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.