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US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

thegrayzone.com

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Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#61

Post by candiddevmike »

blooalien wrote: post #55
autobodie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's called capitalism — capital has the last word. As we have seen clearly, even Trump is overwhelmingly limited by the constraints of capital.

Sadly, Fascism and Capitalism largely walk hand-in-hand these days... Their bastard love-child will almost certainly be the death of "civilized" society if allowed to continue on the path it's currently on... It's well past time society starts brainstorming a better option.

You could almost say capitalism's final form is some flavor of oligarchy fascism

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#62

Post by rafram »

rowanseymour wrote: post #32
rafram wrote: post #15

Grayzone is an extremely unreliable source which frequently publishes false stories with an anti-US bent [1][2]. The past discussion [3] has a WSJ link which should be preferred over this. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon... [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547

The WSJ article is paywalled

Of course. Faux-news outlets peddling disinformation will always be happy to let you read their work for free. Serious journalists rely on your subscription for their paycheck, not Iranian state media, like the author of the OP link [1].

And paywalled links are allowed on HN [2].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179596

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#63

Post by HaZeust »

Peter Thiel's 20-year pursuit of ensuring technology companies, and their accompanied data, are used as a highly-efficient machine for surveillance - and plutocratic-endorsed authoritarianism - is almost actualized.

I guess creating an ecosystem of these products in the form of having most of them come from the same venture capital company WAS the answer, and he was doing it so well - that even In-Q-Tel gave up on their efforts to compete with that strategy.

But Thiel said it best in that regard; "competition is for losers".

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#64

Post by epistasis »

sitkack wrote: post #45
newsclues wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don’t agree with them all the time, I find this sort of critique to be unfair and often are attempting to silence alternative media and viewpoints which is a disservice to journalism

It is an Ad hominem against the source w/o addressing the actual content of the article.

It did address the content of the article: it suggested a more reliable source that is saying the same thing.

Questioning the integrity of a source is not an ad adhominem argument. Saying that a conclusion is false because of the speaker would be an ad hominem.

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#65

Post by ryandv »

max_ wrote: post #24

- [Palantir] A surveillance company used by by spy agencies - [Meta] A social media company that has all your personal conversations & pictures, video, audio - [Open AI] Something many people at work & school are uploading sensitive data to - All run by acolytes of Peter Thiel - Current president & vp are bankrolled Peter Thiel - Top executives formally recruited into US Army. USA is sleep walking into something very…

The people want to be surveilled. This is their choice, which has been revealed billions of times since the dawn of the modern social media era. As a result I have zero pity, and the public can reap what it has sown.

Privacy advocates, cypherpunks, hackers, et cetera have been sounding the alarm bells since Room 641A, if not earlier. Not only has the Internet at large failed to heed these warnings, some of those "conscientious objectors" who refused to willingly submit their information to these systems of surveillance capitalism were actively demonized and hunted.

After all, if you are not willingly signing up for these services, social media, and voluntarily forfeiting your data to these systems, then there is something wrong with you and you should probably just sign up for that Meta account already.

You are the ones who have kept these systems running by voluntarily feeding them your time, attention, and/or data. Now the beast has reached maturity and it is too late to do anything about it.

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#66

Post by scottyah »

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> The Palantir executive pointed to “exploding pagers and long-distance drone strikes from shipping containers” as attacks which “prove that technology has once again changed the battlefield,” and that “our military has to change with it.” That's not Palantir's market segment.

Interesting comment. It's exactly one of their market segments, defense technology.

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#67

Post by OrvalWintermute »

As a veteran, now civil servant, I think this is an excellent thing for the US military to do. BIAS: I am a PLTR shareholder and I collab with at least one of the units involved.

Another similar commissioning was the founder of Dragos, Robert M Lee who was previously a Cyber officer in the Air Force.

We need top talent from industry. These highly skilled individuals will be good pickups for the work confronting our nation in securing vital infrastructure and enabling for the future of high performance compute and AI.

https://www.robertmlee.org/back-in-military-service-from-blu...

https://www.dragos.com/team/robert-m-lee/

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#68

Post by zeroCalories »

autobodie wrote: post #47
exe34 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is. It's called fascism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_paramilitary

No, it's called capitalism — capital has the last word. As we have seen clearly, even Trump is overwhelmingly limited by the constraints of capital.

Capitalism is when people vote away their own rights? Leftist analysis can't explain why Bernie out-spent Biden and got crushed. There are strong capital interests on both sides of this issue.

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#69

Post by landl0rd »

sitkack wrote: post #45
newsclues wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don’t agree with them all the time, I find this sort of critique to be unfair and often are attempting to silence alternative media and viewpoints which is a disservice to journalism

It is an Ad hominem against the source w/o addressing the actual content of the article.

Before you run cover for these guys you should probably know it’s not “muh based anti-American-imperialist” but agitprop in service of Russian and Chinese imperialism.

Re: US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels

#70

Post by jjmarr »

stickfigure wrote: post #48
whatshisface wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd probably be a stronger case if you could point out an inaccuracy in the article. In a sense it's implicit agreement to only criticise the identity of the source.

Dishonest sources can generate bullshit faster than honest people can debunk it. At some point you are obliged to dismiss consistently unreliable sources. In fact, Wikipedia has already done this: "The English Wikipedia formally deprecated the use of The Grayzone as a source for facts in its articles in March 2020, citing issues with the website's factual reliability." (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone…

It was deprecated because it was the personal blog of Max Blumenthal more than any specific false stories. The Wikipedia discussion is public:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...

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