Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon • Hacker News Board

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#571

Post by jackling » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 1:58 PM UTC

richardfeynman wrote: post #476

jackling wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Premise 1: The pagers were military devices, but based on what we know about them, it is impossible to assert that all were in the custody of Hezbollah combatants at the moment they exploded. One would need to prove that the pagers were physically on the combatants’ persons—and not, for example, sitting on a coffee table or elsewhere—at the time of detonation. Premise 2: The physical location of the pagers directly a…

Premise 2 is false. The vast majority of the injured were Hezbollah terrorists. You say The Times of Israel reported "many of the injured were civilians, including children, women, and non-combatant" - show me a source, please. It's also false that footage shows numerous injured civilians with bandaged hands and faces. Again, show a credible source and explain how this happened to them.

Cmon man, there are sources pasted all over this thread from my discussion with OP. I'm not going to post the same source that was already discussed with him, why would I waste my time to do so?

OP did split this chain, but a sibling comment has the sources you want.

EDIT: Getting downvoted because I didn't want to paste the same source N times. Nice.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#572

Post by jackling » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #472

jackling wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Premise 1: The pagers were military devices, but based on what we know about them, it is impossible to assert that all were in the custody of Hezbollah combatants at the moment they exploded. One would need to prove that the pagers were physically on the combatants’ persons—and not, for example, sitting on a coffee table or elsewhere—at the time of detonation. Premise 2: The physical location of the pagers directly a…

Israel was able to monitor communications on the pagers for years and this allowed them to be quite certain of who they were targeting. "Footage from Reuters, Al Jazeera, AP, and local Lebanese reporters shows numerous injured civilians" How do you know they were civilians?

How do YOU know they were terrorist? What would you call people who were around the individual with that pagers?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#573

Post by jackling » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:01 PM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #474

jackling wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost like explosives… explode, and hit the people and surroundings near them. Shrapnel travels. You’re trying to derive who had the pagers from first principles, yet you don’t seem to understand how a bomb actually works.

The bomb in the pagers was so weak it could only harm someone directly holding it or if it was in a pocket.

There are videos where the surrounding people were hurt by the pagers, so, what's the explaination for that?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#574

Post by array_key_first » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

dlubarov wrote: post #555

cess11 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one it wasn't targeted, but either way, if it, as you claim, was targeted then it would be even worse because it's worse to kill and maim kids by targeting them than by being indifferent.

Targeting Hezbollah operatives is certainly targeting, yes. The fact that there was still some nonzero harm to civilians, despite the targeting, does not refute that. Targeting doesn't imply zero collateral damage, which is an impossible standard.

The collateral damage was obvious and predictable. If you know about the potential collateral damage and do it anyway, then it's not targeted, even if you say it's targeted.

For example: say I want to kill someone. I know they live in NYC. So I target them by dropping a nuke on NYC.

Is this a targeted attack? Obviously not. But I said it was targeted! Doesn't work that way.

If you want to target people, you try your best to kill just them. If you're planting bombs in mundane places and setting them off in public, you are not doing that.

I don't know why we feel the need to defend military operatives by essentially claiming they're the stupidest people on Earth and cannot put 2 and 2 together. No no, they can. Meaning, this was intentional.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#575

Post by PepperdineG » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:08 PM UTC

juliusdavies wrote: post #439

jackling wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information. > along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike I am not sure what this means. To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against yo…

Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “? Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers? Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.

>Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers?

Dennis Duffy, but he is the Beeper King.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#576

Post by robertkoss » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

lolive wrote: post #157

robertkoss wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Foundry is insanely impressive tbh. If you set it up correctly, its insanely powerful

I second that. My company is really changing its point of view on data at scale thanks to their tools. [note: SAP announces DataSphere for 2026, and their stack is surprisingly similar :)]

Yeah, but Foundry is so ahead, not seeing DataSphere competing there honestly. The only reason is, you already are on SAP and don't want a second system.

Also the engineering / product culture @Palantir is diametrically opposed to what exists at SAP, so I favour Palantir.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#577

Post by robertkoss » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

therobots927 wrote: post #64

btbuildem wrote: post #27

> Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (artic…

Maybe they aren’t optimizing for user experience and are instead optimizing for how much data they can suck into their central db?

I will never understand how people honestly think that there is a such a thing as a central DB. Do you really think that Gov Agencies from all over the world deploy Gotham just connected to the internet without controlling inflow / outflow of data? I would bet money that 99% of critical systems are not even connected to the internet but air-gapped because, believe it or not, people at those agencies are not that stupid.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#578

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #420

tptacek wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason foreign military organizations don't routinely target active duty US military generals isn't that they're worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds. It's that the United States armed forces will very quickly reduce their entire organization, and much of the surrounding area, to its combustion products. There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get…

> US military ... worried about being dragged into some mostly-fictitious courtroom to answer for their misdeeds... Acutely aware of this fact, yeah. > There aren't a lot of opportunities in life you get to use the word "annihilatory"; this is one of them. Not wrong. None of the former great empires that fell were as military capable as the super powers of the modern era. > And in the immortal words of William Munny…

Of course, by Mamdani's logic here we're fully justified in mobilizing force on the scale of the Allied war in Europe during WW2 against any and every nation-state for the crime of being a nation-state. Go ahead and bomb Dresden again out of nowhere, because the nation-state is genocide!

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#579

Post by NickC25 » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #549

justin66 wrote: post #448

Interestingly just nine days ago someone here shared a link to the US's Law of War manual for military personnel. It's pretty good for what it is. Since countries base this stuff on the same international treaties they've all signed, it's a guide to Israel's conduct during war (or just about anyone's) as well as the US's. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46147605 https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jul/31/2003271432/-…

International law, as poorly enforced as it is, needs to have answers what to do with organizations that exist for the reason to destroy another country and that is financed through hostile nations. In this case Iran. Lebanon suffers as well here and Israel certainly isn't the main threat. The Geneva convention doesn't apply to combatants in this case and you cannot be more targeted than this operation. You spoiler a…

> needs to have answers what to do with organizations that exist for the reason to destroy another country

Organizations...like Irgun?

Iran has existed for thousands of years....the Persian people's existence predates Judaism by hundreds of years. So how you equate Iran with being a state explicitly existing to destroy Israel, a state that is less than 100 years old, is beyond me. But don't let me get in the way of your narrative.

>Lebanon suffers as well here and Israel certainly isn't the main threat.

Out of all the major (and minor) actors in the theater of middle eastern geopolitics politics, only one nation has nuclear weapons. That nation also has a lot of nuclear weapons and isn't a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. That nation has also attacked US Warships. Another nation IS a signatory to said treaty and regularly allows international nuclear weapons inspectors into its enrichment facilities.

Note: fuck the Iranian regime they are religious nutjobs that are suffocating Iranians and have been for decades. I don't support ANY religious regime no matter where on earth it is.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#580

Post by underdeserver » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

tkel wrote: post #395

underdeserver wrote: post #384

I am in awe of the opinions in this thread. Really. If Israel, unprovoked, randomly carried out this attack it would be one thing. But: 1. Hezbollah had been continuously, deliberately firing rockets at civilians since October 8th, 2023 displacing tens of thousands and killing multiple civilians including 12 children in a playground in Majdal Shams. 2. Hezbollah embeds itself and fires from within civilian population…

If I were Israel, I would have not invaded Gaza, which would have resulted in far fewer civilian casualties, and also would have ended the strikes by Hezbollah. Also, if you look at the data on attacks by Israel against Lebanon, they are disproportionate, Israel launching 10x more airstrikes, even going so far as to level entire city blocks of apartment buildings in Beirut. I remember just on the first day of attacks…

> If I were Israel, I would have not invaded Gaza

During the war Israel was attacked from the territories of Gaza, Lebanon, the west bank, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen. All of these were unprovoked, except maybe Iran. All by parties openly calling for Israel's destruction.

Gaza had invaded Israel, killing 1200 and kidnapping 250.

What do you think the above attackers would do if Israel showed there was effectively no retaliation for doing something like that? You are asking Israel to commit suicide.

> If I were Israel, I would simply stop acting as a fanatic aggressor

Israel was attacked first by each and every party above (except maybe Iran), beginning with the Hamas attack.

> with no regard for human life.

In nearly every bombing in Lebanon, and most bombings in Gaza, Israel preceded the attacks with leaflet, social media posts, and phone calls calling people to leave the area. It has achieved the best civilian-combatant death ratio of any urban war in modern history. How does that show no regard for human life?