Reflections on Palantir

> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse.

Lots of people still see it in exactly this way. The fact that Palantir IPO'd and is a magnet for investors doesn't contradict this. Palantir always had a reputation for champagne and surveillance.

So does AT&T and Verizon which would fall in the morally neutral category. Even big tech - Google/meta are probably classified as morally neutral but in reality gray areas. The US government probably has access to all that data - with our without warrants.

I also agree with his premise. There is really no gray area working for defense tech in the US. In my opinion people have a rather lopsided view of that. You would rarely find any other nation that where defense tech companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda ridiculous.

>You would rarely find any other nation that where defense tech companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda ridiculous.

Probably because US MIC is weird political place. On one hand, it's turns out really cool tech and US needs defense. On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems? Throw in some pork barrel in there to add to political stuff.

When people post memes about "You are about to find out why US doesn't have free healthcare." with some overwhelming American firepower equipment in the image, it's not hard to see why a lot of people find it a grey area.

> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems?

Because someone has to be this if you want the continuation of the post-WWII rules-based international order that underpins the entire global economy. The Department of Defense and US hegemony are essentially overhead that is the Least Bad Option to stop WWIII from kicking off or the world from fragmenting into spheres of influence (which is starting to happen already). Who else would do this and not screw over everyone else even worse? Russia? China?

We should stop defending an imperialist establishment which relies on the rampant exploitation of the global south and is committing genocide and calling it rules-based order. More like America rules.

The containment rhetoric/logic is long past its use-by date - the US's pretense as guardians of a common moral high ground was shattered at the very latest with the Vietnam War, and in 2024 it is an absolute tragedy of a joke in poor taste.

You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive anyone decent crazy. What else can happen when you hear pieces of shit like Blinken wax lyrical about the human rights of Palestinians while supercharging weapons deliveries to Israel, or the very existence of the UNSC veto which will guarantee outcomes that reinforce unforgivable and unforgettable mass crimes, beckoning awful consequences for the whole world.

>You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive anyone decent crazy.

All complaints, no solutions. Typical.

So who does have the moral high-ground around the globe? It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared. I can imagine much worse, just by reading a history book.

> It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared.

You've misread the situation. I don't think it would be global peace and harmony if we stopped playing world police. I simply do not care. It's not our responsibility to take care of other countries while we have serious problems at home that are going ignored.