have no natural recourse, only legal. you can vote. With Blackwat…

All of that is a result of government action and the government hiring private corporations, not private corporations acting on their own.

nonsense. Let's go to libertarian land. There's no government for internal affairs. We live in a town. Are there any police? No police? Really? Of course there are police. The townspeople got tired of all the poors breaking into their houses and shops and whatnot, didn't feel like all individually standing outside holding guard all night, got together to pool their money and hired a police force to handle the issue and built a jail to throw all the poors into. And that police force is easily corruptible by the wealthiest members of the town who decided they don't like you very much.

It's just like software. Any community needs to have some degree of shared resources, and in the absense of government this leads them to "roll your own". You're in the same reinventing the wheel problem except real lives are at stake.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#53

Post by rudolf0 »

trome wrote: post #2

So, why does anyone pay attention to the truly awful human being known as Peter Thiel? Between his plots to destroy the infrastructure that allowed PayPal and Y Combinator to be built, and his active attempts to rip away rights from other LGBT people, of which he is one, it seems like a poor idea to pay this person any mind.

Trump is a lot of things, but he isn't really anti-LGBT.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#54

Post by api »

otalp wrote: post #36
redwood wrote: post #4

I just don't understand how he can call himself a libertarian. Self-rationalizing has no ends.

I don't think he's a traditional American libertarian. If you read his book Zero To One, he states that he thinks a fundamental truth that most people don't realize is that improving technology is more important than globalization for the human race, which is fine, but that leads him to the conclusion that things like welfare and tax increases are an abomination holding back progress, which makes him against both. I…

That's a little bit of an oversimplification. Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe since current technology (fossil fuel energy systems, slow transit, inefficient power grids, etc.) cannot possibly support the entire human race at a modern developed world standard of living.

I don't agree with everything Peter thinks, but this seems like a flat fact to me. Present-day technology as deployed in the Western world cannot support the entire human race at a Western standard of living and may not even be able to support the Western world at its current standard of living for another hundred years.

Ask yourself what a slow motion Malthusian catastrophe might look like. Maybe you'd have insane levels of pollution (Google "asian brown cloud") as countries with 3X the US population try to achieve US standards of living, massive inflation in the cost of necessities, economic and political turmoil as systems buckle, stagnation and the destruction of the middle class in developed economies, ...?

Edit:

Thiel originally jumped out at me because he was one of the few people who sees something I've considered self-evident for years but that many other people seem unable to see-- that we entered a kind of minor dark age around 1970. Most of what we are doing now is just an incremental refinement of tech that was invented in the 50s and 60s. We stopped inventing.

I don't know if I would agree with Thiel about the causes of this, but I give him credit for actually seeing it.

When I saw SpaceX land a rocket I was filled with an incredible sense of optimism that the 1970s might finally be over.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#55

Post by burkaman »

angry-hacker wrote: post #17

What about ex president Obama who actually used the tech? So much outrage for Thiel, but where were the protests when Obama wiretapped the world? Ps. I think Thiel is a hypocrite if he really thinks himself as libertarian. Also, despite having money and power I think he has big balls to go against SV where he made himself. I also don't understand how did he became so powerful, every time he talks.. He has charisma of…

What do you mean where were the protests? Where have you been?

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#56

Post by disantlor »

angry-hacker wrote: post #17

What about ex president Obama who actually used the tech? So much outrage for Thiel, but where were the protests when Obama wiretapped the world? Ps. I think Thiel is a hypocrite if he really thinks himself as libertarian. Also, despite having money and power I think he has big balls to go against SV where he made himself. I also don't understand how did he became so powerful, every time he talks.. He has charisma of…

the thing about Obama is that even if he ultimately made a bad decision you got the feeling (a feeling that i would say is backed up by evidence) that he put thought and care and consideration into decisions.

i'm not trying to apologize for any particular failing of his but i think that explains the huge difference in protest reaction between him and trump

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#57

Post by muninn_ »

zzzeek wrote: post #52
muninn_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is a result of government action and the government hiring private corporations, not private corporations acting on their own.

nonsense. Let's go to libertarian land. There's no government for internal affairs. We live in a town. Are there any police? No police? Really? Of course there are police. The townspeople got tired of all the poors breaking into their houses and shops and whatnot, didn't feel like all individually standing outside holding guard all night, got together to pool their money and hired a police force to handle the issue a…

This has nothing to do with libertarianism nor serves as a coherent critique of it. In fact, some of your points are things that we see readily in governments today. As an example, many corrupt police officers exist in many government systems, including western countries. A critique of libertarianism based on such things is not well thought out.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#58

Post by stagbeetle »

trome wrote: post #5
the-dude wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with destroying PayPal ?

PayPal will almost assuredly escape unscathed, Peter Thiel pulling up the ladder after him so others cannot be successful was what I was getting at there.

I'm interested to read about this, can you point me in the right direction?

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#59

Post by burkaman »

reese_john wrote: post #8
trome wrote: post #2

So, why does anyone pay attention to the truly awful human being known as Peter Thiel? Between his plots to destroy the infrastructure that allowed PayPal and Y Combinator to be built, and his active attempts to rip away rights from other LGBT people, of which he is one, it seems like a poor idea to pay this person any mind.

What are some of his active attempts to rip away LGBT rights?

He spoke at the Republican National Convention when the platform called for conversion therapy and outlawing gay marriage (and did not address the issue at all), and he has donated to a wide range of Republican candidates, most of whom are much more vocally against LGBT rights than Trump is.

I'm not sure these qualify as "active attempts to rip away LGBT rights", but at the very least it seems to be one of his lowest priorities.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#60

Post by choxi »

api wrote: post #54
otalp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's a traditional American libertarian. If you read his book Zero To One, he states that he thinks a fundamental truth that most people don't realize is that improving technology is more important than globalization for the human race, which is fine, but that leads him to the conclusion that things like welfare and tax increases are an abomination holding back progress, which makes him against both. I…

That's a little bit of an oversimplification. Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe since current technology (fossil fuel energy systems, slow transit, inefficient power grids, etc.) cannot possibly support the entire human race at a modern developed world standard of living. I don't agree with everything Peter think…

What's your opinion about the causes of this "mini Dark Age"? Do you still feel that we're in it?
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