I don't understand how Palantir managed to sell their services outside of the US, given their deep ties to CIA, political positions and involment with US goverments.
Because until recently that was part of the sales pitch. The post-WW2 political order was that the US Govt was the security guarantor for the "western world," which meant countries allied with the US traded an almost unparalleled security guarantee for things like dollar hegemony and trade policies they probably wouldn't have acceded to otherwise. The Iraq war severely strained that bargain, and Trump's effectively broken it, but for the entire latter half of the 20th century, "this company is part of the American Military-Industrial Technosphere" was why you did business with them.
Wouldn’t that also describe every single US tech and defense contractor? The fact it has deep ties to cia is probably seen as a benefit to the leadership of our allies. Maybe their own public sour on that but you can be sure behind closed doors they are in lockstep with the actual aims of our deep state intelligence services.
The thing is that while EU is allied with the US, they are also competitors in many markets.
Airbus is using Palantir services. The competition between Boeing and Airbus has often be brutal and dirty, and considered significant at the state level.
The fact that a company like Palantir be allowed to insert themselves in the software infrastructure of a critical company that is often working against the interest of the US seems very weird to me.
"Peter Mandelson’s lobbying company, Global Counsel, until its collapse, and Mandelson took the prime minister, Keir Starmer, on a trip to Palantir’s Washington DC showroom. "
Palantir is effectively a US spy company, and let's face it, even Iran have a better international rep than the US right now.
He's just reading the room - no-one wants to be associated with the current US regime, and given Trump's specific dislike of him (you know, because he's not white), he probably doesn't seem to see much reason to beat about the bush.
The US has proven to be a bad international partner, they flout international law, they engage in piracy, their political system is prone to rapid and catastrophic change, and the people there seem to be just fine with electing a narcissistic fraudulent rapist and felon as president. Twice.
Not just "No" but "Hell, No!"
[ITT: Watch the butt-hurt USAsians downvote because they're not used to someone telling it as it is about the USA]
What realm of reality do you live in because the United States is a massive force of evil. Invading nations, ignoring international law, starting illegal blockades, bombing school children, bombing first responders, starving children, helping enable a genocide.
The idea that Iran has a worse international reputation is laughable. The US is literally causing a global recession, along with an energy crunch, and likely manmade induced famine that will ruin the lives of 10s of millions of people; or do none of these lives matter because they have the wrong shade of melatonin?
Whatever goodwill the US built from WW2 has been thoroughly destroyed.
I wish I could say we deserve the imperial boomerang but the only people that will continue to suffer, both domestically and abroad, will be innocent civilians while the elites (who are the only beneficiaries of US imperialism) go unpunished.
And this is strictly talking about political governance, US corporations are another layer of evil as well.
I'm wondering how this will effect the Palantir London office, which is their biggest European office. Local employment has often been a pawn in deals like this (see e.g. Microsoft & Munich), so I'm positively surprised to see a major with a spine here.
My understanding of Palantir's actual, technical offering is profoundly boring: a hosted platform that connects to existing diverse sources of data and organizes them according to well-defined (by Palantir's FDEs) useful schemas. I have developed this impression through actually building a product on the Foundry as well as several rounds of interviews. Frankly that is profoundly boring. The anti-Palantir propaganda, portraying them as this all-powerful Skynet software, is as much a part of their marketing as anything else.
On the other hand, their effectiveness appears to be less in question: the article above claims that Scotland Yard found hundreds of police officers to have been abusing their posts in various ways through use of the Palantir system. I am not a fan of corrupt cops, so I think this is good. Similar stories exist elsewhere, like a 68% reduction in 48-hour mortality at a Tampa hospital through deployment of Palantir's anti-sepsis monitoring tech.
Thus I arrive at the conclusion that this decision is ultimately a loss. Khan's legal standing appears to rely on them not investigating other potential suppliers—I'm not sure that there are any, and "develop these simple data systems in-house" is a bad option because if they could have they would. I suppose ultimately I don't think that Palantir's "bad vibes" among constituents should impact governments' desire to be effective in the programs they purport implement.
This is far more than just "bad vibes", and just a handful of many examples. The vibes also tend to be pretty bad around things that are used to enable spying, a secret police force, or bombing children.
This isn't even touching on the name of the company itself and the origin of that name, or the fact that Peter Thiel founded it, or many of the other things that give it "bad vibes".
Anything critical of Palantir or mass surveillance in general tends to get auto flagged / downvoted very quickly. It's a bit ironic for a site calling itself Hacker News, but it's also very fitting and not surprising that a tech site these days is being influenced so heavily by bots/llms.
Airbus is using Palantir services. The competition between Boeing and Airbus has often be brutal and dirty, and considered significant at the state level.
The fact that a company like Palantir be allowed to insert themselves in the software infrastructure of a critical company that is often working against the interest of the US seems very weird to me.
Bribery.
I wander if they'd care to further elaborate on that.
He's just reading the room - no-one wants to be associated with the current US regime, and given Trump's specific dislike of him (you know, because he's not white), he probably doesn't seem to see much reason to beat about the bush.
The US has proven to be a bad international partner, they flout international law, they engage in piracy, their political system is prone to rapid and catastrophic change, and the people there seem to be just fine with electing a narcissistic fraudulent rapist and felon as president. Twice.
Not just "No" but "Hell, No!"
[ITT: Watch the butt-hurt USAsians downvote because they're not used to someone telling it as it is about the USA]
The idea that Iran has a worse international reputation is laughable. The US is literally causing a global recession, along with an energy crunch, and likely manmade induced famine that will ruin the lives of 10s of millions of people; or do none of these lives matter because they have the wrong shade of melatonin?
Whatever goodwill the US built from WW2 has been thoroughly destroyed.
I wish I could say we deserve the imperial boomerang but the only people that will continue to suffer, both domestically and abroad, will be innocent civilians while the elites (who are the only beneficiaries of US imperialism) go unpunished.
And this is strictly talking about political governance, US corporations are another layer of evil as well.
On the other hand, their effectiveness appears to be less in question: the article above claims that Scotland Yard found hundreds of police officers to have been abusing their posts in various ways through use of the Palantir system. I am not a fan of corrupt cops, so I think this is good. Similar stories exist elsewhere, like a 68% reduction in 48-hour mortality at a Tampa hospital through deployment of Palantir's anti-sepsis monitoring tech.
Thus I arrive at the conclusion that this decision is ultimately a loss. Khan's legal standing appears to rely on them not investigating other potential suppliers—I'm not sure that there are any, and "develop these simple data systems in-house" is a bad option because if they could have they would. I suppose ultimately I don't think that Palantir's "bad vibes" among constituents should impact governments' desire to be effective in the programs they purport implement.
> ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt “illegal immigrants” https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s168
> ICE Just Paid Palantir Tens of Millions for ‘Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations’ https://www.404media.co/ice-just-paid-palantir-tens-of-milli...
> Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American https://newrepublic.com/post/195904/trump-palantir-data-amer...
> Palantir allegedly enables Israel's AI targeting in Gaza, raising concerns over war crimes https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
This is far more than just "bad vibes", and just a handful of many examples. The vibes also tend to be pretty bad around things that are used to enable spying, a secret police force, or bombing children.
This isn't even touching on the name of the company itself and the origin of that name, or the fact that Peter Thiel founded it, or many of the other things that give it "bad vibes".
To be fair, the Met should get a little credit for applying Palantir to themselves first.
Sadiq Khan blocks £50M Met police deal with Palantir https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48221296
Seeing now that this post may be limited, my tin foil hat gets placed back on.
It’s not like Palantir is a fan of YC, they literally sued them…
Who the ever-living fuck thought that was a good idea needs their bank-account scrutinising.
His alternatives look bleak and elitist, I would not be surprised in the slightest they reverse this.